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I made certain of all of it with the same rigor I bring to everything, not out of tenderness, but because damaged goods would ruin the deal, and Katerina would never forgive it.

The child means nothing to me.

A two year old is a key, and I needed a key shaped exactly like Katerina Sokolov’s conscience.

Leo Santoro’s daughter, taken from Maksim Sokolov’s home—close enough to family that Katerina’s blood would answer, distant enough that the Bratva’s response would be rage instead of complete annihilation.

The breach itself cost me a fortune in bought loyalties and eleven weeks of rehearsal on a replica of Maksim Sokolov’s backyard.

Thirty seconds of execution. Two years of patience behind it.

Other men in my position acquire what they want with simpler tools—a van, chloroform, etc.

The thought has occurred to me more times than I’ll admit, but I’ve seen what taken-by-force looks like in a woman’s eyes for the rest of her life, and I will not spend thirty days with that looking back at me.

No. Katerina will come to me on her own two feet, by her own choice, because of what she is—because the woman who held my shattered body together on a busy New York street is incapable of doing anything else.

I’m not forcing her.

I’m simply asking the world’s most predictable question of the world’s most magnificent answer.

I pick up the phone.

Luca answers on the first ring.

“Send it,” I say. “Then route her line to me.”

“Yes, Nico.” A pause, half a heartbeat too long and I raise my eyebrow. Luca’s lucky I’ve known him so long because I wouldn’t otherwise tolerate the disrespect. “And if the Sokolovs trace⁠—”

“They won’t,” I tell him. “Send it.”

On the monitor, Katerina has moved to her kitchen.

She hasn’t eaten—the pad Thai sits untouched on the counter where she abandoned it after two bites—and she’s holding a glass of water she keeps forgetting to drink, pacing the length of the island, phone on the granite countertop in front of her.

Her phone lights up.

She freezes.

One ring. Two. On the third, she squares her shoulders.

I watch the breath she takes as she steadies herself and she puts the phone to her ear and says nothing at all.

Smart. Make the caller speak first. Her cousin’s lessons are in there somewhere after all.

For a moment I just listen to her breathe. It’s controlled, four counts in. I smile.

It’s a doctor’s breathing, a surgeon who has stood in arterial spray without flinching, and underneath it, so faint you’d need to have memorized her to hear it, the flutter of fear.

Two years. Two years of watching her mouth move on silent camera feeds, of replaying a hospital voice from memory.

“Dr. Sokolov,” I say. “Thank you for taking my call.”

“You have her,” Katerina says flatly and I admire how she doesn’t bother with pleasantries. “Seraphina. You’re the one.”

“She’s safe.” I keep my voice at a frequency engineered to soothe. “She’s asleep. She had dinner. There’s a woman with her who spent twenty years in pediatrics. Whatever you’re imagining right now, I promise you, she’s okay.”

“You took a baby from her mother,” Katerina states and I marvel at how controlled it is, even though I can hear the rage underneath it all. Ah, there she is. “Do you have any idea—she’s two. She has a mother who is right now—” The breath punches out of her. “Whatever you want from my family, she is a baby, and if anything happens to her, I swear to God⁠—”