The Bratva King’s Prey (Dark Mafia Daddies #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Alex

"Mrs. Riggs?"

I look up from the sign-in sheet at the front office.

Mrs. Farrell is standing in the doorway of her classroom with that expression that teachers reserve for parents they've already decided are part of the problem.

She's Evie's homeroom teacher, and we've spoken twice since September — once about Evie's reading level, which is three grades ahead, and once about Evie's habit of sitting with her back to the wall at lunch, which Mrs. Farrell found concerning, and I found completely reasonable given everything she’s been through.

"She's having some trouble adjusting still," Mrs. Farrell says.

"With the other children. She doesn't respond when they try to include her, she keeps to herself during group activities, and today—" She pauses.

"Well, today a girl named Sophie approached her at recess to invite her to join a game, and Evie hit her. "

"I highly doubt Evie hit her unprovoked, Mrs. Farrell. What did Sophie say to her before she hit her?"

Mrs. Farrell blinks at me. "She was trying to include—"

"What did she say to her exactly?" I keep my voice even. I've gotten very good at keeping my voice even. "Before Evie hit her."

Something shifts in her expression, and she swallows uncomfortably before continuing. "Children don't always communicate these things clearly—"

"I am quite aware of that, but that still doesn’t answer my question." I interrupt, done playing this particular game. "Is Principal Garland ready for me?"

The principal’s office has that sort of uncomfortable lighting that exists purely to make you feel small — degrees framed at eye level, desk positioned so the light hits him and not you, chairs that are just slightly too low.

I've sat across from him twice already this year. I know the chair situation intimately.

"Evangeline struck another student during recess," he says in the same cold fashion as Mrs. Farrell had, folding his hands on the desk like he's a judge about to deliver a verdict. "The girl required ice for a swollen lip."

"What did she say to Evie?" I ask again.

"The situation escalated from verbal—"

“Yeah, I got that, what no one seems able to tell me though is what did Sophie say to her?" I asked more adamantly.

Garland pauses, clearly caught off guard by my bluntness. He's not used to being interrupted, and I'm not sorry about it. "That's not the—"

"It's relevant," I insist, "to understanding the situation."

He gives me the look that men like him give women like me, the one I’m all too familiar with by now, the one that says you're making this harder than it needs to be. I give him nothing back. I've been giving men like him nothing for years.

"Evangeline is welcome to discuss the details with you at home over the next few days. And I would encourage her to do the same with the school counselor when she returns on Thursday," he says coldly. "But right now, we need to address the physical altercation."

Behind him, through the glass, I can see Evie in a chair in the hallway. Her dark hair half out of her braid, shoulders pulled in, staring at a scuff on the floor like she's trying to disappear into it. She's twelve years old, and she carries herself like someone already used to bad things.

“I'll speak with her," I say, a slight edge of irritation seeping through my voice. "So she is suspended until Thursday then?"

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

The walk home takes longer than usual because Evie doesn't want to talk, and I don't push her.

We do our best thinking in parallel, the two of us — side by side, not looking at each other, letting the silence do the work for us.

She's got her hands jammed in her jacket pockets, and her chin tucked down.

Every few blocks, she kicks a pebble ahead of her, watches it skitter, then kicks it again.

By the time we reach our apartment building, she's almost ready to come clean, I can tell by the way her shoulders drop — just slightly, just enough to reflect the change.

"You can yell at me," she says, pulling the door open.

"I'm not going to yell at you." I tell her as I walk through it.

She follows close on my heels. "You're thinking about it."

"Actually, I'm thinking about dinner." We walk through the lobby side by side, past the bulletin board with Mr. Roberts's hand-lettered notices about package theft and proper hallway etiquette. "What do you want? I can do pasta or I can do pasta."

"That's not much of a choice."

"Sure it is, do you want penne or rigatoni?” I hit the elevator button and look down at her, noticing the way her coat is still shedding small drops of water.

She's still not looking at me, but the corner of her mouth is curved into a small smile.

