Chapter 14
KATIE
Two nights later, Artur takes us to Dally’s All-Night Grill in an armored SUV and calls the outing discreet, although the vehicle behind us contains four armed men.
“Your definition needs medical attention,” I tell him.
Artur glances through the window. “They’ll park across the street. You asked for dinner beyond my walls, and this is the security required to provide it.”
The plain explanation takes the pleasure out of arguing. Cherry leans forward from the back seat to admit she stopped noticing convoys on Tuesday, which makes Boris turn from the passenger seat and explain that getting used to guards can make a protected person careless.
“It means the security has become unobtrusive,” Niko says from beside her.
Cherry studies the pistol under his arm. “That word doesn’t mean what your tailor thinks it means.”
Our driver pulls under a yellow awning faded almost white along the edge. Dally’s occupies the bright corner of a low brick building between a closed pharmacy and a twenty-four-hour laundromat, where red letters promise breakfast, lunch, or regrettable decisions at any hour.
Before the front door opens, butter reaches me from a room where coffee darkens glass pots on two warmers.
Syrup has worked into the seams of every table, leaving the laminated menus faintly sticky along the corners, while a grill hisses behind the serving counter as ceiling fans move the smell of bacon through the room.
The owner, a broad woman with gray beginning at both temples and a pencil tucked through the knot of her hair, recognizes Boris first. Although her expression softens when she sees him, it sharpens again when Artur enters behind me.
“You brought management,” she says.
“He insisted,” Boris replies.
Artur removes his coat. “You were less difficult when the broken freezer required replacing.”
“The freezer didn’t arrive with six men pretending not to guard the pie case.”
Two Dymov guards take a booth near the entrance while the others remain outside, their vehicle visible through the window if I search for it. Artur chooses the corner booth where mirrored panels behind the counter show both exits, but he doesn’t tell me where to sit.
I take the place beside him anyway as Cherry slides in opposite us with Boris. Niko accepts a chair at the end of the table, positioned toward the door with the solemn expression of a man assigned to protect national secrets from pancakes.
The menu claims every meal can become breakfast for an additional dollar, an assertion Boris studies with growing suspicion.
“This is false,” Boris says after reading the line twice. “Printing the offer doesn’t make roast beef breakfast.”
The owner pours coffee into his cup. “At three in the morning, put an egg on it and call it whatever keeps you alive until sunrise.”
Boris looks toward Artur. “You continue funding this place despite fraudulent advertising.”
“The pie is persuasive,” Artur answers.
I open my menu. “I married into organized crime, yet this is the first fraud anyone wants to prosecute.”
The owner points her pencil at me. “You must be Katie.”
The ease with which she says my name surprises me because nothing in her gaze asks me to explain myself. She doesn’t look for the dancer under my sweater or the criminal arrangement behind my ring.
“How much did Boris tell you?” I ask.
“I know the wedding was rushed and nobody ordered a cake.” She looks at Artur. “Poor planning.”
Artur accepts the criticism without defense as we order enough food to crowd the table.
Cherry chooses waffles with strawberries, then adds hash browns because late online coursework has made her hungry at irregular hours.
This is the first meal since my wedding where nobody studies a blueprint or asks which route survived an attack, and for a few minutes, the ordinary scrape of forks lets my shoulders lower.
When Cherry begins describing the preliminary bridal portfolio she submitted that afternoon, Niko turns from the window to listen.
“The humidity test lasted six hours,” she says. “I had one woman stand beside the dishwasher as another sat under a hand dryer.”
Niko lifts his eyes from the window. “Why?”
“A summer bride in Atlanta can experience both conditions between the church and reception.” Cherry opens her phone to a set of comparison photographs. “The foundation can’t separate around the nose. Mascara has to survive crying without surviving industrial solvent.”
She passes the phone to Boris, who studies each image with the same attention he gave the menu.
“This woman’s face is brighter in the second photograph,” he says.
“Because I corrected the undertone.”
“Her face had an undertone?”
Cherry spends several minutes explaining skin temperature while Boris listens without pretending to understand, asking practical questions about lighting until her hands become more animated above the table.
I remember those lessons playing through a cracked laptop in our apartment, Cherry testing color on anyone willing to sit still under a thrift-store lamp.
