Chapter 7 Mina
MINA
I laugh. It isn’t pretty. Maniacal, really. “I’m sorry—what?”
He doesn’t repeat himself. He looks past me and lifts two fingers. The door opens. One of his goons stands in the doorway. Another man I don’t know steps in behind him with a canvas duffel.
“No,” I say, moving between them and the boys. “Nobody touches anything until I understand what’s happening.”
Roman lowers his hand. The men pause. The room goes quiet except for the low baby noises and the building air kicking on. My mother sets her tea down carefully, like it’s a prop that has to be returned intact.
“What is going on?” I ask Roman.
He holds my eyes. “My son is consolidating power. He is pushing men who like tradition and men who like a fight. He will use anything that looks like leverage. The twins are not safe outside my compound. Neither are you.”
“Your compound.” I almost smile. “You mean your house.”
“I mean a place I control. Walls. Cameras. People who answer to me.”
“And the marriage?” I ask. “That part you tossed in like a gift with purchase?”
“Not a gift.” He doesn’t blink. “Cover. Legitimacy. Legal protections. If we are married, you have rights that no one can talk you out of. Next of kin, decisions if I’m hurt, access to lawyers and doctors and money if someone tries to shut a door.
The boys become my named heirs by default.
I have disowned Vitaly. Right now I have no legal heir.
That is dangerous for a pakhan. People test what looks weak. This benefits us both.”
The word hits my chest even though I already knew it. Pakhan. The first time I heard it, it was a title my ex tossed around like a crown he’d already measured for his head. Now it is a problem in my living room in a charcoal suit.
“My sons would inherit illegal businesses,” I say, because if I don’t put it into air it will turn into a stone in my stomach.
“They will inherit what I choose to make theirs,” he answers.
“Companies. Real property. Enough structure to protect them. As for the rest—what is illegal does not sit in a will. But men will still look for an heir. If there isn’t one, they will make one out of themselves.
That means war. War ends up in places like this.
” He lifts his chin toward the thin door, the rattling window, the stroller parked for flight.
“Say the part about Vitaly without euphemisms,” my mother says, cutting through what’s left of my shock. “You said ‘disowned.’ What does that mean in your world?”
“It means he does not inherit a thing from me,” Roman says. “It means I will not hand him my people. It means if he uses you or the boys to force my hand, I treat him as an enemy, not as a son who deserves patience.”
My hand finds the table without looking. I feel the worn wood under my palm and the old paint rubs off like chalk. “And marriage fixes that?”
“It closes a door he wants open,” Roman says. “It tells men who are counting that I have a family under my protection. It gives you a leash on me too—legal standing. And it puts the boys in a place where their names are not a question.”
“I’m supposed to trust that you’re thinking about my leash on you?”
“You are supposed to do the smart thing and survive. I do not ask you to trust me tonight. I tell you to move in with me now. Trust comes later.”
His man hasn’t moved since Roman’s gesture, but his eyes skim the apartment like he’s memorizing an evacuation plan. The other man watches the hall. I can hear our neighbors’ TV through the wall and the rumble of the elevator. Everything ordinary keeps going while my life changes shape.
“You come into my home after a year,” I say, fury waking up under the fear, “and you tell me to play wife because your house looks soft from the outside?”
“I tell you to move because the deli was a preview,” he says.
“The boys are leverage and trophies in his head. I am not waiting for him to choose the hour.” He glances at the playpen and then back at me.
It isn’t soft. It is exact. “You wanted plain words. Here they are. If you stay here, he will test this door. Or that fire escape. Or your windows. Barring that, he may kill your neighbor so he can access that wall and come through it.” He drags his fingers through his dark and silver hair.
“But if you come with me, he will test my door. And my door is heavier.”
I look at my mother. Her face is tight, but she doesn’t look surprised. She nods once—ask the rest. So I do.
“What about my job? I can’t just vanish. I have to tell them something.”
“Your job will be wife and mother. I will pay you triple your salary to manage those duties. Not that you’ll need a salary, as you’ll have access to some of my accounts.”
I swallow hard. “Money doesn’t come without responsibilities.”
“As I said, wife and mother. Wife when other wives would be around—birthdays, holidays, and the like. Mother, full time. Other than that, you are free to do as you wish.”
It still sounds too easy. But there are bigger concerns. “And my mother?”
“She comes,” he says, like the question is insulting. “If that is what you want. I will set up an account for her, as well. You will want for nothing.”
“All of this sounds neat when you say it,” I tell him. “Then I think about putting my babies in a car with strangers, and neat disappears.”
“They won’t be strangers,” he says. He looks at Tanner and the other man. “Names.”
“Tanner,” the hulking one by the door says.
“Marcus,” says the other. He’s older than Tanner, hair too short, eyes steady.
“My men will escort us in my bullet-proof SUV to the compound.” He says it as fact, like there aren’t a thousand questions in my head.
My mother is watching him over the rim of her cup like she watched a contractor once when he said a repair would only take a day. She sets the cup down and stands. “If we go, we pack ourselves. No one rummages through drawers. We hand you what you carry.”
