Chapter 34
VIOLET
"He said that? In front of everyone?"
"Two hundred people. Including David Marino and a freaking string quartet.”
"What were the exact words? I need the exact words."
"Something like, 'She's the woman I'm building my life with. The woman whose name I will put next to mine on everything I own, if she'll let me.'"
Kylie shakes her head in disbelief. “Violet.”
“Yes?”
“You’re living inside one of your novels. You know that, right?”
I can’t help but laugh both at her comment and the total absurdity of my situation.
We're sitting at a coffee shop on Amsterdam Avenue. Patrick is beside me in a booster seat, systematically dismantling a chocolate croissant with focused precision, only stopping to lick the chocolate off his fingertips. Dragon is on the table, as if standing guard over it all. I notice he’s facing the door, and I wonder if Patrick put him that way just in case a certain FBI agent were to come in.
I glance through the front window of the store, spotting three guards right away, one within ten feet of the door. Gianni’s not taking any chances after what happened last time.
"I would pay actual money to have witnessed that," Kylie pulls me back to the conversation.
"It was terrifying and wonderful at the same time. I didn't know whether to kiss him or run."
"That seems to be a theme."
Patrick holds up a piece of croissant. "Mama, Dragon wants some."
"Dragon can't eat chocolate, bug. It's bad for dinosaurs."
"Even a little?”
“Even a little.”
Patrick considers this injustice, then eats the piece himself. Problem solved.
Kylie watches him with the soft expression she reserves exclusively for Patrick.
But today, something’s off with her. I’ve known Kylie since we were fresh out of college working at Undercurrent.
She’d read my terrible drafts on break from her IT work, and the two of us were practically living off vending machine coffee.
I know her tells, the way she looks away and bites her lower lip, the way she picks up her phone and absentmindedly scrolls for a few seconds. She knows something and is holding it back. Any other time, that’d be fine—we’re all entitled to our secrets, right? But this isn’t any other time.
"Ky."
"Mm?"
"What's going on with you?"
"Nothing.” She forces a big, broad smile on her face. “Tell me more about Theresa's face when he—"
"Kylie."
She meets my eyes, and I seethe flicker, the slight contraction around her mouth. She's deciding how much to say. She glances at Patrick, and whatever she was about to tell me gets folded up and put away.
"Later," she says. "When it's just us."
As if on cue, the door chimes and Rudi walks in with Marco, both slightly out of breath, Marco's light-up sneakers flashing with every step. Patrick's face erupts.
“Marco! Look! Dragon was eating all my chocolate!”
“No way!” Marco replies. “Dinosaurs don’t eat chocolate. They eat people.” He puts special emphasis on the last word.
“Not Dragon—he’s nice and only eats chocolate.”
The comment launches the boys headlong into a debate about whether or not dinosaurs do, in fact, eat chocolate. As they chat, Rudi catches my eye, gives me her usual look of warm omniscience, and waves.
"Hey, Rudi. Thanks as always. I think Patrick needed some Marco time.”
"Always, mija." She glances at Kylie and back at me. Her expression tells me instantly that she’s clocked the fact that Kylie and I are on the verge of a serious conversation.
"Come on, boys. We're going to the big playground. “Don’t forget Dragon. And make sure to clean that chocolate off his face.”
Patrick wastes no time snatching up a napkin from the table and giving Dragon’s face a quick dab. “Done!”
I kiss him goodbye, taking in a whiff of that wonderful boy smell before watching him leave with Rudi and Marco, flanked at a discreet distance by two of Gianni's men who've gotten very good at looking like bored dads scrolling their phones on a bench. The third stays with us.
Kylie turns to me. The grin is gone. She looks worried almost, like she has something to tell me and is unsure how I’ll take it.
"Okay," she says. "Talk to me. What are you not telling me?"
"What are you not telling me?"
"I asked first."
"And I'm deflecting. It's what I do. You know this."
“Vi.” She leans forward, elbows on the table. “We’ve known each other for years. I can read you better than JavaScript—and that’s saying a lot. And right now, you’ve practically got a neon sign above your head flashing BIG SECRET.”
I look at my cup of peppermint tea with zero caffeine; she follows my gaze.
"Wait. You're not drinking coffee," she says slowly.
"No."
"You would mainline espresso if the technology existed."
"I'm aware."
"And you're sitting here with a peppermint tea at ten in the morning, and you waited until your four-year-old left the table to let me push you on it." She stares, wide-eyed. "Vi. Are you pregnant?"
I press my lips together and nod once.
"How far?"
"Five weeks."
The silence lasts exactly two seconds before Kylie grabs both my hands across the table and squeezes hard enough to crack my knuckles.
"Oh my God," she whispers. "Oh my God, Violet."
"Don't make a scene."
"I'm not making a scene. I’m just having a moment." Her eyes are bright, and she's wearing a huge grin, like she couldn’t have imagined better news. "You're having a baby. Are you okay? Have you seen a doctor?"
"Yep. They told me at the hospital the night after we got jumped. And Gianni had another doctor at the loft the morning after to double check. Everything's fine. Early, but healthy."
"And emotionally?"
"Terrified. Confused. But happy. Which doesn’t make sense, right? I should be scared out of my mind at the idea of bringing another child into this world.”
“No, you should be happy—that’s the right answer, and that’s how I’m feeling for you.” She squeezes my hands again, gentler this time. Then the grin fades, and the other Kylie settles back in. "I need to say something, and you're not going to like it."
"When has that ever stopped you?"
"I'm worried about you, Vi. About the whole situation.
Lance, the investigation, living in Gianni's penthouse with security details and bodyguards trailing your kid to the park.
" She wraps her hands around her cup. "I know Lance is a monster.
I erased you to get you away from him. I know exactly what he is. "
"But?"
"But Gianni isn't that far behind him. They’re both villains, just with different masks.” She holds my gaze.
"Look. I've been doing some work. Looking into things.
And the picture that's forming—it's not simple, Violet.
He's not a businessman with rough edges or some Camorra boss who delegates the dirty work.
He's the real thing. People who cross him disappear. "
"I know what he is."
"Knowing it and living inside it are two different things.
You're in his home and your son is in his home.
And now there's a baby." She pauses. "You can still disappear.
If push comes to shove. I can build a new identity in forty-eight hours, this time with better resources.
Charlotte. Denver. Portland. Somewhere clean. "
I look at her. My best friend. The woman who erased me once and is offering to do it again.
"I can't run again, Ky. Not with a baby.
Not from Gianni. And not from Lance—not this time.
" I take a deep breath before continuing.
"It's too early and too confusing to make another life-changing decision like the one that got me out of Chicago.
I need to stand still for once. I need to see this through. "
She watches me for a long moment. Whatever she sees in my face—stubbornness, resolve, love, stupidity, probably all four—she accepts it the way she accepts every decision I make, even the ones she disagrees with. By standing beside me anyway.
"Then you need to see what I found," she says. She pulls her phone from her jacket pocket, sets it face-down on the table between us. "Because it changes things. And I need you to be ready."
"Ready for what?"
"For the part where it gets worse before it gets better."