Her online classes now happen behind reinforced glass; here in the diner, Boris discusses portfolio lamps as seriously as armed routes while syrup shines in a glass pitcher and Artur’s watch glints beside my plate.
His attention gives Cherry a kind of safety no reinforced window can provide: ten ordinary minutes in which talent, rather than danger, determines what comes next.
Our plates arrive through a cloud of steam, and my grilled sandwich smells of butter sharpened by mustard. Artur ordered steak and eggs, the bright yolks running across the potatoes when he cuts into them.
Niko reaches for the syrup dispenser after Cherry declares his pancakes too dry. The metal lid sticks until he twists harder, releasing it all at once and throwing a shining brown stripe across his white cuff.
Niko freezes with the dispenser raised while Cherry presses her lips together, leaving Boris to lower his coffee before the tremor in his hand spills it.
“Tactical injury,” Niko says.
Everyone at the table gives up pretending as Cherry laughs until she has to put down her fork. Boris covers his mouth with one fist although the sound escapes anyway, and even Artur’s shoulders move beside me.
Niko looks at the ruined cuff. “The mechanism was compromised.”
“By pancakes,” I say.
The owner throws him a damp towel. “Try not to return fire.”
Laughter warms the booth until the guards near the entrance begin smiling without knowing why. A small boy emerges from behind the counter wearing dinosaur pajamas under an oversized coat, a plastic truck in one hand and his dark hair flattened by sleep along one side.
The owner glances at the kitchen door. “You were supposed to stay with your aunt.”
“She snores.”
He surveys our crowded table, dismisses the rest of us, then walks directly to Artur.
“Are you the boss?”
Artur sets down his fork. “Sometimes.”
“Do people have to do what you say?”
“Often.”
The boy considers that before climbing onto Artur’s lap without requesting permission, a decision every guard in the restaurant notices.
Artur adjusts the child until one small sneaker no longer presses into his thigh, his hand covering most of the boy’s back as the child examines the steel watch at his wrist.
“Why does it move?” the boy asks.
“Gears.”
“Show me.”
Artur unfastens the watch and turns it over, revealing small metal wheels that move beneath the transparent back. He explains how the wound spring releases its stored force and slows his language whenever the boy’s forehead wrinkles.
The child takes the watch from him with the gravity of accepting evidence.
“That watch could fund the kitchen renovation,” Boris says.
Artur looks at him. “No, it doesn’t.”
The owner crosses her arms. “It had better not.”
The boy holds the watch to his ear. “Can I keep it?”
“No.”
“You have money.”
“That stays true if I keep the watch.”
The child accepts the reasoning, then places the watch around his plastic truck as a loose silver belt, an indignity Artur allows.
I’ve seen those hands load a pistol or close around my hips, and the same fingers cleaned blood from my thighs.
Watching them steady a toy truck produces a quieter warmth.
For one careless moment, I imagine a smaller hand wrapped around Artur’s finger as he explains another machine with the same patience.
We have been married for eight days inside a world of assassins and a safe house with one bed, far too soon for me to want that image, yet I keep watching anyway.
The boy returns the watch only after Artur promises to bring a cheap mechanism he can take apart. His mother carries him toward the kitchen as he protests that sleep is government interference.
“You’re good with children,” I tell Artur.
He refastens the watch. “Children ask direct questions. Adults waste time disguising them.”
“He stole several thousand dollars from your wrist.”
“He returned it after negotiation.”
“A natural criminal.”
Artur looks toward the kitchen with a faint curve in his mouth, an expression that changes his face enough for me to understand why the women at Velvet Fortune kept hoping he would look at them.
A waitress arrives with more coffee, bold and unconcerned with my opinion. Her gaze travels across Artur’s shoulders before settling on his open collar.
“Anything else I can bring you?” she asks him.
Her voice carries enough invitation to sweeten the coffee without sugar.
Artur glances at his full plate. “No.”
The waitress lingers. “Dessert later?”
I look at the open space on Artur’s lap where the child sat, feeling jealousy warm me without the pain I caused at the fight. The impulse is ridiculous but far too entertaining to resist, so I stand and settle sideways across Artur’s thighs.
His hand closes around my waist as surprise crosses his face. My hip presses against his stomach, and one of his thighs supports my ass. The booth goes quiet with the speed of people recognizing free entertainment.
“We’re still deciding,” I tell the waitress.