Page 100 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“Asking what?”

“Go out with me tonight.”

She stares at me. “Come again?”

“Go out with me.”

For the first time all day, Tamara looks genuinely uncertain. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“Badly, apparently.”

She almost laughs. “You have no game, Aleksander.”

“I’ve been told I have other strengths.”

“That remains under review.”

Fair.

Her eyes search my face. “Why?”

Because if I keep standing here, I am going to touch you.

Because your father made me imagine his hands on every part of your life, and I need one hour where no one asks anything of you.

Because I don’t know how to fix what I broke without breaking something else.

Because you came home.

I say only the part that matters. “Your father spent the morning making you useful. I’m asking for one hour where no one uses you.”

Tamara looks down at the photograph in her hand. Then back at me. “One hour.”

“Yes.”

“No strategy?”

“No.”

“No questions about what exactly he said?”

“No.”

“No telling me I need air or food or rest?”

“I value my life.”

That earns me something close to a real smile. It is gone quickly. But I see it.

“One hour,” she says.

The club is below street level on a block in Midtown too bright and forgettable to hold anything interesting. There’s no sign, only a narrow black door beside a closed tailor and a brass plate the size of my palm. A staircase drops steeply into sound.

Tamara pauses at the top. “You brought me to a basement.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Should I be concerned?”