Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Kristen
The bathroom mirror shows me a woman I barely recognize.
You spent the night in a mafia enforcer's bed. Multiple nights, actually. And you liked it.
I grip the edge of the sink.
"Mommy, I can't find my purple shoes!"
Lily's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. I release a breath I didn't realize I was holding.
"Check under the bed, baby."
"I already checked!"
"Check again."
A dramatic sigh echoes from the bedroom. Four years old and already mastering the art of theatrical exasperation. She gets that from me.
I finish applying mascara. The memory surfaces unbidden: Jack standing behind me in our old bathroom, watching me get ready, critiquing the angle of my eyeliner, the shade of my lipstick, the way my dress fit.
"You'd be pretty if you tried harder, Kris."
I set down the mascara wand.
That voice doesn't have power anymore. Not after Nico looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Not after he touched me like my body was something to worship rather than fix.
Stop. You're going to see your mother. Focus.
"Found them!" Lily announces triumphantly, appearing in the doorway with one purple sneaker held aloft like a trophy. "They were under Sir Floppington."
"Of course they were. Sir Floppington is a notorious shoe thief."
She giggles.
We're visiting my mother today. The woman who raised me alone after my father left and never complained, never asked for help, never let me see her cry.
I don't know how to feel about it.
Lily tugs on my shirt. "Is the big scary man taking us?"
"Liam? He's not scary, baby."
She considers this with the gravity only a four-year-old can muster. "He doesn't smile."
"Some people just have serious faces."
"Nico has a serious face too. But he smiled at me yesterday."
My heart does something complicated. "Did he?"
"Uh-huh. When I showed him my drawing of Bunbun riding a dinosaur. He said it was..." She scrunches her nose, trying to remember. "'Anatomically improbable but creatively impressive.'"
I laugh despite myself. That sounds exactly like Nico.
God, what am I doing?
The question hits me as I help Lily into her second shoe. I'm sleeping with a man who uses words like "anatomically improbable" with a four-year-old. A man who runs construction for a crime family.
And somehow, impossibly, my daughter likes him.
She likes him because he doesn't lie to her. Because he talks to her like she's a person, not a prop.
Unlike Jack. Jack who used Lily as a weapon.
I shake off the thought and grab my purse. "Ready?"
"Ready!"
We find Liam waiting in the foyer. He's exactly as Lily described—serious face, eyes that scan our surroundings even though we're inside the compound. His suit is immaculate. His presence is both reassuring and slightly terrifying.
"Mrs. Thomas." He nods once.
"Just Kristen is fine."
He looks at me. "Kristen. The car is ready."
As we walk toward the garage, I think about my mother.
She never remarried after my father left. Never even came close. When I was younger, I asked her about it once. Why she didn't date, why she didn't try to find someone. She'd smiled that tired smile and said she'd had "casual things now and then" but nothing serious.
I didn't understand what she meant back then.
I understand now.
Casual things. Sex without commitment. Taking what you need without letting anyone close enough to hurt you.
Is that what I'm doing with Nico?
No. It can't be. Because Nico isn't casual about anything. The way he looks at me, touches me, refuses to let me leave his bed—there's nothing casual about it.
But I can't explain that to Lily. Can't explain why Mommy sleeps in Nico's room now. Can't explain the marks he left on my neck that I've carefully covered with concealer.
The difference, I realize as Liam opens the car door, is that Lily gets to live here too. She's not hidden away like some dirty secret. She's part of this, whatever this is.
My mother never had that. She had to keep her "casual things" separate from raising me.
Maybe that's why she's so determined to see me with Jack. Because he's the safe choice. The known quantity. The man who fits into a life she understands.
"Mommy?" Lily's small hand finds mine. "Why do you look sad?"
I force a smile. "I'm not sad, baby. Just thinking."
"About Grandma?"
"Yeah."
"Is she still mad at you?"
Out of the mouths of babes.
"I don't know," I admit. "But we're going to find out."
Liam starts the engine and my phone buzzes.
Nico: Check your left coat pocket.
I frown at the screen. We've been apart for maybe ten minutes. What could possibly—
My fingers find something hard and rectangular. I pull it out.
A credit card. Gold. Heavy. The kind that probably has no limit because people who carry them don't need limits.
My name is embossed across the front in elegant lettering.
Kristen Thomas.
What the hell?
Me: What is this?
The response comes immediately.
