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VADKA

The first thing I do is call Zoya. “How’s Luka?”

“He’s fine,” she says, her voice laced with steel. The Kopolov women don’t fuck around—and she’s seen more than one tense situation.

Rafail raised them right. Zoya was just a child when Rafail became the legal guardian of her and her siblings.

He taught them to be strong, loyal, and fastidious.

And to this day, I’m not sure there’s anything the Kopolov family can’t handle.

They know how to use weapons, how to navigate tense situations.

They’ve seen people they love hurt and killed.

And when shit hits the fan, the Kopolov family stands strong.

“Luka’s packing a bag right now,” she says more quietly. “I told him we’re going on a trip and that he’ll see his Auntie Ruthie and his Papa soon.”

“Thank you. ”

I used to like to think that even the Irish weren’t so cold they’d go after a child. But I don’t have the luxury of thinking that anymore. Not after they killed my innocent wife.

A little voice in the back of my mind reminds me that her death was an accident—that they didn’t come straight for her—she just got caught in the line of fire when the Irish were on a rampage. But it doesn’t soothe anything.

The Irish are my mortal enemies. The most dangerous fuckers I’ve ever met, and I’ve been swimming with sharks since I was a kid.

“We’re twenty minutes out,” I say. “We’re on my bike now. Ruthie’s car broke down, and I can’t tell if it was mechanical or if it was intentional.”

“Let me check with Matvei, see if we have surveillance outside the area you’re in. You were with her mother, yes?”

Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?

“Yes. Good idea. Thank you.”

“It’s filling up here fast. Everyone was at the house when Rafail hit the alarm. I’ll make sure I save space for you.”

She has to. She has my son. “Thank you.”

“Are you two hungry?”

“Yeah.”

She’s so cute. Literal lives are on the line, and Zoya’s worried about feeding us.

Always the little mother hen—even when she was little.

I remember the first time she saw a bruise on my shoulder, back when my father had decked me, the fucking asshole.

I remember when she started realizing the bruises on my arms and cheeks weren’t from falling or walking into walls, like I told everyone. That I wasn’t just clumsy.

She reached out and touched a black eye with a small, trembling hand. “No one’s perfect, Vadka. But no one deserves this either.”

I slept on the Kopolov couch that night. And I never went home.

“I’ll have some food prepared for you,” she says. “Luka is tired. We had a busy day. He might be asleep when you get back.”

“I know. I just want what’s best for the little guy. Thank you.”

I decide to tell Ruthie what’s going on, so I fill her in on the comm and tell her she should come with me.

I realize then that I like the feel of her behind me. It makes me a little sad, honestly. I could never convince Mariah to sit on the back of the bike with me.

Ruthie reminds me of her sister—but only the best parts of Mariah. She probably fears that when I look at her, I see a smaller, younger version of her sister. Hell, I feared that.

But I don’t.

I see Ruthie. Brilliant, headstrong, somewhat chaotic Ruthie. The most loyal woman I know. The strongest.

The one who clutches her vulnerability with a death grip, unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen .

Dusk has fallen by the time we pull down a long, quiet street. I check behind us carefully, making sure we’re not being followed.

No shadows. No headlights tailing us. Just the steady rumble of the engine beneath us and the way Ruthie exhales—slow, uncertain—as I ease the bike down a narrow back alley.

We don’t pull up to the front of anything. That’s suicide. I cut the engine behind an abandoned auto shop with rusted signage and boarded windows. The back lot is gravel and overgrown. Only the locals know the garage door still works.

It groans as it lifts.

We roll in silently. No interior lights. Just a single, motion-activated bulb that flickers when we pass under it. I kill the ignition.

Ruthie slides off behind me. She looks around, frowning.

“This can’t be the safe house,” she says.

“No.” I take her hand before she can wander. “It’s the entrance.”

We walk. Around the side of the garage, across a broken alley. The kind of place you don’t look too long at if you want to stay alive.

I stop outside the side door of a grimy dive bar—“Crescent,” the faded lettering above the awning reads. It used to be a jazz bar back in the '60s. Now, it’s mostly forgotten.

But not by us .

We step inside. The place is nearly empty—just an old bartender cleaning a glass and a silent man in the corner who doesn’t glance up. No music. Just the hum of an old fridge and the tick of a slow ceiling fan.

Ruthie gives me a sidelong look. “This where we drink or die?”

I almost smile. “Both, maybe. Come on. Let’s get a table.”

