Page 126 of Nine Months to Bear

“Daddy has to go to work,” Haley manages. “He’ll be back soon.”

The boy looks at me balefully. He’s hugging a teddy bear to his chest, one of its ears torn half-off with years of love.

Will my son look like that one day? Will he hold a teddy bear I gave him and watch as one of my enemies drags me away?

I wrench my eyes elsewhere.

“Now, Devon.” My patience evaporates.

He peels himself away from his family. Taras grabs his arm, not gently, and steers him toward the front door. I follow, Mikayla bringing up the rear.

“Mr. Safonov…” Haley’s voice stops me at the threshold. When I turn, she’s clutching her son to her side, tears still streaming. “Thank you.”

I wish she’d said “fuck you” instead. At least that I would have understood.

Outside, Taras shoves Devon into the SUV’s trunk—not the backseat, the trunk—and slams it shut. The sound echoes through suburbia’s dull silence.

“What thefuckwas that, man?” Taras rounds on me the second we’re in the vehicle. “Since when do we leave witnesses? Since when do we domercy?!”

“Since I decided to.”

“That’s not an answer!”

Mikayla starts the engine, pulling away from the curb smooth as silk. In the rearview mirror, I watch the colonial shrink. Haleystands framed in the doorway, son in her arms, watching us steal her husband.

“He has information,” I say finally. “Dead men don’t talk.”

“We could have gotten what we needed in an hour and put a bullet in him.” Taras’s scarred face twists with disgust. “Now, we have a liability. A wife who knows we took him. Kids who’ll remember strange men in their house?—”

“Enough.”

“It’s her, isn’t it?” He doesn’t stop. “She’s making you soft.”

Mikayla’s eyes flick to the mirror, watching my reaction but saying nothing.

“Choose your next words very carefully, Taras,” I growl.

“Fuck, man, someone has to say it! Three months ago, you would have painted that living room with Devon’s brains. Now, you’re—what? Showing mercy? Being a fuckin’nice guy?!That’s not who we are. That’s not whoyouare.”

He’s right.

He’s more fucking right than he realizes.

He’s not done, either. “The Stefan Safonov I know?—”

“—doesn’t exist anymore.”

Taras goes silent. Mikayla’s hands tighten on the wheel.

Because it’s true. The man who walked into Devon Manizer’s house isn’t the same one leaving it. Olivia has infected me, rewritten my code, made me see things differently.

Made meweak.

Or maybe—and this thought terrifies me more—made me something else entirely.

I’m not sure which is worse.

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