Page 29 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

“Okay.” She swallows. “Then why are you in Queens?”

She knows something. Clearly. But she’s not prepared for this. No version of this goes well, no matter what she thinks she knows.

“Thea. You’ll be leaving town. Tonight. Now. Pack one bag, essentials, only. A car is downstairs, and two more sit at the corners. There is no running. I will explain what can be explained once we are moving. And I’m aware of exactly how this sounds.”

She does not move. The kettle ticks on the stove behind her, cooling. The cat sits down on her foot as if to anchor her to the floor, just as stubborn as she is. She glares at me across the room, pale, steady, working the problem as if this is a negotiation.

I watch her check the window with one eye still on me. She glances to the front door. And I see the moment it clicks that neither exit is available to her.

She gulps as her shoulders heave with her breath. “Are you kidnapping me?”

“I’m protecting you.”

13

THEA

I didn’t know a sugar bowl could catch air, but when you throw it hard enough, they sail far.

But I didn’t throw it at him. I threw it at the wall beside him, a foot wide of his shoulder. Sugar and ceramic catch the light as the bits spray out. Potato bolts under the couch, not that I blame him.

Maxim doesn’t move one inch. Cocky bastard.

So, I throw the dish towel too, which is not aerodynamic, and flutters to the floor between us like a sad flag that gave up its post.

“You don’t get to do this.” My voice is something between a whisper and a shriek. “You don’t get to tell me to pack a bag. That’s not—people don’t—this is my apartment. I have a job! I have a dentist appointment! I have a life, Maxim, a small dumb life, and it’s mine, and I love it, and you don’t get to just⁠—“

“Thea—”

“I’m not done throwing things, and so help me, if you finish that sentence, the next thing I throw will be aimed at your stupid face!”

He breathes, then glances at the counter, assessing my remaining arsenal. A mug, a banana, the good scissors. Every one of them is a good option. Then he reaches into his coat, and the part of my brain that read a think-tank PDF tonight goes very quiet, but what comes out of his pocket is an envelope.

Not a gun.

“You want a reason?”

“Yes!”

He pauses. “I would have spared you this. Remember, you’re the one who insisted.”

Two photographs.

The first one empties my lungs. It’s me. Me in the hallway of the Meridian the morning of our hookup. The picture is taken from an angle that makes me think of a scarred scalp and a bloody smile.

The creep. He took that picture.

The second photo is worse, because it’s daytime. The garage at work. Me, a few days ago, crossing to my car with my sunglasses up and my mouth open mid-sentence, because I talk to myself on the way to my car. Someone photographed me doing it from an upper ramp.

In daylight. At my job.

I flip them over because there’s handwriting showing through one of them. Two words in Russian. Pretty face.

But I won’t give up my secrets that easily. Not even when I can’t stop shaking. The words shake, too. “What… what does that mean?”

If he lies, then this is some kind of trick.

“Pretty face.”