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“He was a horrible man.” Sighing, Minka brings our joined hands up and presses a kiss to my wrist. “He didn’t want you to be friends, but he didn’twant you to be enemies either. He had no clue what he truly wanted. He just knew he liked chaos and hurting the very people he was supposed to protect.”
“Essentially.” I smile when she kisses the side of my thumb. “What’s your favorite memory?”
“Hmm…” She casts a look out at the city streets as I merge off of a four-lane road and onto a circular exit. “My mom and dad worked a lot when I was a kid. Like, a lot a lot,” she clarifies with a playful smile. “They both had second jobs, which made me a latchkey kid who got herself up for school, made her own breakfast and school lunches. Then I spent my evenings alone, making my own dinner and putting myself to bed.”
“I never would have guessed that.” I squeeze her hand, teasing. “Bet you forgot to eat a lot as a kid, too.”
“Kinda wish I had a sexy cop handing me yogurt pouches back then,” she taunts. “Maybe then I would have eaten better.”
“If a sexy, grown ass man was trying to feed you back then, because he knew you were seven and routinely left home alone, we might’ve seen you on the news eventually.” I bypass the regular entrance for commercial flights and go a different way. Different entrance. “I’m infinitely thankful you never ended up on Dateline, Mayet. That would’ve messed with our wedding plans.”
“Har-har.” She sounds playful. Bored, even, but as we come closer to the private hangars, tension grows thicker between us. She doesn’t want to go, and it takes every scrap of willpower I possess to let her.
It’s insane to admit, but she’s safer in New York this week. With Felix and Micah running that cityandowning the hotel she just so happens to be staying in, they control her safety.
“Finish your story, babe.” Taking back my hand, I maneuver between other cars. Buses. Limousines, even. “What was your favorite memory?”
“It was my tenth birthday.” She sets both hands in her lap and straightens in her seat to face the front. “My mom and dad’s marriage was a farce. They stayed together, of course. They would never divorce, no matter what choices my mother made. By that point, we were content with the quiet, ya know? On the odd Sunday when neither of them had to work, even when we were all together, the apartment was about as silent as my autopsy suites. But on this particular day, my tenth birthday, I guess they’d coordinated their work schedules as a surprise for me.”
“They had it off?”
“The night,” she clarifies with a shrug. “They couldn’t take the whole day,but they worked their rosters to make sure they had the evening with me. Mom finished around four, and my dad, around five. They hadn’t told me their plans prior, so I was really surprised when six o’clock rolled around and they were still at the apartment.”
Spotting not only the hangar I’ve visited a half dozen times in the last twelve months, but the handful of cars I know Felix will have organized to be here—because we protect, above all else—I follow their perimeter of black and bring the cruiser under the shaded shelter, knowing we’re guarded here.
“They spent the night with you?” Cutting the engine and snagging the key, I look across and study the stress that makes her jaw hard. The angst that makes her cheeks pink. “Like a little party?”
“Even better.” She slowly, almost robotically, unsnaps her seat belt and allows it to retract back into the frame of the car. But then she smiles, soft and sweet, almost as though she’s revisiting her tenth birthday. “We were so poor back then, we survivedbecausethey were never home for mealtimes. That meant our grocery bill consisted of cereal and small servings to get a kid through. But on my birthday, they announced we were going out.Get your shoes on, Malenka.” Her voice takes on a distinct accent, a European lilt that has my heart stumbling in my chest. “It was December in New York, which meant snow was everywhere and the sky was especially bright at night. It’s only a week and a bit before Christmas, so the lights were up, and those who didn’t mind the cold would come out and skate on the ice in Manhattan.”
Happily, she grins when our eyes meet. “We hopped on the subway and headed into the city. At ten, obviously, I was getting a little old to hold my parents’ hands in public. Especially being who I was—happily independent—but this was a special night. I felt it in my heart how very special it was. So I walked between my parents, almost as tall as my mom already, and I let them swing my arms. We went to dinner at a restaurant. It wasn’t a crazy expensive place, no fabric napkins,” she snickers. “But it was my family, together, sitting at the same table at the same time for the first time in years.”
“Their gift to you was togetherness.”
She drops her chin in a kind of nod. “Not only that, but hope, too. A full heart. Because even though we sat down and started eating, which, of course, meant they released my hands, they still held on to each other’s. It didn’t feel fake. It wasn’t for show. For that night, at least, they were in love again, the way it used to be before life got too hard. They were able to setaside their differences and perhaps remember who they used to be before I came along.”
“Your parents totally fucked that night after you went to bed.”
Stunned, she whips her head up and widens her eyes. Thensmack! She hits me. “Archer!”
“What?” I catch her hand on the second swing and hold on tight, because I want to bring it to my lips. But I don’t want her to split them. “They were young,Malenka. They were revisiting old feelings. Life was good and their kid was happy. Bet your ass your dad went to town on your mom as soon as you were asleep.”
“Ya know, sometimes I consider youother.” She yanks her hand from mine and shoves her door open. So I follow her lead, chuckling as I stand and catch her flaming red cheeks on the other side. “I think you’ve evolved from where you came from. I look at Cato, then at you, and I marvel at how well you adjusted to life after you left them.”
“Babe!”
“But then you say shit like that and,whoops! There’s Cato and Felix, speaking right out of your damn mouth.”
Laughing, I slam my door and pull the back open to get her bags. At least we’re both smiling. She’s repressing hers, because parents having sex?Ew. But beneath that is a woman begging to break out in giggles. “You’re a prude, Doctor Mayet. I forgot that about you.”
“I’m not a prude!” She slams her door and strides around the car. “I just made a point of marryingDetectiveArcher Malone. Not…” She swings her arm out, not to hit me this time, but to gesture to the fleet of cars and the men who have strict instructions to become my wife’s parachute and soft landing in the rare chance our plane falls from the sky somewhere over Texas. “I didn’t marryMafiaMalone!”
“You kinda did.” I slip her—my—duffel across my chest and snag her briefcase in my left hand, then I drape my free arm over her shoulder and force her to cuddle against my side. “I’m just one man. Two sides, perhaps, but one coin. I was raised amongst ferals, and now I’m in charge of herding the ferals. Life is complex.”
“If you mention my parents’ sex life ever again, I’m going to put a pillow over your face while you sleep and hold it down until you stop struggling.”
I smile at Felix’s closest guard and shake my head. “She doesn’t mean that. She’s not a threat to any Malone, in any capacity. Don’t sweat it.”
“I am!” She nails the guard with a look directly between his eyes. “KeepFelix away from me while I’m on the east coast, or I’ll do the pillow thing to him, too.”
