Chapter 34
LYRA
“Are you going to comment on everything I pick up?”
“Not commenting, more like observing.”
“I merely glanced at that onesie, and you raised an eyebrow.”
“It’s too many snaps. Trust me—too many snaps is the last thing you want to deal with when you’ve got a screaming baby at 1 a.m. And then there’s the matter of the pattern.”
“The pattern?” Now it’s my turn to raise an eyebrow.
“It’s just a little much. Lots of ducks.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Ethan Kang has opinions on ducks. That’s going in my mental database. And maybe my journal.”
“You don’t keep a journal.”
“I’m starting one. And my first entry is going to be about how my security escort has strong opinions on children’s clothing with waterfowl designs.”
He chuckles.
The maternity store is a small boutique on Madison Avenue called Little Sprout. It’s the kind of half-granola, half-bougie place where everything is organic cotton and in muted earth tones, with price tags that make you want to overthrow capitalism personally.
I’m not buying much—it’s too early for that.
I’m not even showing yet. But Dr. Reeves had mentioned prenatal vitamins and comfortable basics.
When I mentioned that to Julian this morning, he’d responded by handing me a credit card made of solid metal and saying, “Whatever you need.” The look on his face suggested that arguing about it would be more exhausting than just accepting.
So, here I am, shopping for the first tangible evidence of a future that I still can’t wrap my head around, with a large man who’d take a bullet for me—and has—carrying a shopping basket with tiny little things inside. He’d insisted.
“Okay, out of the clothes section. It’s getting me choked up,” I say, nodding toward the vitamins. “That’s where I need to be.”
“Lead the way.”
We head over, and I make a beeline for the prenatal vitamins, picking up two packs and comparing dosages.
“How long have you known Julian?” I ask. The question just sort of tumbles out but in a natural way. I go with it.
Ethan gives me a slightly odd expression, as if surprised that I asked him a personal question.
“What?” I reply to his look. “Are you surprised that I want to know a little more about the guy attached to my hip for the indefinite future?”
He chuckles. “It’s more like fielding personal questions is quite the change of pace from working with Julian. We’re friends, but it’s a different kind of friendship.”
I grin. “Well, consider me a more personable client.”
He crosses his arms, wincing just a bit from the shoulder injury, then leans against a nearby wall.
“Fair enough. Anyway, I’ve known Julian for twelve years. I met him in Moscow. I was freelancing in security, and the first job he hired me for happened to go all kinds of sideways. I handled the situation.”
I set down the pre-natal vitamins, turning my attention to small packets of baby snacks with little anime-style pandas on them. Everything in here is just so damn cute.
“Handled. I’ve been in this world long enough to know what that word is a euphemism for.”
“Then I won’t go into detail,” he replies. “Anyway, he liked my work and hired me full-time the next morning.”
“Wow. Just like that?”
“Just like that. Julian doesn’t deliberate about people. He either trusts you or he doesn’t. There’s no in between.” Ethan turns his attention to the display of pre-natal vitamins. “The one with folate and higher dosage is best to start taking ASAP.”
I grab the ones he’s talking about, give him a look, and toss them into the basket.
“Not trying to pry, but you seem to know quite a bit about the topic of pregnant women and babies.”
“I do. I have some experience.”
“You’re a dad?”
“Uncle. My younger sister has two daughters. She lost her husband shortly after the second one in a car accident.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. It happened a few years ago. I took some time off work and moved my sister to New York, so I could help out more with the girls. I still do, whenever I can.”
“And Julian let you?”
“Julian insisted. He told me that I had a duty. He paid me my full salary through the time off, and he brought me back as soon as I got my sister squared away.”
His words warm my heart. It’s no surprise that Julian has a soft spot for kids. All the same, hearing this makes me like him just a little bit more.
And I’m really starting to warm up to Ethan. Learning that he’s the kind of brother willing to drop everything for his sister and his nieces is endearing.
On top of that, he’s deeply competent. Having him close at hand makes me feel safe, which says a lot, seeing as someone in this town wants me dead. Not to mention there’s a team of six other bodyguards all within a hundred feet of our location at any given moment that we’re out of the apartment.
But Ethan’s amazing at keeping them out of sight and not making me feel like I’m a moving zoo exhibit.
“Julian is different with you. In the twelve years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him—” he pauses, choosing his words carefully.
“He plans for everything. Every contingency, every scenario, every possible outcome. But with you, he doesn’t plan.
He reacts. It makes him better in some ways and worse in others. ”
“Worse how?”
“He’s making decisions with his heart, instead of with his head. In our world, that gets people killed.” He takes a beat. “But he’s also happier with you than I’ve ever seen him. So there’s that.”
We’re at the register paying when the door chimes. I glance over and my blood runs cold, my instincts instantly firing.
Sophia.
Ethan’s already on his phone, no doubt preparing to have his men move in.
“Wait,” I tell him.
He pauses. “Are you sure?”
