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I laughed before I could stop myself.

Rurik looked down at the rolls scattered across the kitchen floor. “There is no reason for that sound.”

“You can coordinate armed men in three languages, but bread defeated you.”

“The pan is defective.”

“The pan didn’t throw itself.”

“It shifted.”

“Of course it did.”

He stared at me for several seconds, then the corner of his mouth moved. The expression barely became a smile, but it changed the room.

We ate at a table built for six. Rurik occupied one end while I sat around the corner from him, close enough to pass the food without either of us reaching too far. He didn’t mention the family I was missing or tell me we would be somewhere better by Christmas.

He understood that promises couldn’t manufacture a future.

Snow began shortly before dark. The flakes gathered against the window and carried me back to Montana, where winter had once meant Salvatore stomping snow from his boots and Henry sleeping beneath three blankets because his father believed the house was never warm enough.

Our first Christmas in Montana, Salvatore hung three stockings above the fireplace. Henry’s was so large that our infant son could have slept inside it, and I laughed until Salvatore insisted his child required adequate room for gifts.

“He’s four months old,” I told him. “He wants milk and a clean diaper.”

“My son has more sophisticated interests.” Salvatore adjusted the stocking until his name sat perfectly straight. “He also wants a motorcycle.”

“Your son can’t hold up his own head.”

“Then we have time to find the right one.”

I took a photograph while Salvatore stood beneath the stockings with Henry against his chest. He smiled down at our son instead of looking at the camera, and the image captured more love than any posed picture could have held.

“Now one with all three of us,” I said.

Salvatore checked the windows before propping my phone against a stack of books and setting the timer. He gathered Henry between us, one arm around my waist and the other supporting our son.

The photograph caught Henry reaching for my hair while Salvatore watched him with that unguarded softness he showed nowhere else.

I studied the three of us on the screen. No one outside the ranch knew Henry existed. My mother didn’t know she had a grandson. To the rest of the world, there was no Christmas tree, no stockings, and no family hidden beneath the Montana mountains.

Salvatore kissed my temple. “Someday, we won’t have to hide him.”

Someday had become the promise holding every wall in place.

At the time, I had believed Nolan was the reason our happiness had to remain hidden. He was the only danger I knew to fear.

Salvatore had known better.

A photograph contained shadows, windows, weather, and a hundred details invisible to someone who wasn’t searching for them. Love made people careless because joy wanted witnesses. Salvatore had let us keep one ordinary picture, then guarded it like another secret capable of leading someone directly to our door.

I’d resented that even our happiest moments could belong only to us.

Now I lived with the curtains closed against every window.

The farmhouse became unsafe three days after Thanksgiving when someone attempted to access a dormant utility account connected to the property. Maxim couldn’t prove the Society was responsible. Rurik had our bags inside the car before the search produced an answer.

December found us in a narrow brick house near the Connecticut border. Russian guards occupied the first floor while Rurik and I remained upstairs. The heat worked only when the pipes felt cooperative, and the bedroom wallpaper had faded around the places where family photographs once hung.