Page 4

The coffee’s cold before I realize I haven’t taken a single sip, ignoring the shuffling with his newspaper, pulling me back from memories I much rather forget.

Gazing at the clock on the wall, I’ve been standing at this window for twenty-three minutes.

I know because I checked the time the moment Mikhail went outside.

Every second he’s out there with them makes me more nervous.

So far, he hasn’t screamed. He never does at the girls; that voice is only reserved for me.

He’s just sitting, watching them with a blank face and a cigarette burning between his fingers.

It’s never just that. Not with him. I fucked up the other night when I questioned why she was here; he is suspicious and is showing me how easily he can take them away while I remain trapped in this prison.

I shift my weight slightly, just enough to peek out the gauzy curtain without drawing attention by ripping it completely open. Mila’s got her shoelace untied again, and Anya is pointing at it, bossy and loud like her father.

They’re innocent. Blissfully so. I envy them for that. I hate myself for letting them be born into this.

Mikhail stands, stretching, and moves to help her tie her laces. He peers up toward the house as he ties the last knot. My stomach twists instantly under that gaze. I raise my coffee like a toast and give him a soft smile, I don’t feel—my mouth curves, though the smile feels pained.

He gives a slight nod and turns his back again, and I let the curtain fall.

My hands are already sweating, not from heat, it’s from nerves. I haven’t done anything yet, and I’m already terrified of being caught.

I glance down at my clothes: casual, clean, and deliberately unremarkable.

Neutral tones. Submissive shades. Mikhail no longer allows red.

Before that, it was purple. Anything that might draw attention is off-limits.

At this point, I should just stick to black—at least then I’ll be dressed appropriately for my own funeral.

Not that it would stop him. He’d probably find a reason to ban black next, claim I was mourning someone I shouldn’t be.

The last time I wore red, he accused me of flirting with his second-in-command in the casino restrooms. His dead second-in-command. In reality, I was trying to figure out what the hell my daughter was doing with a man like Leone Pressutti.

Now, much to Mikhail’s ongoing paranoia, Igor is back on guard duty. He thinks I need supervision and wants to make sure I’m not getting on my knees for his men.

The thought makes me roll my eyes as if I’d waste a kneecap on any of them.

Now I’m running out of time. I’ve prepared this for months.

Slowly. Quietly. A little at a time. Earning back his slivers of trust, learning Fallon is here now, makes everything more dire.

Once finally back here in my home country, I planned to make one final bid at escape.

Her presence, though, now makes it more dire than ever.

Mikhail will kill her the moment he seizes control of whatever he has planned with Leone.

So now I need to make a call.

To Nathan.

To the man who thought I left him all those years ago. I wasn’t even trying to contact Nathan—not at first.

All I wanted was Fallon’s number. That’s it.

And I was already risking too much having snuck off to make that call, Mikhail made sure I paid for that sneakiness, as he called it, earned me a split lip and a concussion.

I figured I could explain myself and warn her to run, that I could find a way to help her.

I knew better than to think anyone on the front desk would hand it over.

Not these days. Privacy and protocol and all that. Yet a cleaner?

Cleaners are invisible. Unnoticed. Underpaid.

The kind of people who see and hear everything and are rarely asked to keep secrets.

They know who’s sleeping with who, who’s snorting what off the bathroom sink, and where the real ledgers are kept.

No one ever thinks of warning them of what not to say.

So I called the club. I asked to speak with the head cleaner. Said I’d lost my phone, probably near the bar. The girl who answered, Sydney, I think, didn’t ask many questions. Said she’d patch me through.

And just like that, I was in. I told the cleaner I was trying to get in touch with Fallon.

I made up some excuse about playing at the tables with her and Leone, and I think I lost my phone.

She didn’t seem suspicious, just distracted.

Said Fallon didn’t work there anymore, but if I were with her, I should call her because nothing is in the lost and found.

Of course, she wasn’t willing to hand over Leone Pressutti’s wife’s number when she gave me the number of someone I least suspected.

The universe handed me something I hadn’t dared ask for in sixteen years.

Nathan.

She rattled off a number I wasn’t supposed to hear.

She told me to call him and ask if a phone had been handed in.

