Chapter 10 Aleksander #4
I look at the sticker, then at Bella’s annoyed profile, then at Lily’s ketchup grin.
Cute little family.
Yeah. That’s not me. That can never be me.
Lily is still playing with the sticker on my sleeve, patting it like it’s a pet. Bella watches her, and for a few minutes something close to normal settles over the table.
She takes another bite of her burger, wipes a smear of ketchup from Lily’s cheek, and there it is—the thing that hits me harder than the gunfire did.
Her smile.
It’s small, tired, but real. The kind she probably gave strangers before all of this, over coffees and deadlines and little everyday problems. It softens her face, rounds the edges of her eyes, makes her look young in a way I haven’t seen in years.
For a heartbeat I can almost imagine this is just…life. A long drive. A bad morning. A roadside stop.
Then the smile fades.
I watch it happen. Her gaze drifts to the window, to the cars on the highway, and I can see the moment reality slides back into place. Her shoulders stiffen. Her jaw tightens. Whatever warmth was there hardens into something more practical.
She takes a long sip of her soda and sets it down with more force than necessary.
“Mama,” Lily announces, wriggling. “Pee.”
Bella blows out a breath, focusing. “Okay, baby. Let’s go.”
She slides out of the booth, lifts Lily onto her hip, and heads toward the restroom. I track them until the door closes behind them. The diner feels louder without them—plates clinking, fryer hissing, some song from ten years ago playing too low over the speakers.
I sit back, fingers drumming once against the table, then still. Their half-finished food is in front of me. Her drink, the little damp ring it’s left on the laminate. Lily’s crown from the kids’ menu, crushed in the middle where she gripped it too tightly.
What are you doing, Antonov?
I know the answer, even if I don’t want to look at it too closely.
I’m supposed to be good at distance. At cutting things off cleanly. At seeing risk and walking away while it’s still small. That’s how I stayed alive long enough to become the kind of man other people whisper about.
But with them…I’m already past the line.
I picture Bella’s face when the glass shattered. The way she curled around her child without a thought for herself. The way her hands shook but she held on anyway. I picture Lily’s little fingers grabbing my sleeve. The way she said Papa like it was the most obvious word in the world.
I could drop them in New York. Hand them their safety like an envelope. Walk away. Tell myself it’s mercy.
I know I’m not going to.
The bench dips beside me. Nikolai slides into the booth, coffee in hand, eyes scanning the diner once before settling on me.
“You look like hell,” he says mildly.
“You drive like it,” I counter.
He huffs something like a laugh, then sobers. “What’s the plan when we hit the city?”
“Hotel first,” I say.
He nods, unsurprised. “And after that? You going to drop them where they need to go?”
I don’t answer right away.
His brows lift a fraction. “Aleksander.”
“No,” I say finally.
He studies me, really studies me. “No as in ‘not yet’ or ‘not at all’?”
I take a slow breath. “No as in I’m not dropping them anywhere like they’re a parcel. They stay under my protection until I’m satisfied this is over. Completely. Whoever sent that car—whoever decided to take a shot at us on open road—they’re still breathing. That’s a problem.”
Nikolai takes a sip of his coffee, watching me over the rim. “Protection,” he repeats. “That what we’re calling it.”
I give him a flat look. “You have something to say, say it.”
He shrugs. “I’ve seen you extend protection before. It doesn’t usually involve kids’ stickers on your sleeve.”
I glance down. The smiling burger is still there, slightly crooked. I don’t peel it off.
“She’s not just some civilian I used as cover,” I say quietly. “She’s…mine.”
I don’t mean it in the way I do when I talk about soldiers or lieutenants or assets.
Nikolai shakes his head, something like fond exasperation in the movement. “You’ve taken territory with less preparation than you’ve put into this woman.”
“She’s not territory,” I say. “She’s…a problem I don’t want solved.”
He goes quiet at that. He’s known me long enough to hear the weight under it.
“So what are you going to do?” he says eventually. “Keep them in your pocket forever? Hide them in some apartment and hope the world doesn’t find them?”
“I’m going to make sure anyone who even thinks about using them against me regrets it,” I say. “That’s step one.”
“And step two?”
My gaze fixes on the door just as it opens. I expect to see Bella but it’s not her.
I look at my watch. Two minutes. Three. Five.
Too long for a toddler and a bathroom, I tell myself. But the unease is already starting. It sits low in my chest and spreads.
