Page 70 of The Promise

Roman knew Jimmy—the guy was decent. He trusted the man to get the job done and keep Karine safe, but he’d never discussed socializing with her. In fact, he’d told all the bulls to leave her alone unless she made the first step to close the bridge. The rationale behind that was she was free to do whatever she wanted, as long as she wanted to do it. If Jimmy and she were becoming friends, and she was comfortable with a particular bull, then Roman had no say in it.

And it wasn’t a bad thing, his father had pointed out to him when he dared to bring it up to the man. If she felt more comfortable with a particular bull, it could make things better for her in many ways.

Demyan wasn’t wrong.

Roman just didn’t like it.

There was that monster—again.

Besides, the more she engaged in these things, the more distracted she was going to be from his absence. However, the alternative reality where she enjoyed shooting skeets and laughing with one of the bulls—he practically buzzed with envy.

Not that he let it show.

“And how’d it go?” Roman asked.

“The lesson?”

“Yeah, babe.”

“Not too bad,” she replied, a smile coloring up her words brightly. He couldn’t see it, but he swore he could hear it. “I hit a couple. Jimmy said I was a natural, but I think he was just being nice.”

“Jimmy is a lot of things but nice for the sake of being nice is not of them. And I’m not surprised. You have the potential of being good at everything—you only have to try.”

Nothing he said was untrue, but it still stung a little to say it. He should have been in Vermont teaching Karine to shoot skeets over the lake.

“How are you?” she asked, then, not giving him the chance to respond before she added, “I feel like whenever we talk, I just end up monopolizing the conversation. It’s always all about me.”

Right.

“Because you’re what matters, Karine.”

She gave a little sigh. “You haven’t told me anything about how things are going there.”

He preferred to keep their conversations light because he had enough on his mind already. Not that he expected her to understand.

“I don’t want to talk about things that aren’t important,” he settled on saying. “I want to talk about you. Besides, there are some things I just ... can’t discuss. You understand, don’t you?”

Karine was quiet for longer than he liked before finally saying, “I do understand.”

“But it’s not easy, right?”

“You said it, not me.”

Roman laughed darkly, and scrubbed a hand down his neatly trimmed beard. “So you know though, just because I’m not giving you all the details of my day-to-day life right now, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about you.”

“No, I know that, too. I just ... everything sounds scary and complicated. I figured I should at least ask, you know?”

It was complicated, but he wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“Why do you feel that way—has something happened there, Karine?”

It took her a second to respond.

A second too long.

“I’ve just overheard some things. That’s all. Mostly the guys talking amongst themselves around here. I heard one say Leonid was acting as the boss in Chicago. I don’t understand what that means. What about ... my father? What’s happening?”

Fuck.