Page 118 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

She’s neither shocked nor horrified.

David Kalinin raised a daughter to understand power, then made the mistake of becoming the man she most wanted to see stripped of it.

“Then I ask for his name.”

Mikhail’s expression shifts. “The name your father thinks you don’t have.”

“Yes. He thinks the name is still treasure. I let him believe that.”

“He gives it to you,” Igor says, “and believes he has bought himself more time.”

She taps the envelope. “He has.”

Then she looks at me.

“But not as much as he thinks.”

29

I LIVED AND DIED IN LESS THAN TEN MINUTES. (TAMARA)

By ten-thirty the next morning, I’m dressed for a day trip that’s not a day trip.

Dark jeans. Black sweater. Camel coat. Boots low enough to walk in, polished enough to pretend this is about architectural salvage and not the fact that my son will come out of a school building in less than five hours and I will be close enough to see his face.

Aleksander finds me in the sitting room with my coat already on and my bag beside my chair. My coffee is cooling untouched on the table. He takes in the coat, the bag, the cup, then me.

He doesn’t ask if I am ready.

Instead, he crosses the room, sets his overcoat over the back of the chair, and cups my face in both hands. His thumbs rest along my jaw, warm and reassuring, and I let myself lean into him. Last night is still too close between us. His mouth on mine. His hands. The way he said my name.

Aleksander lowers his head and kisses me. A slow, deliberate kiss that says he is here, that I am here, that my body has not become only a container for grief.

I grip the front of his sweater. His breath changes. So does mine.

The trip, the school, my father, the photograph—all of it recedes beneath the clean, impossible heat of his mouth. I could lose myself there. I want to. But Aleksander ends the kiss, resting his forehead against mine.

“If we go,” he says, “we do it carefully.”

My fingers are still curled in his sweater. “You make that sound optional.”

“It is.”

I laugh once, but it comes out unsteady. “No, it isn’t.”

His fingers brush my cheek. “It is. If you change your mind before we get there, we turn around. If you change your mind after we get there, we leave. If you need to stop, you tell me.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I close my eyes. “What if I see him and I can’t stay still? What if every reasonable thing in me disappears?”

He is silent. Finally, he says, “Then I will help you leave before you do something that hurts him.”

My eyes open. The answer cuts because it is exactly right.

“You won’t stop me?”