Page 61 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

Her first sentence wasn’t a greeting. It was a demand to be on speakerphone, because she knows Lev is with me. She walks us through it. The weights, the container profiles, the buyer chains that die at transit hubs, all of it. I wish was wrong. Thea is many things, but wrong is rarely one of them.

“How sure are you?”

“Sure enough that I’m wondering whether the hospital bag is about to be a bugout bag. Come home safe.” The line goes dead, and Lev stares at me across the car. Neither of us says anything for a mile.

So, it is not a negotiation. Since my return to the States, Alexei has been toying with me. Delaying me from noticing what he’s truly up to. He’s bought an arsenal and stored it across the globe near my ports. Staged the weapons for a simultaneous attack.

It’s a very risky move. The more you move weapons, the more likely they are to be noticed by officials you cannot bribe. The risk-averse Alexei would not risk exposure unless he thought he would win.

Once in the office, we set about figuring out the date of his attack. “The ribbon-cutting,” Lev says. “It has to be. Alexei on the invitation list, the Port Authority chairman with him and us on the dais, press on the risers. If Alexei is there, too, he’ll appear to be an innocent witness to your murder. A bystander. It’s the perfect day to level an attack of this size. The other attacks across the globe will be blamed on other people—he likely has scapegoats lined up already—and since you’re the only person who could contradict his story…”

I look at the dais picture for a long time. It fits. Alexei’s performance will go down in history. All he has to do is watch me get shot.

“Then we let him commit to it. I will attend, announced, front row. I’m the bait the event is built to catch, so we let him catch me.” I move three markers across the map.

Lev’s brow lines. “You have a plan that does not include your death, I presume.”

“We salt the crowd, the risers, the stacks, the water. We take his shooters out before the ribbon is cut.”

“You are making yourself the target.”

“I’m the target regardless. I will be sure to stand very close to Alexei before the event happens, and I will remain at his side the entire time. Let him sweat whether his sharpshooters can get a clean shot.” It makes me smile to think of that bastard worrying the whole time, while my men take his shooters out.

“I hate this.” He sighs at the dais picture, because he knows there’s no other option.

“Then find me the version where I’m not the target.”

He studies the map for a long time. “There isn’t one. He built all of this on you.” When he looks at me, Lev’s aged another five years. “You’re putting a lot of trust in our men, Maxim.”

“Comes with the job, doesn’t it?”

Another sigh. “Right.”

“Thea doesn’t leave my estate. Not for any reason. If I’m on that pier being a target, my house must remain her safe fortress. I want double the guards that day at both locations.”

“She found the weapons,” Lev points out. “She won’t like staying home for this.”

“She’ll be alive to resent me.” I look at him until he nods.

He goes to set up security, and I take a moment to breathe before I return to battle strategy. But my mind circles the drain after a while, so I go home to my office. I cannot stop thinking of what comes next. After me.

There, I open the locked drawer and take out the two documents I pray I’ll never have to use. The first is my will. There’s a child now, and I write the child in so they are provided for in perpetuity, and Thea, because she’s more than earned it.

The second is her exit package. If the pier goes wrong, Lev puts her and the child on a plane within the hour, gone and safe. I wish there was more I could do for them in the event of my death, but there’s only so much a man can do.

Then I call my son.

Four rings, which means he’s looking at my name and deciding. Or perhaps, he’s with his new father now. Laughing that I’d reach out to him.

In the end, it doesn’t matter why he lets it go to voicemail. He’s made his choice. The tone sounds.

“Niklaus,” I pause, as the words I had prepared escape me. Thea has recently encouraged me to embrace honesty, which now guides my expression. “I sincerely apologize. For the boarding schools. For the couriers. For the years I believed I was providing protection, and you perceived it as abandonment…”

I hate the truth of it.

“You were right. I wasn’t the father you required, and I knew this even as I failed to fulfill that role. I knew better, yet I did not do better, and this regret will remain with me for the remainder of my days.

I turn the pen in my fingers.