There’s something off about her. She doesn’t look haughty or self-assured. She looks… lost.
“I want to talk to her.”
“Lyra, I don’t think that’s a good decision.”
“You can stay close and have the other guys watch, but I want to give her a few seconds.”
Ethan’s lips form a thin line, as if trying to decide whether or not to let me have my way or to put his foot down.
“Fine. I don’t like it, but fine. If she does anything I don’t like, she gets tackled.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Ethan takes the bag from the counter and we walk outside. Sophia follows. When we stop outside the door, her hands fall to her sides, and she looks like she has no idea what to do with herself.
She’s thinner, paler. The bold red lips from the fundraiser are gone, replaced with a nude gloss that washes her out. Her coat is wrinkled, her hair mussed.
“I know you don’t want to see me,” she says. “I know I don’t deserve any of your time. But I need to say something. And then I’ll go.”
Ethan takes position a couple of feet away. He raises his eyebrows, silently asking if I want him to get rid of her. I shake my head quickly. Not yet.
“Talk,” I say.
“I was wrong about Alex.” She says it quick, like she's been rehearsing it, and she is afraid she'll say it wrong if she doesn’t say it fast. “I was wrong about everything. He’s not who I thought he was, Lyra. When we were together, when I was with him, I thought I was special. I thought he chose me because I was better. More of what he wanted.” She swallows hard before continuing.
“But I wasn’t better, I was just easier to control. ”
I don’t respond. This is either the best performance she’s ever given or the first honest thing she’s said in years.
“He talks to me the way he once talked to you. You know, little comments about my body. And the way he looks at me when I say the ‘wrong’ thing in front of his mother. Laura. God, Laura is—” She stops and takes a slow breath.
“She makes me feel so goddamn stupid. Not in an obvious way. She does it with just a look or a snicker. I hate it. And Alex just lets her.”
“I know exactly what that feels like,” I reply. Because I do.
“I know you do. That’s why I’m here.” Sophia’s eyes are damp.
“I’m sorry, Ly. For everything. For Alex, for the things I said at the gala—all of it.
I was cruel, because being cruel made me feel like I had power.
But I didn’t. I never did. Alex holds all of it, and he has no intention of ever letting me have any, even just a little. ”
The silence that follows is heavy. I look at her—my former best friend, the girl who used to braid my hair in the dorm at Hudson, the one who cried on my shoulder when her grandmother died—and I feel something that I didn’t expect.
It’s not forgiveness. Not yet, but maybe not ever. It’s recognition. A specific, painful recognition that she’s been through the same thing that I have and come out the other end, just like I did, with the same bruises, the same scars.
I shake my head. “I’m not ready to be friends again.
And honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.
What you did was cruel and it was calculated.
If it had been some one-off thing, it still would’ve hurt, but maybe it would have been easier to understand.
This has been years of looking me in the eye and lying every time we saw each other. ”
She glances aside, biting her lower lip before turning her attention back to me.
“I… I know.”
“But I hear you. And I’ll think about it.”
She nods and wipes her eyes. “That’s more than I deserve.”
“Yeah. It really is.”
She turns to leave but then stops a few feet away and turns back.
“Ly, be careful. With Alex. He’s planning something. I don’t know what, but he and Laura have been having meetings. Late-night, closed-door meetings at his place. And he stopped telling me things. So whatever it is that he’s hiding, he doesn’t trust me to keep quiet about it.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s the least I can do.” She smiles, and I can’t help but smile back. She’s a ghost of the old Sophia, the one who could be funny and charming.
She vanishes into the Madison Avenue foot traffic.
I stand on the sidewalk, slightly stunned, trying to process everything. Ethan steps up next to me, holding the Little Sprout bag.
“You know she’s playing you, right?”
“Yep.”
“And you let her talk anyway.”
“I wanted to see what her angle was.” I take the bag and start walking, Ethan falling into step at my side. “The apology is real, or at least part of it was. Alex and Laura have been grinding her down the same way they did me. It’s just how they are.”
“And the rest?”
“A con. I’d bet anything she didn’t just happen to find me at a maternity store. She doesn’t even know I’m pregnant. Someone knew I’d be here and sent her, probably because they want to see if I’ll take the bait and start trusting her again.”
Ethan nods. “Very likely. So if that is the case, what’s your play?”
“I’ll let her think it’s working, let her believe I’m really thinking it over, weighing the pros and cons. I’ll leave the door open a crack and see what she brings me next, because whatever Alex is planning, she knows something. And that means she might talk.”
Ethan is quiet for a few paces. Then he chuckles.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just that you’re more like Julian than you want to admit.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“It is, actually, and one of the nicest ones I could give.”
When we get to the car, Ethan opens the door and I slide into my seat. As soon as he shuts it, I place my hand on my stomach the way I’ve done so many times since hearing the news.
I’m planning and plotting, trying to see three moves ahead again. And I have to get it right. Because I’m not the only one I need to be watching out for.