Page 99 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

I want to keep that fragile, furious confession. I have no right to. Instead, I say, “You came because it was strategically necessary.”

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Make it easier for me by making it colder.”

She stands, and the movement brings her closer. I catch the trace of her perfume beneath winter air, paper, leather, and whatever poison Kalinin’s office left under her skin.

“You are angry,” she says.

“Yes.”

“How angry?”

“Very.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.”

“Then give me one.”

I look at the photograph in her hand. The list of names. The Friday deadline. All of it familiar. Too familiar.

Routes. Pressure. Surveillance. Leverage. The language of the world she has spent her whole life trying to leave.

“If I answer honestly,” I say, “you’ll hear a man planning what to break first.”

Tamara’s face goes carefully blank. “Isn’t that what you do?”

“Yes.” The word costs more than it should.

“And that’s the problem?”

“The problem is that you walked out of your father’s office covered in what this life does to people. And my first instinct is to answer in the same language.”

Tamara says nothing. I force myself to continue. “I can call it strategy. Protection. Response. It may even be necessary.” My jaw tightens. “But it’s still the same world. Men in quiet rooms deciding who gets watched, moved, pressured, punished.”

Her eyes sharpen slightly. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I know you know it.” My voice lowers. “I also know you never wanted to live inside it.”

She knows exactly what I mean. I think not only about how to keep danger away from her. I think about how much of my life can be made survivable if she chooses to stay near it.

I look at the file on my desk, the photograph, the list of names, the Friday deadline. The old instinct rises again. Map the threat. Contain the variables. Establish coverage. Run the routes. Identify pressure points. Put men on every door between Manhattan and Woodstock.

Keep her here until every risk is accounted for.

I could do all of that.

I will do most of it.

But not right now.

“Enough for today,” I say.

Her head turns. The mistake is immediate. Then I add quickly, “I’m asking.”