“I mean, I could definitely use a cheap beer,” she mutters.

God, me too.

I look at my phone and see a message from Rafail.

Rafail

Zoya is trying to get Luka to sleep. He’s almost there. If you come in now he’ll get all wound up, so can you kill some time?

I show Ruthie. “Bingo.”

We get drinks and sit alone in the back.

She regales me with stories from her work at the bar—A fight that broke out over a spilled drink when some suit in a linen blazer shoved the wrong man and got his teeth kissed by a barstool.

A guy who tried to flirt with her by sliding her a poetry book—dog-eared and underlined, as if his annotated Pablo Neruda was supposed to win her over.

And then there was the wannabe playboy who ordered a “non-alcoholic vodka” and declared he was “sober but fun,” to which she replied, “Then why are you trying so hard?”

She makes me laugh. Really laugh. The kind that slips past my ribs before I can cage it. I forget for a moment that the fucking Irish are on the move, that we’re about to lock down in a safe house so nobody gets hurt. That I’m supposed to be dead inside.

And somehow, here I am—I’m drinking cheap beer and laughing with my sister-in-law, hiding out like fugitives in a place no one knows exists.

Feels a little rebellious. But Rafail told me to take my time.

“I love shitty bars,” I mutter, leaning back as she finishes telling me a story.

She smiles. “Me too. No pretense. Drown your sorrows at a discount.”

I tilt my head. “So people hit on you at the bar?”

She snorts. “Not really. I’m not pretty enough for that.”

I stare at her. Blink. She means it. She actually believes that.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I say, leaning forward. “Is this some kind of self-deprecating bullshit?”

“What? No.”

The words slip out before I can stop them. “Ruthie, Jesus . You’re beautiful.” She is.

She gets shy, eyes darting away. Then she clears her throat and straightens up. “We should go.”

Of course. We should. But all I can think about is how wrong she is about herself—and how dangerously right she feels beside me .

"Yeah," I tell her. "We should."

But we don’t .

Instead, we order another round.

“I know your dad was an asshole," she says. "But I was too young… or maybe too self-focused to understand.” She sips her drink. There’s a little froth on her lip, and it’s adorable. “Tell me about your dad?”

So we’re going there.

"My dad was a biker," I say. “I don't mean the weekend bikers with leather vests and toy drives. I mean the kind who ran meth across state lines. People thought he was all chill because he never raised his voice, but the real reason was because his fists did the talking.” I shake my head. “And I was his fucking punching bag. He said I had to be ‘toughened up.’ That the world doesn’t spare weak boys. By the time I was ten, I could stitch my own eyebrow and lie to the ER nurse without flinching. By fourteen, I stopped crying when he broke something in me—because I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.”

I said too much. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I look away.

“He died when I was nineteen. Bike wreck. Drunk and fast and finally out of luck.”

I didn’t cry. I didn’t go to the funeral. I just stood in the kitchen, blood still drying on my cheek from the night before and thought: You finally did one good thing. You left .

“I’m sorry he wasn’t good to you.”

I shrug and bury myself in my drink. I’ve almost made my peace with it.

“I used to tell myself he had a hard life, that he didn’t know how to deal with his anger.

But now that I have a kid of my own, it’s harder for me to reconcile the way he treated me.

Kids are innocent. They trust easily and love so hard.

” I shake my head. “They deserve to be treated with love and respect.”

I pause.

The memory surfaces unbidden, like something half-drowned. The beer’s made me talk more than normal.

“I remember when I was seven. I dropped a glass of milk—barely touched it, and it slipped right out of my hands. He didn’t say a word.

Just grabbed the broken pieces and threw them in the trash.

Then he made me kneel on the kitchen floor until my legs fell asleep.

One of them was cut on the broken glass. Said I needed to learn consequences.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ruthie glares.

My voice goes quiet. “I remember how cold the tile was. I remember the sound of the clock ticking while I tried not to cry. That sound stuck with me longer than the pain. I mean, I got the damn milk because I was thirsty.”

There’s a silence between us now—thick but not empty.

She reaches her small hand out to mine and rubs her thumb gently across the top of it. Her nails are short, unpainted, and shaped in soft ovals.

"I’m sorry," she says, and I know she means it.

Mariah was the one who helped me when I struggled with my own anger. When I was frustrated that Luka wouldn’t sleep, when he had his first tantrums—throwing things, shouting "No!" She would lay her hand on my arm and say, "Walk away. I’ve got this. "