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Including and especially Kane Makov.

So that’s the question, really.

The devil I know? Or the devil I don’t?

I guess it comes down to this:

Only one of them has broken my heart.

I gulp.

I steel myself.

And then I dial.

“Mr. Vetrov, it’s Delilah Dorsey.”

There’s a pause, and then a sound I can only describe as pleased. “Ms. Dorsey. Happy Easter to you.”

“Same to you.”

“You are working today?”

“I’m always working.”

I put my back against the wall and look at my shop. The case, empty and clean. The chair by the window where he sat with his hat on the table. The floor where Kane stood with snow melting on his shoulders three hours ago.

“I’m calling with my answer,” I say.

“I assumed as much.”

“It’s no.”

Silence follows.

“May I ask why?” he says at last. “Not to argue. I’d simply like to understand.”

There’s a long version that involves me crying, and then there’s the short version. I’m done shedding tears for a while, so he gets the latter.

“Because I’m not trading my bakery to one rich man to get away from another one.”

“I see,” replies Vetrov. “That is admirably succinct.”

“I’ve had practice being unclear. I’m trying something new.” I toy with the edge of the envelope, flicking it back and forth with my nail. “You told me you weren’t offering a gift. Just a transaction. I appreciated that, honestly. It was the most honest thing anybody said to me in a long time. But I looked at the deal, Mr. Vetrov, and what it comes down to is: I stop being Kane Makov’s problem and I start being yours. And at the end of the day, some man owns the building at Forty-Fourth and Fourth, and it isn’t me.”

“You would be paid very well, you know,” he reminds me.

“I know.”

“And still, no.”

“Yeah. Sticking to it.” I look at the deck oven with its bad left-side hot spot, and the walk-in with its wheezy compressor, and the plywood ramp out front where the curb used to be. All the things that money could fix, if I had it. “It’s not for sale to you. It’s not for sale to him. It’s not for sale to the two guys in the suits, or the group they represent, or anybody who comes in here in June with a folder and a bad feeling about my insurance renewal. It’s not for sale at all. It’s mine. It’s mine.”

Another pause.

“There is still the matter of Mr. Makov’s lien,” he says. “You understand it will not vanish because you refuse me.”

“It already did.”