I'll take it. "So are you ready to tell me what happened at school today ? "

We get on the elevator, and she stays quiet for one floor, two. Then, she finally relents.

“She said I talk weird. And that I probably don't have a real family.

" The elevator dings and opens on four, and she walks out ahead of me.

"She's been saying stuff like that for a week. I told Ms. Farrell, and she told me to ignore it, so I did, and then today she said it in front of everyone at recess and called me—” She stops pausing outside our door waiting for me to unlock it, still not looking at me. "Something bad."

Opening the door, I let her step in first, follow her inside, and close the door behind us, lock it, and turn the doorknob and two deadbolts, same as always. "And then you hit her?"

"And then I hit her." She drops her bag by the couch, head still tilted down. "I know I shouldn't have."

"You're right, you shouldn't have." I move around the counter into the kitchen and proceed to pull out a box of pasta. "But I also understand why you did."

I can see her watching me out of the corner of my eye from the living room, waiting for the rest of the lecture to fall.

The disappointment, the careful correction.

I've given her all of those before, as any mother would, and I'll give them again when they're what she needs.

But right now, what she needs is something different, and I recognize that.

Motioning to the barstools at the counter with one hand, I wave her over. "Come sit. Tell me the rest of it."

She comes, sitting across the counter, watching while I start the noodles.

And then it all comes out — not just today but the whole week of it.

The comments that started the first day Sophie noticed her.

The way she'd come over with her friends already laughing before she'd said a word, the way she'd put her hand on Evie's shoulder while she said the cruel thing, performing kindness for the audience while delivering the knife.

The teachers who weren't watching closely enough.

The classmates who laughed and looked away.

Evie had told Ms. Farrell twice and been told to ignore it twice, and today she'd decided she was done ignoring it.

"She wasn't trying to be my friend," Evie says, her voice finally cracking open past the flatness.

"Mrs. Farrell thinks she was including me but she wasn't. She came over because she knew everyone was watching and she wanted them to see.

And then she touched me like she felt sorry for me while she was still laughing.

" Her hands are moving now, animated in the way they get when she's stopped performing calm.

"Nobody ever believes me because I'm the new one.

I'm always the new one. The new one is always the problem. "

"I believe you," I say.

She stops. Looks at me. "You always say that."

"Because it's always true." I set the spoon down and look at her directly. "I know what Sophie was doing. I know the difference, and so do you, and the fact that Mrs. Farrell didn't see it doesn't make you wrong."

She's quiet for a moment, turning that over. Then the bigger thing surfaces, the one she's been carrying since before today. "I'm tired of moving," she says with a haughty sigh. "Every time something gets bad, we just… leave. And I have to start over again, and I'm so tired of it."

"Evie—" I start, the guilt of moving the poor girl all over tugging at my heart.

"You promised me last time." Her eyes finally meet mine. Dark and direct, older than twelve, the eyes of a person who has lived their entire life surviving instead of living. "You said Chicago was going to be different."

"It is different."

"Then why does it feel exactly the same?"

I set the box of pasta down on the small counter and look at her — really look at her, the way you look at someone when you're about to say something you need them to believe.

"Because this time the bad thing was a girl in your class, not something chasing us.

That's not the same. That's just— life. Life has bad days in it, people are always going to be jerks.

That doesn't mean we run." She's still watching me, still measuring.

"We are not leaving. I need you to hear me. We're staying."

"Promise?"

"I Promise."

The words feel empty, and it costs me something deep inside. Every promise costs something when you know exactly how many moving pieces are required to keep it. But she needs it, and I mean it, and I will fight myself bloody to make it true.

We have been running long enough. We have been careful and quiet and small for long enough, folding ourselves into whatever space was available, moving on before anyone looked too closely.

This apartment is tiny and old, and the radiator makes a sound like it's personally offended by winter, but it has Mr. Roberts two doors down, and Rosa six blocks away, and Evie has been in this school long enough to know where the bathrooms are, at least.