She said he works the floor, and my best option would be to speak to him.

I had hoped she would tell me what days Fallon might come in, so I could find a way to call back there, not hand me the number of my first and only love.

If Mikhail ever found out, if he ever even suspected I was trying to find someone from before him, it’d be over. For me. For Nathan. For the girls.

Because to him, my past doesn’t exist. I told him I had no one.

No family. No child. That lie has kept them all alive.

He did have suspicions at first, mostly because when I was taken, it was obvious I had recently had a child.

I remember how it angered him that he couldn’t sell me for a few weeks since I was still bleeding.

Only thing that saved them was that he knew I was a junkie, so telling him I lost the baby wasn’t a far stretch.

And now I’m risking it. All of it. To call the man who thinks I walked out and never looked back.

Edging closer to the stove, I pretend to sip the coffee that’s gone cold in my hands, eyes fixed on the window. I don’t really see the garden outside or any of the scenery.

What I do see is Mikhail, kneeling in the grass, holding Anya under the arms as she squeals and kicks her feet. Mila dances in circles around them, giggling, twirling, blonde hair catching the sun.

To anyone else, it might look like a family moment. I can’t hear them through the glass, but I know the sound of my girls laughing. He is distracted, and I may never get another chance. I shift my gaze to the counter. Mikhail’s phone is sitting there.

Unattended. My pulse kicks. He never leaves it behind. That phone is usually glued to his hand like a weapon. I glance at Igor, seated at the small dining table, pretending to read the paper.

He’s watching me in the reflection of the bay windows.

Of course he is.

I bring the mug to my lips and take a slow breath instead of a sip. My eyes shift between his reflection and the phone. It’s close. Closer than it’s ever been.

I walk toward the sink. Slowly. Casually. My hip grazes the counter. I’m between Igor and the phone now, using my body to block his view.

My fingers twitch around the ceramic mug. I set it down, bend slightly like I’m wiping a spot from the granite, and slip the phone into my pocket.

One move. One second. My heart slams against my ribs.

I keep moving. I wipe the countertop. Then I drift toward the pantry, pick up a cloth, and go back to the fridge. Nothing erratic. I’m just cleaning. I’m just moving.

Igor’s chair creaks as he leans back. My throat tightens. I turn toward him with a sigh. “I need to pee, Igor.”

He grunts but doesn’t rise as he waves me off.

Good. I walk, ensuring I don’t rush toward the bathroom. I shut the door quietly. Lock it.

It took me months to figure out his PIN.

I watched him unlock it, over and over as I would linger on his lap too long while he used it.

He uses his fingerprint mostly, yet a few times I saw the PIN he typed in, mainly when it would play up the sensor needing a clean, a bloody fingerprint won’t always like to register.

Once I realized he used the same one, I memorized it.

Six digits. Our wedding day, or perhaps the correct term would be the day I was served a life sentence. I punch it in. It works. My hands are shaking. I force myself to steady them.

Nathan. The name alone makes my vision blur—the screen dials.

I don’t know if Mikhail monitors his own calls. Probably not—he’s arrogant enough to believe he’s untouchable. Men like him always are. Surveillance is for people he doesn’t trust, so he has no reason to monitor himself.

Still, I can’t risk it. I can’t say my name. I can’t say where we are.

Because if Mikhail finds out I lied all those years ago—if he finds out I had a family before him he won’t just kill me. He’ll kill Nathan. He’ll kill Fallon. He’ll make me watch.

So I reach for a memory. One so buried, so specific, that only Nathan would ever understand it.

The cabin. Back when he first met me, I was high on God knows what, and he found me passed out at a bus stop.

I can’t even remember where I was going, I just remember waking up in the barn, where he used to live with his mother in the middle of nowhere.

No noise. No neighbors. At first, I thought he was kidnapping me.

I had no memory of the night before. Instead, he hid me in the barn so his mother wouldn’t find me.

I was barely eighteen. Just trees that scraped the sky, and darkness so quiet it was like time didn’t exist out there.

The first few nights, I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up, convinced there were lights in the window. I’d curse the stars, groggy, twitchy, and sore, telling him they were too bright, that they were watching me.

He laughed quietly and said , “They’re not stars, Starling. Just fireflies.”