I keep my eyes on the hallway. No one comes out. A couple of truckers go in, one after another. Some kids barrel past, laughing, a woman with a stroller follows. No Bella. No Lily.
“Stay here,” I tell Nikolai, already sliding out of the booth.
“You got it,” he says, but his eyes are sharper now, tracking me.
I move through the diner, past the counter, past the soda machines. A waitress with tired eyes and a ponytail steps into my path, polite, automatic. “Sir? Restrooms are back there,” she says, pointing, like I’ve missed the signs.
“I know,” I say. I’m already halfway there.
Another staff member—older, manager vibe, name tag I don’t read—steps in front of the ladies’ room door just as I reach for it. “Sir, you can’t go in there.”
“My wife and child have been in there too long,” I say. I don’t correct the word wife. I don’t care enough to. “Move.”
“We just checked,” he says calmly, palms up. “A minute ago. There’s no one in there. They must’ve already come out.”
My heart kicks hard against my ribs. Cold spreads through my limbs.
“They haven’t,” I say flatly.
He gives me the kind of smile people give difficult customers. “I’m sure they just—”
I shove him aside.
He stumbles back with a protest. “Sir, you can’t—”
The door swings open under my hand.
It’s quiet inside. Too quiet.
The smell hits first—cheap soap, bleach, something flowery from a wall dispenser. Three stalls, all doors open. Empty. No feet, no voices. The baby-changing shelf is folded up against the wall. A paper towel hangs half out of the trash can, damp and forgotten.
And at the far end, above the sinks, the narrow window is open.
Cold air slides in through the gap, stirring the thin curtain. It lifts, falls, lifts again, like it’s breathing.
My heart stops.
For a second everything in me goes still, like the world has dropped out from under my feet. Then everything hits at once—sound, blood, movement.
I cross the room in three strides. The tiles echo under my boots. The window is small, but not too small. It opens onto the side of the building, a narrow strip of gravel and concrete and a rusty dumpster just visible below. There are faint marks on the sill—scuffs, the smudge of a shoe.
She’s gone.
I grip the edge of the frame, fingers biting into metal.
I see it play out in my head—Bella lifting the window, pushing it with her shoulder, checking the drop.
Passing Lily through first, then climbing after her, dirt on her knees, one hand clamped over that little mouth to keep her quiet.
The way her heart must have been pounding.
The way she didn’t come back to say goodbye.
Survival instinct, I think.
Of course she ran. Of course she did.
Behind me, the manager hovers in the doorway, voice small now. “Sir…like I said, there was no one in—”
“Get out,” I say.
He shuts up and vanishes.
I stay there a moment longer, breathing hard, eyes on the tiny rectangle of outside. The morning looks the same as it did an hour ago. Same gray sky, same moving cars, same nothing.
But she’s out there now. Somewhere. Carrying my…carrying Lily. No car seat. No protection. No idea who sent that sedan or whether they’re still in play.
Every protective instinct in me snarls.
Nikolai appears in the doorway, eyes taking in the empty stalls, the open window, my white-knuckled grip on the frame.
“She left,” he says. Not a question.
“She ran,” I correct, voice low.
He watches me for a second. “You going to let her?”
I stare out at the strip of alley, the world beyond it. My pulse is a drum in my ears, but under the anger, under the fear, there’s something else—a dark, reluctant respect. She didn’t just sit and wait for me to decide her fate. She made a move.
“Track the cameras,” I say. “Street, parking lot, inside. I want every angle. Pull plate data from anyone leaving in the last twenty minutes. Get someone talking to staff, see if she asked for a cab or directions. Cash receipts, anything.”
Nikolai nods once. “And if she doesn’t want to be found?”
A muscle in my jaw jumps. “She’s walking out there with a three-year-old and no cover in a city she doesn’t know. The people who just tried to kill us might still be looking. She doesn’t get to not be found.”
He holds my gaze. There’s no judgment in his eyes now. Just acknowledgment. He’s seen this in me before, in other contexts, with other targets.
“This isn’t business, Alek,” he says quietly.
“I know,” I answer.
And that’s the problem.
I take one last look at the open window, at the flimsy curtain still swaying like a taunt. Then I turn away.
She thinks she’s out. Safe, because she’s away from me.
She has no idea that the safest place for her—the only safe place left—is the very thing she’s running from.
I don’t blame her for wanting distance. I don’t blame her for choosing the gap in the wall when I’m the one sitting at the table.
But it doesn’t matter.
I’m not done with her. Or with Lily.