"I'm not really that hungry," I say.
"You still need to eat. You didn't touch breakfast."
I stab a fry. It's crisp, salted, perfect. "Were you watching me?"
"Of course, someone has to."
Silence follows. It's the quiet that fills up with old pain if you let it. And I'm letting it. Because I'm looking at him across this tiny table, at the way his hands rest on either side of his plate—scarred, capable, currently weaponless—and I realize I don't know where he came from. Not really. Not before the warehouses and the money and the penthouse that swallows sound.
"Your family," I say. The words just fall out. "Where are they?"
His jaw tightens. Not a lot. Just enough that I catch the micro-expression before he smooths it away. But his eyes change. Something shutters behind them.
"They're dead," he says. Flat. Factual. "Killed in a shooting. I was eleven."
I knew he was alone. You don't get to be the Pakhan by being some beloved son with a fat inheritance and a summer house. But shot. Both of them. He was just a child.
"I'm sorry," I say. It sounds pathetic. I mean it more than I've meant almost anything.
Mikhail shrugs, but the movement is strained. "It was a long time ago."
"Doesn't mean I'm not sorry." I set down my fork. "I don't have anyone either. You know that. The system is only required to provide for you until you turn eighteen. After that, you're on your own. I got into a career training program that helped me earn my cosmetology license and provided room and boardfor another two years. Then nothing. Nobody. Not even a caseworker who pretends to check in anymore."
He watches me. Those gray eyes, usually so sharp they could cut glass, soften at the edges. "I know."
"It means," I say slowly, feeling my way through the sentence like it's a dark room. "Being nobody's person. It means you learn to hold your own hand. You learn to sleep with one eye open. You learn that everything is temporary, especially if it's good."
He nods. Just once. "Yes."
I swirl the ice in my water glass, watching the circles distort. "I don't remember much of my mother. Just her perfume—fruity, like candy left in a hot car. I was four, almost five, when she left me at a social services office. We went together, and then she just… didn't come back from the bathroom."
Mikhail goes very still.
"She told me to stay in the plastic chair. Don't move. Be a good girl. I sat there for an hour before anyone noticed. I counted the tiles on the floor. Seventy-two blue, forty-eight white. When they finally asked about my mother, the lady gave me this look. Pity mixed with sorrow, like she already knew my fate." My voice stays steady, but my hands are shaking. I press them flat against my thighs under the table. "She'd walked out the side exit. Left my birth certificate on the counter. My jacket, too. It was November. I remember because they gave me a sweater from the lost-and-found bin, and it smelled like cigarettes."
For a second, I'm back there—the chill of that laminated chair against the backs of my legs, the social worker's acrylic nails when she finally knelt in front of me and said,You're going to be just fine, sweetheart.The lie of it. The way they all lied, passing me from house to house like used luggage.
"I used to make up stories," I continue, my throat tight. "My mom was a singer. My dad was in the army. They were coming back. Any day now. I'd stand by the window in every fosterplacement, waiting for a car I knew wasn't coming. Then you hit thirteen, fourteen, and you realize nobody's coming. So you stop looking up. You look straight ahead."
Mikhail's hand moves across the table. He doesn't touch me. His fingers rest on the linen cloth, close to my wrist, close enough that I feel the heat of him.
"Did you ever try to find relatives?" I ask. "Before. I mean, did you ever look for family?"
For a second, I think he's going to shut down. But he takes a sip of his soda, and when he sets the glass down, his thumb traces the handle like he's measuring it.
"As a child," he says. "I dreamed of it. Aunts. Uncles. Someone who would claim me from the orphanage. I wrote letters that were never answered." A ghost of a smile that isn't happy. "Then I stopped dreaming."
"Yeah." I look at my plate, but I don't see the food. I see that gray sweater. I see the empty chair beside me at every school play, every awards ceremony, every holiday morning in a house full of other people's unwanted children. "Same. Survival."
"Survival," he murmurs.
I meet his gaze, and it is terrifyingly tender. It looks more like recognition than pity. Pity would break me right now. This is worse. This is hope.
The waiter comes, clears the plates, and disappears. Neither of us moves for the check. Mikhail leans back in his chair, his gaze pinning me in place.
The muffled street noise from the window feels very far away.
He leans forward, elbows on the table, and the space between us shrinks to nothing. His eyes search mine, ruthless and gentle all at once.