Nico: Your credit card.
Me: I can see that. WHY do I have a credit card?
Nico: Because you need things. Lily needs things. Tomorrow, Vittoria is taking you shopping.
My jaw tightens. The gold card feels heavier in my palm now.
Me: I have things. At my apartment. Remember? The place where I actually live?
Nico: The discussion is over.
I stare at those four words.
The discussion is over.
Jack used to say things like that. Different words, same meaning. "I've decided, Kris. Don't make this difficult." Or his favorite: "This isn't up for debate."
My stomach twists.
Me: You don't get to decide when discussions are over.
Send.
The reply takes longer this time. Thirty seconds. A minute.
Nico: You're right. But the card stays. Use it or don't. Your choice.
Your choice.
I look at the card again. Think about what it represents.
Lily's shoes are held together with hope and desperation. Her winter coat is too small—she's grown two inches since I bought it at Goodwill last year. The stuffed bunnies she carries everywhere are missing eyes, losing stuffing, loved to the point of disintegration.
I've never been able to buy her something new. Something that wasn't already worn by someone else's child first.
The opportunity to not think twice before buying something small for Lily.
That's what this card means.
No more calculating whether I can afford the slightly-better cereal. No more pretending the generic brand tastes just as good when Lily asks why her Cheerios look different from the ones in commercials.
No more telling her "maybe next time" when she points at something in a store window.
"Mommy?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Can we get ice cream after Grandma's?"
My automatic response forms on my tongue: We'll see. The phrase every parent uses when they mean probably not but can't bear to say it.
I look at the gold card.
"Yeah," I hear myself say. "We can get ice cream."
Lily's face lights up.
I pocket the card.
It feels like surrender. It feels like freedom. It feels like both things at once, and I don't know how to hold the contradiction.
What am I doing?
The question echoes again. Louder this time.
I'm letting a man I've known for weeks pay for my life. I'm sleeping in his bed. I'm raising my daughter in his family's compound while the Russian mob circles outside and my ex-husband files for custody.
And somehow, impossibly, I feel safer than I have in years.
The credit card burns against my thigh through the fabric of my coat.
Your choice.
Maybe that's the difference. Maybe that's what separates Nico from Jack.
Jack took my choices away and called it love.
Nico gives me choices and calls it nothing at all.
I pull out my phone one more time.
Me: Fine. But I'm buying Lily ice cream first.
Nico: Good. She deserves ice cream.
She deserves ice cream.
I put the phone away before I do something stupid. Like tell him I might be falling for him. Like admit that his direct, blunt honesty is the most romantic thing anyone has ever given me.
"Are we almost there?" Lily asks.
"Almost, baby."
Through the tinted windows, Chicago slides past. Gray buildings, gray sky, gray slush on the sidewalks. But inside this armored SUV, with a gold card in my pocket and ice cream in my future, the world looks a little less colorless.
My mother's apartment building appears ahead.
Time to face a different kind of battle.
Nico
The surveillance footage plays on a loop across three monitors. Empty streets where Russians used to park their black SUVs. Clean sidewalks where their soldiers used to smoke and watch our gates.
Gone. All of them. Three days now.
"They stopped." Pietro leans back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. "Just like that."
I don't trust just like that. Nothing in our world happens without reason. "Word on the street?"
"That's the interesting part." Pietro swivels toward me, and I catch the calculation in his eyes. The same look our father used to get before making moves that changed everything. "They want an alliance."
My jaw tightens. "Everyone wants an alliance. Doesn't mean we give them one."
"I've been reconsidering."
What?
I push off the wall where I've been leaning and cross to the desk, planting my palms on the polished wood.
"Reconsidering what, exactly?"
Pietro doesn't flinch at my tone. He never does. "We've done a deep dive on the Baganovs. Liam's had people inside for weeks now. Financial records, supply chains, territory disputes." He slides a folder across the desk. "They're cleaner than any other Bratva we've encountered."
I flip through the pages. Bank statements. Shipping manifests. Personnel files with photographs and detailed backgrounds. Liam's work is thorough, as always.
"Clean is relative in our business," I mutter.
"Clean enough." Pietro stands, moving to the window that overlooks the compound's eastern gardens.
"They've also expanded into territories we don't touch," Pietro continues. "Atlantic City. Parts of Miami. Some shipping routes through the Gulf that could double our distribution capacity."