Page 25 of Cruel Kiss

"But what comes with money?" I press. I scoot closer to him. "Danger. Not for me—fuck knows I can handle the risk. It goes everywhere with no rhyme or reason, and anyone standing in the splash zone might get hit. We are in this mess in the first place because we couldn't handle the overflow. I've got more to lose now than ever before. I won't risk it. Not her. Not them.”

I finally pick up the coffee and take what I believe to be a triumphant sip.

But I should've known Navi would never let me get away with congratulating myself that easily. No champagne toasts here. Not in this diner, not tonight.

"You know she's not there with you, right?" my cousin says in a soft, deadly voice. "She's tolerating you, but she doesn'twantyou. You're just clinging to the dead corpse of something youthought you'd get to keep for good. You know better than that, man. I'm actually kind of disappointed that you don't see what a charade you're living."

That, finally, is enough to piss me off. I snarl, "I know exactly what I have and don't have."

"Do you?" It's his turn to press forward. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're whistling to your grave for the sake of a woman who hates your guts. If tomorrow's New York Times saidRonan Akov Found Violently Murdered,she'd read it over her morning waffles and say,Well, that's what happens to men like that."

I don't think I want this coffee anymore.

It's been a couple weeks now of playing house with Cali and her children. Nights of dinners and bathtimes, of normalcy I never dared to dream of.

"That's the point," I whisper.

Navi frowns. "What?"

"That she doesn't know. That's the point of it."

Navi frowns. "Explain that to me like I'm stupid. Because either I am or you are; that shit doesn't make any sense."

I set the cup down. I look at my hands. These are my father's hands, more or less. Big and scarred and good at exactly one kind of work. I spent my whole life trying to make them do a different kind, and mostly, I failed. The one time I did something with them that was clean—dropping off money at an orphanage in the dark, no name, no gold letters—I made sure nobody knew.

Anna would have liked it. I never told a soul but Navi.

"Everything I ever did for anyone came withmyname on it," I say. "The firm. The foundation. The Bratva. Even when I gave, I gave so that someone would know I'd given. Igor was the same. Everything was a transaction. You do a thing, you get the credit. He never once did something for the sake of it being a good thing to do."

"Okay. So what?"

"So here's a thing I can do without needing a favor in return." I look up at him. "I can keep her safe. Even if it costs me everything and she never once sees a drop of that sweat or blood price. I don't want her thanks, Navi. I just want her alive. As long as I know that she's okay, that's enough."

Navi looks at me for a long time. Then he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and squints at me again like he's hoping everything I just said was a mirage. When he takes them away, he looks older than I've ever seen him.

"You're not dyingforthe Bratva," he says slowly, like he's working it out as he says it. "I keep thinking you're too proud to save yourself, or you've got a death wish, or you really have gone soft in the head over a woman. But that's not it, is it? You're dyingoutof it. For her."

"For whatever's left of me by the time it's over." I finally answer him honestly, which I owe him, because he's the only man alive I owe anything to. "I'm not going to walk out of this a whole man, Navi. I'm not that lucky and I haven't earned it. But maybe there's a piece of me at the end of it that's clean enough." I shrug. "Probably not. Most likely, I bleed out first and Lev takes the crown and she reads about it in the paper, just like you said. But maybe not. Maybe not.”

Navi is thoughtful for a long, long moment.

Then he nods.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay?"

"You're my cousin. You're mypakhan, or you were, or you're becoming something else, I don't know what to call you anymore. But you're mine. So if this is what you're doing, then I'll help you do it right. I'm not going to spend the next month trying to talk you back into the marshes." He picks his coffee back up. "I'll dig on the mole. I'll keep the payroll limping as long as I can. I'll watch Lev. And when it's time, when all the shit hits the fan like it inevitably will, I'll be at your side, no matter what."

He drains the dregs his coffee and stands. At the door, he pauses.

"For what it's worth," he says, "your old man never could've done what you're doing. He didn't have the balls or the heart.”

He's gone before I can answer, out through the diner and into the dark of Sheepshead Bay.

I linger for a little longer before I make my own exit. I go home to a house that isn't mine, to a guest room and a quietly sleeping woman upstairs and the two children down the hall dreaming of squids and volcanoes and happily meandering butterflies, floating somewhere above a lake where the sun never quite sets.

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