“Agreed,” Roman says immediately. He looks back to his men. “Do not touch anything unless asked. Help when asked.”
Tanner nods. Marcus nods. My shoulders loosen a fraction. Then they tighten again. “You don’t get to decide this and have me say thank you like a good girl,” I tell Roman, because I’m not about to roll over for this. “You didn’t ask. You told.”
“I told because the time for asking is long past. I wasted that time. I won’t waste another night.”
Silence stretches, thin as a wire. Then Xander fusses, a small complaint with a big voice behind it. The sound snaps something in me back into place. The part that gets formula measured correctly and bottles rinsed and sleep found even when the world refuses.
“What do I pack?” I ask, because anger is a luxury and I don’t have time for luxuries.
“Three days of everything you can’t find in a store,” Roman says. “Documents. Medicine. Comfort things. The rest we will replace tomorrow.”
I move. My mother moves with me because we’ve done this before in other times—evictions, hospital bags, the kind of nights that sort people into those who panic and those who work.
I go to the boys’ drawers and start with the ridiculous quantity of onesies small bodies require.
Socks. The hat Yuri refuses and the one Xander tolerates.
The soft blanket that calms them both. My mother grabs diapers because she knows how fast a day eats them.
“Bottles,” she says, and I’m already at the sink. The drying rack is full. I pack the clean ones and the brush. Formula goes in next. I toss in the baby wash because unfamiliar soap can start a rash and I don’t want to discover that at two in the morning in a new bathroom. My hands are steady.
My heart is not.
I stop long enough to text the office: Family emergency. Out tomorrow and likely the week. I’ll confirm as soon as I can. I could add details. I don’t. Mr. Kerr will bluster and then enjoy telling someone else to adjust a calendar. Work will survive without me.
I’m not sure about Roman’s “wife and mother” thing. Having no money of my own sounds like a recipe for disaster. No matter how appealing the thought is. Money with no strings attached sounds too good to be true.
Back in the main room, Roman has taken one step closer to the door like he’s holding a wall up with his shoulder. He watches without interfering. He doesn’t ask where anything is. He doesn’t tell me I’m packing wrong. It makes the packing easier to bear.
“Birth certificates?” he asks. “Insurance?”
“In the drawer,” I say, and I go to the narrow dresser by the door and pull the accordion folder that holds our lives. The paper feels thin in my hands. I slide the folder into my bag.
“What about the crib?” my mother asks, practical to the bone even now.
“You’ll have one there,” Roman says. “Two, actually.” He says it without looking at a phone, like he assumed we were coming the second he walked in and set men moving.
“And the stroller?” she asks.
“Marcus will carry it,” he says. “Or we can buy a second.”
“We’re not rich,” she says automatically.
“I am,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a boast. Just a simple statement of fact.
I pick up Yuri and he quiets. I turn back to Roman. “Ground rules.”
“Say them.”
“My mother comes,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“My name on the paperwork,” I say. “On theirs. On mine. Nothing hidden. Nothing in somebody else’s lockbox.”
“Yes.”
“No guns near them. I know you live in a world where that sentence is a joke. I’m not laughing. No guns where they sleep. None where they eat.”
“Agreed.” He looks surprisingly unruffled by this demand. “Security is separate from a nursery and a kitchen. The house is big.”
“I keep working,” I add. “Maybe not tomorrow. But I’m not becoming a decoration.”
“You don’t become anything you don’t choose.”
“And if I hate it there? If it feels like another kind of cage?”
“You tell me. We fix it, or we build you a separate house and lock a different door.” He looks around my apartment. “But we don’t pretend this is good enough while a man who thinks he owns you is lurking and looking to collect heads.”
My throat hurts. “You’re very good at being reasonable and terrifying at the same time.”
Xander fusses and my mother trades me. I settle him against my shoulder and he sighs like he’s rearranging his tiny soul.
The room looks smaller with the bags open and the men’s shoulders near the door.
My list runs again in my head—bottles, formula, wipes, blankets, pajamas, chargers, keys—it’s all here. “Ready.”
Roman nods to Marcus. “Car two to the back. We go in three minutes.” Marcus slips out, quick and quiet.
I turn back to Roman because there is still the boulder in the middle of the room with letters carved into it. “The marriage. We don’t know each other.”
He lifts a shoulder. “We know enough. We can know more with coffee tomorrow.”
I look at the boys. One dozes. One stares, serious as a tax form. Memories flash to the forefront. The deli. The knife a year ago and the clean sting and the kind, bored nurse who handed me a new strip of tape and said, “Press here.” How thin our front door is.
“This is nuts,” I say, because it is. “It’s reckless and fast and it sounds like a bad soap opera.”
“Yes. And it’s the only option.”
I breathe. I kiss Xander’s head. I hand him to my mother and wipe my face with the back of my hand, annoyed at myself for the damp there. I face Roman so he can’t mistake me. “Okay. Let’s go.”