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I hang the dress up on my closet door and sit on my bed to look at it. With an elegant silhouette and a tasteful hemline, the dress is just enough but not too much. With the right accessories, it’ll work wherever Ethan takes me for our date.
I wish Mama were here to see me wear it.
If it weren’t for old ghosts from her home country, Romania, we’d still be together. When I was still a toddler, she moved us to the United States, trying to escape the dangerous people who wanted to hurt her. In the years after she fled, everything was okay. Life was a little challenging—she was a single mother with limited English at the time she moved—but we were together. We had each other.
And then the past came knocking three years ago.
Mama decided that I would be safer in a bigger city, and because I’d just turned eighteen then, I could do it alone. She had just enough saved for a single, one-way plane ticket and a few months of rent. She refused to come with me, saying that buying just one plane ticket would give me more rent money and more flexibility regarding the kind of place I could get.
I hated myself for getting on the plane, even though I knew she was right. Soon after, I found this apartment and started streaming myself playing video games. People liked my content, and now I make enough money to pay for my expenses. Mama has refused to give me her information so that I can wire the excess to her, so instead, I save it. I already have enough to help her with a cross-country move to join me here, I’m just waiting for the right time.
After a while—how long I’m lost in my thoughts, I’m not sure—Baxter starts to whine from another room. I check the clock on my bedside table and realize that it’s his dinner time. I need to feed him, and then I need to get ready for my date for real.
After filling my cat’s bowl with food, I start to walk back to my room. Something catches my eye and stops me.
A box on the floor, sitting in my living room next to my threadbare couch.
Right, Ethan brought that inside for me. He left it there before he backed me against the wall as if he was going to kiss me.
With a shaky breath, I bend down to fetch the box and start to open it. I don’t bother looking for a return address, knowing it’s likely from one of my neighbors. Sometimes Nancy, a retired lady that lives down the hall, makes too many cookies for her grandkids and gives me the extra. She always says she’s trying to watch her figure when she gives them to me. I think she’s got her eyes on George, another retiree who lives on our floor.
When I open the box, I discover another box instead of homemade cookies.
My brow furrows.
The box is embossed with the name of a very expensive design house my mother has a fondness for, and when I open it, I find a carefully folded silk scarf inside. As I pull the scarf out to look at it, a card falls to the floor.
My fingers tremble as I bend to pick up the little card and read it.
This color would look beautiful on you. It’s time to come home, draga.
No.
No, no, no.
The box falls from my hands as I scramble back, my heart hammering so hard against my ribcage it feels like it’s going to break through my sternum.
How? How did they find me?
We’ve been so careful. My mother and I have worked so hard, keeping our heads down and creating new identities for ourselves. I moved across this huge country, tried to fade into the background of its bustling streets, kept my full name a secretfrom my online following. Hell, I look a lot like most of the other young women who livestream. Blondes in this content niche are a dime a dozen.
Tears begin to gather in my eyes.
What do I do? Have they gotten my mom yet? Is that how they found me? Is she in danger?
These thoughts and more have my brain reeling. I can’t think straight, not with my hands shaking and my heart racing and my head beginning to pound with the stress of being discovered. Everything in me wants to flee, and yet I can’t make myself move. It’s too much.
My life as I know it now is over. All of the work my mother and I have done has been for nothing.
My father, the head of Romania’s most powerful crime organization has found us. I knew he was relentless, but I’d half hoped he’d given up on us by now. When my mom left him almost twenty years ago, he was stung. A man who clearly can’t keep his house under control won’t be able to keep his operation under control either, so the blow to his pride was monumental. Still, my mother didn’t want that life for herself, let alone for her tiny daughter.
Three years ago, he’d located us. Mama sent me away, confident she could hold him off.
This man is not and has never been a father to me, but now I’m faced with the reality that he’s still convinced he is. Maybe it was silly to think I could keep running, even if my mother wasn’t with me.
Today had started out rough. I’d embarrassed myself on a livestream and my cat had escaped the apartment, but then I’d managed to find him while meeting a handsome, charismaticman. After he’d invited me on a date, it had truly felt like my day was turning around.
Now, my world is crumbling around me before my very eyes.
