Chapter Forty-Five
Max
The hotel becomes a habitat.
Gio and Rudi ferry my life across town in Target bags and garment boxes a piece at a time like contraband. I tell them once to take the long way, so we don’t pass the penthouse, and from then on, they pretend it’s because of traffic and I let them.
School keeps happening because it is something that has an end, and I decide to move toward endings.
One month left.
Spring break came and went without any fanfare.
I finish outlines in the quiet hours and don’t say ‘bar exam’ out loud. I’m not borrowing July’s worries today. I barely bother with today’s.
At night, the ear-ringing comes back if I listen for it.
I sleep with the TV on mute, the subtitles like someone else’s life scrolling past.
There is a fire video I play sometimes—fake fireplace, endless loop—because the real one made me jump and the fake one is honest about what it is.
People talk around me.
People talk to me.
People try not to say his name in past tense and do anyway.
I hear all of it. I register all of it. I choose what I actually listen to.
I keep the moon phases necklace in my pocket. I touch it when the door in my chest feels closed from the wrong side.
A few weeks after the funeral, Sophia texts me.
She doesn’t ask if I’m okay, likely because she knows the answer and still isn’t okay herself.
She just says: Mom is making Sunday dinner. You don’t have to come. But we’d really love it if you did.
I stare at the text for a long time.
The hotel is behind me and Becca sits across the small kitchen table of the apartment we found two weeks ago—third floor walk-up, two bedrooms, a kitchen the size of a large closet, radiators that clank at three in the morning and windows that stick.
Nothing like the penthouse. Everything like what I can actually stand to be inside of right now.
I haven’t seen Nico in weeks, but Gio and Rudi still take shifts sitting outside the apartment. Following me to classes. Following me home. Following me and Bart, who loves the smells of the city, as we walk through the park at night.
It bothered me at first. Felt like I was a burden just because someone important loved me. Just because he loved me.
I tried to slip away from them two weeks ago; went through the back of the library and was walking down a back alley.
And then that alley started to feel really small. And really… alone.
I had a panic attack and called Nico.
He got there faster than Gio, who was probably just around the block.
I think Nico was more panicked than I was.
I heard him coming before I saw him; the tires were squealing around the corner and I was sitting on a curb hyperventilating, hugging myself. I’m not even sure he put the car in park before the door opened.
Gio pulled up behind him, and they both had guns drawn as they walked up to me, clearing the area around us.
It was just me in the alley, though. Me and the pain.
From then on, a pit formed in my stomach and stayed there thinking about the fact that the Russians still might try and take me again.
I wouldn’t be worth anything now that he is dead, but the stark realization that someone might still come after me gave me a new appreciation for Gio and Rudi following me everywhere.
“You should go,” Becca says without looking up from her laptop.
Sophia and Maggie found Becca a job at one of the family’s shops doing some kind of administrative work so she could move here fast. She works from home most days but goes into one of the buildings on the east side a few times a week.
They told her it was the least they could do to help give me some comfort.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’ve been staring at your phone for four minutes with that face.” She looks up. “Go. You love them. They love you. And you need to eat something that isn’t cereal.”
I don’t want to argue with her.
So, I go.