Page 91 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

I smile faintly.

“No. Crude would be asking whether Aleksander gives me operational details after he fucks me. You prefer to call it predictability.”

The silence that follows is the first honest thing in the room. His fingers stop moving. He studies me more closely.

“Does Aleksander trust you?”

The question slides into the space between us like a thin blade.

“I’m his wife.”

“That was not my question.”

“No,” I say. “It wasn’t.”

Papa waits. So do I. At last, he says, “Has he spoken of children?”

My hands don’t move in my lap. “No.”

“An alliance becomes less theoretical when there is blood between families.”

The sentence should make me flinch. But apparently I’ve used up the part of me that flinches at his desk. My father is good at making horror sound like inevitability while he waits for everyone else to become embarrassed by their own outrage.

I give him none.

“My marriage is not yours to inspect.”

“Your marriage exists because of me.”

I meet his eyes. “It exists because of what you took.”

Papa stops performing disappointment. Then he says, gently, “Careful.”

There is the father I know.

Not angry.

Worse.

Patient.

I sit back. “You asked me here to discuss my son.”

He hears the claim in it.

My son.

Not the boy. Not his asset. Not his hidden piece.

Mine.

Papa opens the top drawer of his desk. The sound of wood sliding over wood crawls across my skin. He removes a small envelope and places it on the desk between us.

For one second, I cannot move. I know what is inside before he says anything.

“He is healthy,” Papa says. “Well cared for. As I promised.”

My throat closes. Not because I don’t already know. Because the performance still works on the body. Because a photograph of my son from the hands of the man who stole him is still a photograph of my son.