21. Gabby
Gabby
I deal the cards on autopilot, replaying this morning over and over. Luke sitting at the kitchen table, looking at Nikolai with something close to trust when he said he wanted his own room.
My son has never had his own room. Four and a half years old, almost five, and he’s always shared space with me. Hotels. Shelters. Tiny one-bedroom apartments where we slept in the same bed because there was only one. I told myself it was about money. About keeping him close. About safety.
But maybe it was about me. Maybe I needed him close because he was the only constant I had. I know it isn’t healthy. I know it can’t be that way forever.
And now, Nikolai is offering him something I couldn’t give him. A room. His own space. Dinosaurs on the walls.
It terrifies me.
Not because I don’t think Luke is ready. He is. I can see it in the way he’s starting to spread out a little. There hasn’t been a meltdown in weeks. No withdrawing to that place that scares me to death. He’s talking. Interacting.
Happy.
It’s good for him.
It terrifies me because it means we’re staying. Really staying. Not just for a week or two until I can scrape together enough for a deposit. Not just until I find something better.
We’re building a life here.
With Nikolai.
A man I slept with last night. A man who made me feel things I didn’t know I could feel. A man who takes care of my son. Maybe that’s the problem. He can do it better than I can.
Am I afraid, or am I jealous?
They have some kind of connection I don’t think I’ll ever have with Luke. I watch them sometimes, and I swear they are having full conversations without saying a word.
I collect the cards and shuffle for the next hand.
My table is steady today. Some D-list celebrity is having her bachelorette party, and her friends are extra noisy.
I think the people at my table are trying to get away from the screeching women, who freak out over every roll of the dice and every card dealt.
Normal people living normal lives.
I’ve never been normal.
But for the first time in five years, I’m starting to forget that.
I’m relieved when my lunch break comes and am starting toward the break room when one of the security guys stops me.
“Collins.”
I turn. “Yes?”
“You’ve got a delivery.”
I look up, confused. “A delivery?”
“They’re bringing it over now.”
One of the floor attendants appears with a massive crystal vase filled with two dozen white roses. Perfect and pristine. Gorgeous.
White roses.
Just like the one on the windshield.
The attendant thrusts them at me. “Lucky girl.”
I can’t breathe. I’m staring at the roses like they might explode. My hands are shaking as I reach for them.
It’s Nikolai, I tell myself. It has to be Nikolai. This is a romantic gesture. A real one. Not one that’s an apology for beating the shit out of me or forcing me to clean blood from the foyer.
Nik isn’t Matteo.
He gave me a car this morning. He’s setting up a bedroom for Luke. He’s spoiling us. This is just another kind gesture after I fought him about staying.
That’s all this is.
But I remember the last time I saw white roses. I can still feel what the tightness around my eye felt like where it had swollen to the size of a golf ball. He’d given me a dozen after that beating.
And before that. The roses he used to leave on my pillow after he hurt me. Like flowers could erase bruises.
“You okay?” the attendant asks.
I force myself to smile. “Fine. Just surprised.”
I carry the vase to the break room.
The cloying sweetness wafts up and makes my stomach turn.
It’s Nikolai. It has to be.
He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t know about Matteo. He has no idea what white roses mean to me.
But what if it’s not him?
What if someone else sent them? Someone who knows what they mean?
I set the vase on a table in the break room and pull out my phone.
I should text Nikolai and thank him, but that’s not very personal. I’ll tell him when I see him tonight.
I stare at the flowers. They’re just flowers. Beautiful, expensive flowers from a man who can afford to send them.
Nikolai is safe, I remind myself. He’s been nothing but good to us.
He’s not Matteo.
I think about telling him. I want to tell him who I really am. The widow of a made man. A woman who traded information to the FBI and then disappeared when her husband’s car exploded.
He deserves to know what he’s getting into. What kind of danger he might be bringing into his house by letting us stay.
But I can’t.
