Page 89 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

“No.” My voice breaks, and I hate that more than anything. “You don’t.”

Dmitri’s attention drops to my shaking hands. I close them into fists.

He takes one step back and keeps both hands where I can see them. “What is it I don’t know, Cara? Tell me.”

My knees give before I can answer. I sink down against the truck, grab my arms with both hands, and try to stop shaking.

Dmitri drops in front of me. He goes down on one knee first, then both, close enough that I can see the snow melting in his hair. One hand is on my shoulder, careful and steady.

“Cara,” he says, his face near mine.

The yard feels too bright. The gate lights burn behind him. Snow falls between us in small, kind flakes, melting as soon as it touches his coat.

Dmitri lowers his voice. “Whose name are you protecting?”

Mikhail’s red car flashes behind my eyes. His sticky fingers. Patrick’s message. Make it casual, Cara, I tell myself.

“Mikhail.” I make myself say it.

Dmitri doesn’t move. The name sits between us, small and huge and real.

I pull my hands to my sides before they can cover my mouth. “He’s four.”

Dmitri’s face changes by inches. “Four.”

“He likes cars and pancakes.” The words come faster now, spilling because I can’t hold them back anymore. “He thinks a spoon can fix anything if you try hard enough. Kathryn has him because I sent him there when your men came for me. Patrick must have guessed enough. The clinic.”

My voice breaks on the last word. Dmitri waits, his face unreadable under the yard lights, and somehow, that makes it harder to stop.

I force the rest out. “It was proof Patrick could get close, and I couldn’t take one more piece of him near Mikhail.”

Dmitri doesn’t say anything for an eternity. Then he says, “Who’s the father?”

My hands shake against my thighs. The service lane is beside him, and the gate lights burn past it, still out of reach. Boston feels farther than both.

I lift my chin and give him the rest. “Yours.”

Dmitri stops breathing, and every way out disappears.

20

DMITRI

For one suspended beat, the world splits open under me. The delivery yard, the truck, the men, the cold night all fall away. Nothing stands between me and her words.

Mikhail is my son.

Then I look at Cara. She braces for rage. I see it in her shoulders, in the way her hands curl at her sides. Her injured leg shifts forward, as if she’s ready to take whatever I throw at her.

I don’t give her the chance to hate me through it. She expects me to become the monster she has feared since Boston. I give her none of that.

It isn’t easy. The first urge is violent. Mine always is. I kill it before it reaches her. This can’t become a fight between us. A child with my blood is in Boston, and Patrick knows enough to reach him. Nothing matters before that.

Dima stands near the service doors with two guards behind him. Both men heard enough to make themselves dangerous. I turn my head once, and Dima reads the order before I speak.

“Clear the yard,” I say, cutting my hand toward the doors. “Every man who heard anything here tonight keeps it out of his mouth.”

Dima grabs the nearest guard by the collar and drives him toward the exit.