Page 46 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

A weight sits on my chest. But I won’t let him blame himself for that. “Thank you, Pasha. Say nothing to anyone.”

“Not even the other guards? They could⁠—”

“No one.”

In the study, I sit down in the lamplight without turning on the fire. My head swims. What is this? Betrayal? Anger would be simpler. But it is not anger.

It is loss, arriving early.

She wants to leave. This isn’t a surprise. Not really. She’s wanted out of this since the moment I knocked on her door. This isn’t new information.

But I had thought things changed between us.

Had I misread her this badly? A woman who baits a man into losing his control does not fear him. A woman who sleeps like the drowned against a man’s chest when she does that with no one else… it means something, doesn’t it?

Or I wanted to believe it did.

I’ve never told anyone about Irina. Not the year of hospitals, not the fear of my own hands, not to Lev, not to a priest. Years of silence, unlocked by a woman doing paperwork in my bed with a pen in her hair.

What else could it be? I didn’t read her wrong. You can’t fake that.

I even tolerated the cat. The animal sat on the window seat through the entirety of the other evening’s proceedings, and I minded so little that I forgot it was there.

Well… That’s not completely true.

I minded slightly. It watched the entire time, and I’ve known interrogators with less presence. But I permitted it. I permit her everything. Why would she want to leave me?

Somewhere between a ruined shirt and a snowless October I’ve fallen, for a woman I’ve no business falling for. And I believed that the fall wasn’t one-sided.

She spent this evening measuring my wall for ways to leave.

Very well.

The truth of the matter is that my walls were always one option among several. There were other avenues available from the first night. Relocation, reconstruction, a guarded life elsewhere, expensive and complicated but buildable. Happens all the time.

But I presented the estate as the only door because I wanted to keep her safe. To keep her, period.

I called that desire “protocol” and made her believe my lie. The rest of it is true, of course. Alexei, Kirill, the danger of them, all real. But the cure to the disease? That’s the lie.

A lie she may never forgive, if she were to discover it. And then she would feel justified to leave.

Then again, she wants to leave as it is. Were she to learn the truth of the matter, she would demand to leave, and I couldn’t blame her.

She will leave safely, or she will stay freely. There’s no other arrangement I’m willing to own.

It takes two hours and four phone calls to men who ask no questions to build her that exit she so desperately wants. A new name with new documents. A passport, a driver’s license, a history, employment records for a communications manager from Harrisburg, references that will answer the phone.

A new home. A house in a coastal town in Portugal where an associate owes me a debt the size of a harbor. Should she prefer to stay stateside, a duplex in Asheville held by a shell company will do nicely. She won’t like that she’s not close to her sister, but she will like living, so that should help ease the burden of visitation travel.

An account in the new name, seeded deep, structured as an inheritance from a fictional aunt. Clean, boring.

A security team for my peace of mind.

It’s another dumb life, as she might call it, but it’s far safer than the one she has now. Her new documents give her darker hair and brown eyes—dye and contacts will do a lot of the heavy-lifting to complete her transformation.

I seal the folder and set it in the drawer that locks and sit back. It’s done. A gourmet severance package of sorts. It’ll take a day before the passport and driver’s license are delivered—I don’t have the proper printer for all of that, so I had to put in an order. But once they’re in my hand, I’ll store them alongside everything else.

Thea will be protected and happy, which is all I can ask for, given the circumstances.