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“What do you want?”

“Wow. Okay.” He laughs and puts his hands up, easy, friendly, submissive. “Can I come in? It’s freezing.”

“No.”

“Five minutes.”

“You can have them right there.”

He looks past me at the warm room and the counter lights. “God, it smells exactly the same. Remember Sundays? Rosa used to leave us the broken croissants.”

This is what he does best, normalizing toxic behavior in the hopes that I won’t recall the bad bits stretching longer and longer until they consumed everything else.

“I remember you leaving.”

The smile holds. The way it held through every apology I ever got from him.

“I’m in a hole, V. A deep one. I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.” His voice drops, gentle, like we’re the only two people on the block. “Eight thousand. That’s all. I’ll give it back to you in three months, I swear to God. Everybody knows Rosa’s selling. Everybody knows you’ve been putting money away for years. You were always the smart one with money.”

I have been putting money away for years. Nine years to be precise. Every Saturday shift when I was seventeen. Every ER night I could pick up. Every birthday check my grandmother pressed into my hand and told me not to spend. And I didn’t save a single cent for Daniel’s benefit.

A snort escapes before I can stop it. “Are you serious right now?”

“Vera, come on, please.”

“No, Daniel. I’m closing the door now.”

Something goes out of his face, and what’s under his expression is what was always under it.

“Right. Sure.” He looks at my apron, my hands, the flour on my wrist. “You know what’s funny? You always said you were going to be a nurse, and here you are, wiping counters for an old lady every evening.” He smiles again, a different smile, and I’m surprised not to find two rows of teeth. “I guess someone had to.”

I don’t move. I’ve had six years to get used to the idea that he can still find my soft place, and it still hurts.

His eyes slide past my shoulder and narrow. “Who’s that?”

I don’t have to turn around. I know where Nikolai is because I can smell his citrussy shampoo.

He’s right behind me, just there at my shoulder, where Daniel has to look up to see his face, and I know exactly what it cost him, because I watched him sit down when he got here.

“Nobody you need to know,” I say.

Daniel stares at him for a long moment, at the scar through the eyebrow and the hand resting on the edge of the door above my head, the ink across every knuckle.

His face changes. It isn’t fear. I’ve seen Daniel afraid, and fear makes him loud. This is quieter. It’s the look he used to get at the end of the month, running numbers in his head at the kitchen table.

“She said no.” Nikolai is calm, polite, only there’s a sharp edge to his tone that I haven’t heard before. “Don’t make her say it again.”

“Or what?” Daniel counters, hands balling into fists.

“Or you’ll find out what happens when I run out of patience.”

Daniel looks at me. Then at him. He huffs out a short laugh, shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, and walks away up the block toward a gray car parked under the streetlight on the corner.

I close the door and lock it. My hands are completely steady until the bolt slides home and then they start to shake.

“I had it.” I lean against the door.

“I know.”