She holds my eyes for three full seconds. Then she exhales — her whole body exhaling, shoulders dropping, something unlocking behind her face. "Okay," she says. "Can I pick the pasta sauce?"

"Sure," I agree with a smile, glad to have her fully engaged once more, “red or white?”

"White."

"Awww, I was hoping you would say red!" I say playfully, enjoying what little time I have with the only person who matters to me in this world.

After dinner, we curl up to watch a movie, and she's asleep by nine.

I escort her to her room, supporting her half-sleepy stagger before tucking her in.

Standing in her doorway, I savor the moment, watching the slow rise and fall of her breathing for longer than necessary, that maternal part of me making sure the world hasn't done anything to her while I wasn't looking.

Rosa called at six to tell me she wasn't feeling well and asked if I could go in early and cover her shift tonight. Thanks to her, we both work the same jobs, day shifts at the restaurants and night shifts cleaning and restocking a local nightclub after hours. Usually, she takes the 1 A.M. to 4 A.M. shift, and I take the 4 A.M. to 7 A.M. shift. But tonight, I’ll be covering both.

I said yes before she finished asking, because that's what you do for the person who covers your tables without requiring explanation.

With a tired sigh, I take a moment to regret my decision, then remind myself to suck it up.

The sleep deprivation is the same as any other night; I just have to be at Onyx by one in the morning now, which means I need to leave in twenty minutes, and the conversation I need to have with Evie first needs to happen now.

She's not fully asleep yet. She opens one eye when I sit on the edge of her bed.

"I have to go to work," I tell her. "Rosa is sick so I'm covering her shift tonight."

She opens the other eye. "Are you working both shifts?"

"I'll still be back before you wake up." I smooth her hair back. "You know the rules."

"Door locked at all times," she recites. "Don't open for strangers. Call Mr. Roberts if I need anything. Call you the moment something feels wrong."

"And?"

" Don’t open the windows except if it's an emergency and I need to go out the fire escape."

"Good." I kiss her forehead. She's warm and soft and smells like the coconut shampoo she picked out last month, and I hold on for one extra second before I make myself let go. "I already texted Mr. Roberts that I'm going in early. He'll have his TV volume down, and his phone ringer turned up."

"I don’t need a babysitter. I'm practically grown," she says dramatically into her pillow.

"You're twelve."

"Almost thirteen."

"In six months." I stand up. She's already closing her eyes. "Call me."

"I know, Alex."

"I know you know."

She's drifting back to sleep before I reach the hallway. I slip out the front and pull the door shut quietly behind me. Using my key to make sure that all three locks slide into place before turning toward the elevator. When I reach the ground floor, I push through the door into the cool night air.

Taking the bus, I watch the city slide past the rain-streaked window and let my brain zone out, thinking about nothing in particular.

Onyx after hours is a completely different creature from Onyx when it's alive.

Empty, it's all hard floors and low shadows, the bass still faintly humming in the walls like a memory the building can't shake.

The cleaning crew is usually four of us — Dani, a quiet guy named Paulie who listens to audiobooks on one earbud, me, and whoever the rotating fourth happens to be that week.

We work without talking much, which suits me fine.

I start in the east corridor, which always takes the longest. Private booth spillover, the particular mess that happens when people spend too much money and stop caring about where things land. I put my headphones in, mop in long even strokes, and let my brain go quiet.

I'm thirty minutes in when that sound that haunts my dreams fills the air. One clean, sharp crack from somewhere above me. I instantly stop moving.

I've been afraid of those specific sounds my entire life.

I pull out my earbuds and stand completely still and listen, and the building listens back, and for three full seconds there is nothing — just the hum of the walls and the distant drip of something in the kitchen and the blood rushing through my ears.

Then footsteps. Above me, two sets. One quick and uneven, off-rhythm, wrong. The other slow and measured and completely unbothered, the footsteps of someone who is far too unbothered by that sound.

My exit is on the other side of the building, and the men are between me and it. I look at the mop in my hand, the bucket, the long, empty corridor ahead of me, and I make the only decision available. I find the nearest door and slip behind it.