If I tell him, he might make us leave. He might decide Luke and I are too much of a risk. And I can’t lose this. Not when Luke is finally blossoming. Not when I’m finally feeling like I can breathe.
Greg would lose his mind if he knew I was living with a bratva boss. He’d tell me I’m making the same mistake all over again. Trading one dangerous man for another.
But Nikolai isn’t like Matteo.
Matteo was cruel. Violent. He married me because it was ordered. I came from the right family and would give him legitimate heirs. He was twenty-five years older than me and had already been widowed twice before.
Nikolai chose us. He didn’t have to. He could have left me and Luke standing on that sidewalk. He could have given me a hotel room for a night and washed his hands of us.
Instead, he brought us into his home. Into his life.
He’s nothing like my late husband.
Then, it occurs to me to check for a card. There isn’t one. Nikolai gifted me a hundred-thousand-dollar car without fanfare. He probably told someone to send flowers and didn’t think about the details. He’s a man of few words. Writing a sweet message is not his thing. I know it and accept it.
I’m being paranoid. I’ve spent too long looking over my shoulder. It’s made me see threats where there aren’t any.
I’m halfway across the parking garage when I hear the footsteps behind me. They’re moving fast.
I turn just as someone grabs my arm. The vase slips from my grip. Crystal shatters across the concrete, and roses scatter everywhere. Water spreads across the oil-stained pavement.
I don’t think. I react. Five years of looking over my shoulder kicks in. I drive my elbow back into his ribs. He grunts. His grip loosens just enough for me to twist away.
The man has a ski mask on. In July. In Vegas.
He lunges for me again, and I swing my purse at his head. The strap breaks, but the bag connects with his temple. He staggers and reaches out for it, snatching it from my hand.
“Hey!” someone shouts from across the garage. “Security!”
The man looks toward the voice, then back at me. His eyes are cold. Dead.
“This isn’t over,” he says.
Then he takes off toward the exit stairwell.
My hands are shaking. Hard. A security guard appears beside me with his hand on his radio.
“You okay? Did he hurt you?”
“I’m fine.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “I’m okay.”
“I’ll call the police,” he says.
“No. I’m fine.”
Another security guard jogs over. They’re talking into their radios, calling it in.
“I’m okay,” I say again. “I don’t need the police. I just… I want to go home.”
“We need to make a report.”
“He got my purse,” I murmur. My ID. My money.
The key fob for my new Mercedes is still in my hand. My phone is in my pocket. My tips are gone. That would have been devastating a month ago, but I don’t have rent to pay or groceries to buy.
I’m listening to the first security guard talking to someone. Mina from the bar got jumped last week. They took her phone and her tips.
Vegas.
“I’ve got to go,” I say when I hear the guard talking to what I assume is the police dispatcher. I cannot talk with police.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m good. Thanks.”
I look at the shattered glass and scattered roses. “Sorry,” I murmur and rush toward the shiny new car.
I slide into the seat, lock the doors, and grip the steering wheel with both hands.
It was just a mugging. Random. Wrong place, wrong time.
But my hands won’t stop shaking.
I pull out of the garage with the AC blasting. I’m sweaty. And cold. Traffic is thick on the Strip. Tourists are everywhere, oblivious to anything but their next meal or show or spin of the roulette wheel.
I grip the steering wheel.
It was random. Some junkie looking for cash. That’s what it was.
Greg always told me paranoia makes you see threats everywhere. Makes you forget that sometimes, bad things just happen.
This is Vegas. Crime happens.
I turn onto the road that leads to Nikolai’s estate. The gates open as I pull up. Security knows my car.
I park in the garage and sit there for another minute, trying to pull myself together. Luke cannot see me like this. He picks up on everything. If I walk in there shaking and pale, he’ll know something’s wrong.
I take three deep breaths. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
I get out of the car and head for the door that leads into the house. My legs still feel unsteady, but I can fake it. I’ve been faking it for five years.