Page 57 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

I promised her the security would be less gentle. I keep my promises. My finger is on the desk phone before she clears the doorway. “Security to forty-two.”

“That’s fair,” she says, unbothered, heels clacking on my floor. No theater today. She does not go near my chair, does not unbutton her coat. “I need ninety seconds, Maxim.”

“You get sixty.”

“Your son wants to see his father.”

“He has a funny way of showing it.”

“San Bastien, on Green, the private suite upstairs. One hour from now. I booked it under my own name.” She sets a card on the desk, the restaurant’s. There’s nothing written on it. “Today, before he loses his nerve or finds better advice. There won’t be another.”

“Why are you delivering his invitations?”

She smiles with ice in her veins. “Because no one else in either house has the balls to do it.” A shrug, elegant. “Consider me a bridge. Bridges do not take sides.”

“Why today?”

“Because today he asked for my help.” Something in her tone thins, and underneath the polish there’s information she’s choosing not to hand me. “He’s not a patient man, your son. You have noticed.”

The security men arrive in the doorway. Fifty seconds.

“One hour. Bastien.” I look at the card and not at her. “Escort Miss Sokolov to the street.”

She goes without protest, chin high, and commands me between my two guards without looking back, “Wear something nice for him.”

I stand at the window where she last posed, and I give myself sixty seconds of my own. This is likely a trap. But knowing it’s a trap is the first step in evading one.

Bastien’s private room is brick and white cloth and one window over Green Street. Neutral, as promised. I arrive first and read the room out of habit.

One door. One window, no fire escape.

I take the seat facing the door. Klaus arrives eleven minutes late, believing it’s a power move. He’s always pulled that bullshit. It’s nerves, but I don’t have the heart to tell him. He’s dressed by someone else’s tailor. New watch, new confidence. He drops into the chair across from me and spreads like he’s in his own living room.

“Dad, you look tired.”

“You look expensive.”

“Yeah, well.” He flags the waiter, orders a cognac, and pronounces it correctly for once. “Turns out there are people in this city who value me. Took thirty-one years to find them, but here we are.”

“I see.”

The cognac is served. He turns the glass, observes the legs running down the crystal, and I wait, as I don’t intend to speak first.

He cannot stand silence for long. “You want to know why. Go ahead. Ask me why.”

“I know why.”

“No. No, you think you know.” The glass comes down harder than the wood deserves. “I was nine years old, Dad. Nine.”

He counts it off one finger at a time, and his voice rises with each item. “Mom dies, and you ship me to Switzerland with a trunk and a housekeeper’s phone number. Birthdays were either a formal dinner of your choosing or a gift arriving by courier. Christmas at Uncle Lev’s was like I was a dog sent to the kennel. The head boy at school taught me to tie a tie. A tutorial video taught me to shave.”

“Niklaus—”

“Then you show up every few years to examine me, find me wanting, and leave again. The one time you hand me something real, you come home in the dark, humiliate me in front of the board, put me on a leash you call special projects, and fire me in front of security guards.”

“You were destroying⁠—”

“So, I found people who actually respect me.”