Page 35 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

“I already did.”

They take his arms and walk him backward through my office door while he strains against them toward me. “You took everything from me! Twice!”

“Be grateful I still see you with a father’s eyes and pray I never see you through the eyes of a pakhan. Pakhans do not suffer traitors to live.”

“Fuck—”

The door slams shut on his retort, and my hand aches from gripping the gun in my pocket.

15

THEA

Day four of captivity. I’ve read everything in the library, reorganized my closet twice—which doesn’t take long since all I brought is a beach bag—and taught Potato to high-five. Well, it’s not quite a high five. Maybe a high claw.

I’m not built for this. I’ve spent my adult life doing eleven things before lunch, not prison. Even if it’s a beautiful prison, every door I can open just reminds me of the ones I can’t.

So, I keep searching for doors I can’t open, hoping the next time I try it, it’ll be unlocked. I know it’s dangerous. Maxim’s world is no joke. But I do it anyway, because snooping feels like my old job. I’m not spying. I’m onboarding.

Which is how I find Maxim’s office door standing ajar.

Not open. Ajar. Amber lamplight and book smell. When I press against the door and there are no objections, I walk in.

It’s the most him room in the house, dark shelves, a large desk, a fireplace that gets used. The only room I’ve seen with personal things in it, which is what pulls me past the point of claiming I’m looking for a stapler. I don’t care—curiosity has me in its claws.

Photographs on the back shelf. A stern couple before a Brooklyn storefront, forty years ago by the clothes. Lev, younger, laughing, holding a fish outside. A dark-haired woman on a windy beach, mid-shout at the camera, beautiful.

And then the last frame, and the floor drops the way it dropped in the auditorium.

It’s Maxim, maybe five years younger, sitting comfortably at a low table in a room with paper screens, cross-legged and without his jacket. He looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. Four older Japanese men in dark suits sit around the table. The nearest man’s sleeve has shifted back, revealing a dense, patterned tattoo that stretches from his hand to his wrist, and I imagine it goes way beyond that.

I recognize these tattoos from a documentary Mandy showed me about organized crime in Japan. Yakuza.

I stand very still and take in the room again. A lacquered black box on the shelf below. Inside, on silk, a short knife in a plain wooden sheath, a card in Japanese brushwork. A gift.

The think-tank PDF scrolls up behind my eyes, page forty-one. Links to European and East Asian syndicates. I skimmed right past “East Asian” because the Russian stuff had already filled my brain to capacity. But here it is on a shelf.

Building the European and Pacific operations, he had told the auditorium.

Pacific operations.

What do I know about the Yakuza? Serious. Scary. They take fingers, and the documentary had a lot of ominous drums. I’d mostly tuned out because Mandy and I were watching it drunk, and I was distracted by something on my phone.

It’s one thing to accept that your boss-slash-whatever runs a Russian criminal family. It’s another to learn that the man is notorious internationally. This isn’t just a family. It’s a network.

And I’m not a witness anymore. I’m inside it.

I put everything back, aligned to the dust, and walk out on weak knees. I can’t stay here. What am I even doing here?

My boss is Bratva, who is involved with the Yakuza. I’m a decent EA from Pennsylvania, who some other boss guy thinks is important.

I’m not important. I’m a normal woman who fell into an important man’s bed. And now, I’m screwed in a completely different way.

No. Fuck all of this.

The day is gray and low. There’s a gap after the afternoon handoff, when the guards take the golf cart to the greenhouse and swap out. If they wanted to be stealthy, they shouldn’t drive past my window.

Sneakers. Coat. Potato goes in his carrier, and this time, he doesn’t fight me. He must know something’s wrong.