Page 31 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

My stomach drops through the floor because I know that route. That’s the route to Tiny. “That’s my sister’s town.”

“Yes. You purchased that ticket with your credit card on your phone, which will remain here, powered on.”

“Excuse me⁠—”

“Tomorrow a woman of your build wearing your coat will board that bus.” He says it the way he assigns meetings. “Sokolov will learn you panicked and ran home to Pennsylvania. It’s what a frightened civilian does, and it’s boring, and boring is safe. He’ll confirm it, lose interest, and look elsewhere because doing that would mean you are not my woman and you are not my spy.”

I blink at him. “Confirm it?” The floor of my stomach keeps going. “Confirm it how? By sending someone to Scranton? To Tiny’s street, where her kids catch a school bus, are you… no. No. You are not painting a target on my sister to take one off of me⁠—”

“There’s been a man on your sister’s street since this evening.” He doesn’t raise his voice. “My man. He watches the house, the school route, the husband’s garage. He will be there as long as this lasts, and your sister will never know his name or his face, and nothing, Thea, nothing will happen on that street. My man is on it. She and her family will remain safe.”

My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth for a beat. “You have one guy on a family of four? That math does not work.”

He pauses. “I will add another. Any other requests?”

“The kids. My niece and nephew. They deserve their own detail.”

“Consider it done.” He pulls out his phone, presumably handling it as I stand here. This is what serious looks like when it’s on your side.

There’s more. So much more. But right now, I have to stay focused. Where’s Potato’s carrier? I yank it from the hall closet, so he takes off to hide in the curtains. “He hates his carrier, so I need to grab some cheese from the fridge to put one of his sedatives in it. It’ll take just a minute, and then the sedative will kick in about five minutes later—the vet gave me the good stuff.”

Maxim looks at Potato’s curtain lump. Potato peeks out at Maxim. It is not warm, in either direction.

“No,” Maxim says.

“You don’t want him traveling without it. Trust me.”

“That’s not what I meant. You cannot think to take him with us.”

I frown at him. “You cannot think I’m leaving him behind.”

“It’s a cat.”

“He’s my cat.”

“The estate is secure. Cats are not securable assets,” he gestures at Potato, who has begun washing a foot with his leg straight up in the air, having forgotten about the carrier.

“You bought a decoy bus ticket, an actress, and you’re adding security guys for my family like it’s nothing, so I think your empire can absorb a litter box.” I plant myself. Five-foot-five in fuzzy socks, giving the most feared man I’ve ever met the face I give vendors who tell me something can’t be done by Friday. Not my most dignified argument, but at the moment, I’m out of fucks to give.

“Thea—”

“You’re taking my apartment, my job, my dentist appointment, my entire life, tonight, on your word. Fine. You’ve got the photos, you win. You have officially creeped me out. But the cat is not negotiable. The cat is the line. I will get on that bus for real before I leave him here to starve because you don’t like animals.”

“I like animals. Horses. Dogs.” He regards Potato with the cold assessment I last saw aimed at a champagne fountain. “That is a mop with claws. And I didn’t say to leave him to starve. I thought we could leave him at a kennel or with a neighbor.”

“The mop comes, or I don’t. It’s that easy.”

Maxim closes his eyes in the manner of a man consulting a distant and patient god. Then he sighs the first words he says, “The carrier. Five minutes,” and turns to stand at the window with his back to us. As if he cannot look at the two creatures that made him make a compromise.

Maybe the first of his life.

I get to the closet before I let myself smile. I won the battle. But I lost the war, so the smile is short-lived.

The upstate drive lasts about two quiet hours. Maxim sits beside me in the back of a tinted black car, absorbed in his phone, while I hold the carrier on my lap as Potato yowls a continuous, formal complaint through the mesh. I’ve had worse trips.

Past the city line, I stop watching for headlights following us and start focusing on the dark shapes of trees. The world becomes emptier and quieter. I’m used to the city. Driving to the country feels like life slipping away.

The gates to his empire are dark iron and taller than my apartment. Feels like we’re driving onto a movie set or something equally fake. Maybe because I don’t want this to be real. They open without anyone touching anything, and the driveway after them goes on for so long that I have time to pretend this isn’t happening.