Page 120 of Cruel Kiss

His last one, too.

"So be it," I tell Grigor. "Tonight, we'll see who's right."

I knot my tie in front of the mirror.

It's her mirror, technically. One of the ones I took out of this house in the dark and then had put back, because she should get to choose what she has and how she sees herself. It's in her bathroom, hung level, right where it came from. And I'm standing in front of it in a black suit, working the silk through my fingers.

I confiscated all her glass because I couldn't stand to watch her take inventory of herself and declare herself unworthy. So I removed the equipment and left her no way to shrink.

But in all these weeks, I never once stood in front of one of these and did the same thing to myself, taken my own stock.

So I do it now.

The man in the mirror has his father's shoulders.

His father's height, his father's hands.

There are scars under this shirt that I called occupational hazards of Brooklyn real estate. Some of them are, and some of them aren't.

But there's the rest of it, too, if I look long enough. There's a man who kneels down to a child's level instead of towering. Who asks permission at every step. Who took the mirrors and then gave them back. Who built a place with a swing in it so children who deserved happiness could be free. Who wrote a letter so a woman wouldn't be gutted in a room full of strangers, and thenlet her push it back across the counter, because she'd rather hear the worst thing from my mouth than read it off a page.

I don't know which man wins tonight. Both of them are in here, standing in the same body. One of them has to walk into that warehouse and answer for the other.

I finish the knot. I smooth it down.

Behind me, in the glass, the door opens.

Cali stands in the doorway in the green dress. The one from the first date. It fits her perfectly, every gorgeous curve that made me salivate from the moment I first laid eyes on her. On her wrist, I spy a flash of gold: the little octopus charm.

She looks beautiful. She always does, and I've told her every day since I stole her glass. I'll go on telling her whether she believes me or not, both because it's in the terms and because it's true.

Our eyes meet in the mirror.

I turn around, so I'm looking at the real thing instead of the reflection.

"You're the most beautiful thing I have ever been in a room with," I tell her.

She smiles, and it doesn't quite diminish the fear behind her eyes, but it's a real smile all the same. She crosses the bathroom to me. She reaches up and straightens the tie I already straightened, because her hands need something to do.

"The kids are with my mom," she says. "She didn't ask questions. She just took them and told me to be careful, and then she told me—" Her voice catches. "She told me to bring you home."

"Formidable woman."

"She likes you. God knows why."

"She has excellent taste. It runs in the family."

That gets a laugh out of her. She presses her forehead to my chest for a second, and I put my hand on the back of her head and hold her there. Her whole world is at her mother's tonight, but she doesn't have to worry—they'll be safe. I would burn every warehouse in Brooklyn to the ground before I let anything happen to any piece of it.

"You have your machine?" I ask.

"Downstairs. Charged. Backed up in three places." She pulls back and wipes under her eyes. "I'm the operator, remember? I don't do things halfway."

"No," I say. "You never have."

I take her hand. Her fingers are cold as they close around mine. I feel the whole terrible weight of what we're walking into and the whole impossible weight of what I'd lose settle over me at the same time.

She looks up at me. "Ready?" she asks.