Page 21 of Savage Vows

“I shouldn’t,” I say.

“You should,” she answers, like the matter is already settled.

I shake my head. “I need to keep moving. If I go home with you, I’ll stay, and I cannot afford to sit still.”

The counter bell dings. Bella carries the tray to a small table by the window, pushes a bagel toward me, and waits until I take a bite before she goes on. “You think I don’t know what it looks like when you’re running. I’ve known you since we were kids. You used to hide in the pantry behind the sacks of flour when your father had guests. I would bring you cookies my mother burned and you would eat them anyway.”

I smile despite the knot in my stomach. “She never burned them. She just liked them darker than everyone else.”

“She burned them,” Bella says, but her mouth softens. “She made twice as many because she knew you would sneak half of them. You remember.”

Of course I remember. Bella’s mother started in our house when I was ten, a quiet woman with quick hands who hummed under her breath when she cooked. She treated me like a child even when the adults in my family already expected me to act like an heir, and that small kindness felt like a private door I could slip through when the house was on display for the world.

I met Bella in the back corridor where deliveries came in. We traded small things at first, a hair ribbon for a magazine, a story for a story, and then one afternoon she showed me where theservice gate stuck if you lifted it by the rusted bar, and we slipped out to the sidewalk like we’d done it all our lives.

“You can stay with me,” Bella says again, quieter now. “I’m not asking questions you don’t want to answer. I’m saying you don’t have to be alone.”

I wrap my fingers around the coffee and keep my eyes on the street. “Your address will be obvious to anyone who cares to look. I don’t want trouble at your door.”

“You say that like it’s already following you.”

“It usually is,” I say.

“Then let me drive you to my place for an hour,” she says finally. “You take a shower, you change, you eat something that’s not coffee. After that I’ll drop you wherever you want to go. Hotel, station, a friend. I don’t care. But I’m not letting you run on empty.”

“I’ll take the hotel,” I say. “Something quiet, cash at the desk, no questions.”

Her mouth tightens. “You’re not a ghost, Adi.”

“I need to be one for a little while,” I say. “Did you find anything about Anya?”

“No, but I’m hearing rumors that another girl was taken.”

A chill goes through me.

“Who?”

“My mom is working at a new house part-time, your Aunt Olive,” Bella says. I remember the name vaguely; her husband is an enforcer in the Bratva. “Her younger son’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Any link between the two and Julianne?” I ask.

“I’m not sure.”

“Crap,” I say, pulling my hair back. One was bad enough, and now this. What’s going on?

Bella nudges the bagel closer. “Eat. You can think later. My mother will be insulted if I return you looking thinner than when you arrived.”

I take another bite. The sesame seeds stick to my fingers and the steam fogs the window where my wrist brushes the glass. For a second, I’m not planning my next call or the next train or how to walk into a house I left years ago. For a second, I’m sitting across from the girl who used to meet me at the service gate with a paper cup of tea and a grin she could never hide, the one person who spoke to me like the house did not own me.

“I thought about calling your mother,” I say. “She would know how to get a message through.”

“She would,” Bella says, and there’s pride in her voice. “She would also put you to bed and stand in front of the door with a wooden spoon until you slept.”

“That sounds about right.”

We finish the food, and I feel the heat return to my hands. The part of me that keeps score settles down enough to breathe.

Bella gathers the trash and stands. “Come on. There’s a place in Queens that takes cash and still changes the sheets,” she says. “You can shower and think, and then you can decide how to walk into whatever is waiting.”