Page 150 of Merciless Daddy

I had known it would cost us. I had not known Gianni had already planted explosives beneath every part of our lives.

“He was always going to act,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But I gave him a story. An excuse.”

“Exactly.”

I looked again at the footage of fire climbing Tonio’s building.

My brother’s restaurant. His kitchen. The place he had built beside Katerina’s bakery with too much laughter and too much hope.

Guilt had weight. It sat in my chest like iron.

But I would not let it bend me toward the wrong answer.

“Yelena will never be returned,” I said.

Serafina’s face did not change.

“I know. She’s family. And we don’t abandon family. We protect them.”

The words were quiet.

Then she leaned both palms on the table.

“Now find a way to keep her without burying the rest of us.”

Chapter 12

Yelena

Iwoke because the place beside me had gone cold.

For one confused second, I reached across the sheets for Sal and found only the dent his body had left behind. The scratchy blanket was tucked around my shoulders. The lake beyond the windows was a slab of pale morning light.

Then I heard voices below.

Not loud. Nobody in this house needed to shout to make danger real.

I pulled on Sal’s sweater from the chair, shoved my feet into slippers, and went downstairs.

The library door stood open three inches.

Serafina’s voice came through first. Flat. Precise.

“Lev has given Gianni thirty Sokolov soldiers. Access to the trucking unions. Permission to recover both his children by force.”

I stopped.

Both his children.

Like Kiryl and I were missing documents. Like we had been misplaced from the drawer where my father kept the things he owned.

Sal answered, and something in his voice made my hand tighten around the doorframe.

“Yelena will never be returned.”