After a moment, he pushed the briefcase back to me. He pulled a leather wallet from his pocket and dropped a few bills on the table.
“Tomorrow. If my lawyer doesn’t see your parents, I will have you back,” he said, rising from his seat.
“Look—” I started, but he stopped me, sliding his watch fromhis wrist.
“Take a cab home. It might rain. He shouldn’t get sick, and I don’t like my family staying in a godforsaken apartment. I will only allow it for tonight.”
He handed Cole the wristwatch. “This will look good on you.”
“Really?” Cole’s face lit up, a giggle slipping out as he held it. “Thank you.”
The man smiled at him, then glanced at me. Without another word, he left, and with him went my ability to breathe, my composure, and any sense of safety.
He didn’t have me arrested or harm us, but whatever game he was playing felt worse than any scenario I had imagined. Every instinct screamed that he was mentally unstable.
“But Inna, what does he mean that I’m his son?” Cole asked.
I froze for a beat, searching for words that didn’t exist. My mind raced as I tried to understand how someone could be both meticulous and unhinged.
Chapter Seven
Dmitri Konstantinov
The grainy CCTV footage flickeredacross my screen. I took a sip of whiskey, giving it my full attention.
In the weeks after Inna stole from me, Akim flagged some men outside her apartment who were watching from a distance. It raised the possibility that Inna owed them money, which was why she stole from me. Akim dug deeper, and what he found stretched years back. Those same men kidnapped Inna’s father years ago, and they worked for Iker Perez.
Iker ran a small crime organization in Mexico, the kind that liked to pretend it was bigger than it was. Their reach extended into small areas of Florida, just enough to feel important but not enough to matter. They aren’t Bratva enemies, and they sure as hell aren’t friends. They existed in that careful middle ground where survival depended on knowing exactly how small you were.
The clip showed how his men took Inna’s father one night on his way home, a minute from his front door. One moment he was there, the next he was being folded into the back of a vehicle likeluggage. The van drove off, and the street went back to normal, as if nothing had happened.
I paused the video and leaned back, the burn of whiskey settling low in my chest. There was something almost admirable about the execution. The more I watched, the less it felt random. Inna’s father wasn’t taken by accident.
The same men were watching Inna and Cole, which meant that the two would soon go missing, just like their father.
I lived long enough to know that coincidences were just what weak men called mysterious situations. I did not believe in it. Either Inna’s father was in serious trouble that got him taken off the streets, or he was involved in a shady business. And it was business that ensnared his daughter without her realizing it.
Both roads led to the same place. Inna was already a pawn or a liability someone was circling, waiting for the right moment to collect.
The door opened without a knock just as I raised my glass again to take another sip. For one to walk into my office like that meant they either forgot who I was or had lived long enough around me to know they didn’t need to remember.
But it was Grandma.
California didn’t slow her down. She came back more settled in herself, the kind of woman who had seen enough of the world that nothing it did surprised her anymore. Two months away, and she walked back as though time itself had learned not to argue with her.
After Rodion’s pretty, naive wife had a miscarriage, Grandma grew restless. She moved to California, chasing the one thing she wanted before she died: great-grandchildren.
Death has been waiting for her for years. She just hadn’t agreed to the meeting.
“I thought you were dead,” I said, watching her move in slowly with her walking stick.
“I’m not here for your stupid jokes.” She declared and lowered herself onto the sofa. I watched her a second longer, not out of concern but out of curiosity. The woman looked ready to outlive every last one of us just to prove a point.
“What did you expect me to think?” I took another sip and let the burn settle. “I went to your room and found you passed out. Did California have you climbing walls?”
She scoffed. “I was exhausted from the flight. And forget that.” Her hand cut through the air, eyes sharpening on me. “You have a son? What kind of nonsense is that? Are you even sure he’s yours?”
I stood and walked over with the glass still in my hand. “Why? Did I ever say I was infertile?” I took the sofa across from her.
