Page 47 of Single Mom's Daddies
“You can’t?—”
“Ican,” I say. “And I will. You know who I am. You know what I will do to you. If I see your faces again, our conversation will not include words.”
I leave them there—bruised, humiliated, hurting. But alive. They’re stupid kids caught in something they don’t understand. Used, by the Costellos, like so many before them.
I walk away without looking back.
Twenty minutes later, I’m crossing the 27th Street Bridge. The sun’s high, the sky too blue for how I feel. The river below churns with slow current, brown and thick.
I stop halfway across. Pull the knives from my coat. Toss them one by one into the water. They vanish.
The gun stays in my pocket. It might be junk. It might be gold. But either way, it’s a tether to the Costellos. And I want the next time we see each other to be something they remember.
Permanently.
12
NIKOLAI
The numbers don’t lie,but they sure know how to waste my time.
I scroll through the export manifest for the third time, cross-checking the most recent container shipment out of Rotterdam. Everything is accounted for—five crates, sealed under the right name, all routed through the right flags. Customs won’t even blink. That part is solid.
Still, I like to see it with my own eyes.
Roman’s beside me, leaning one elbow on my bedroom desk, arms crossed. His face is still and unreadable, but I know him. I know that half his attention is on the open laptop in front of us and the other half is planning seventeen ways to kill Ruger without leaving a footprint.
“This crate here,” he says, tapping the screen. “The one with the internal code ending in seven-six-four. That one landed in New York last week?”
I nod. “Through the Jersey dock.”
“And it cleared inspection?”
“With a thank-you from their chief logistics officer and a handshake.”
He doesn’t smile, but I see the edge of approval flicker in his eyes.
The house is quiet. It’s early afternoon—warm light filtering through the tall windows, the murmur of the fountain out in the courtyard soft against the stone. The kids were playing a little bit ago, and I heard Saffron calling out for them to come see a bee. They ran to her. She has them wrapped around her finger.
I know the feeling. But I shouldn’t think about that right now.
Roman scrolls down the list again, reading silently. “I don’t like the way they’re pushing timelines at the Valencia port,” he mutters. “If they speed it up again, we’ll have to split the load in transit.”
“I’ve already got a backup route flagged.”
“Good.”
He straightens, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “You’re sure about these codes?”
“I programmed half of them myself.”
“Then I’ll sleep better.”
“You don’t sleep at all.”
He doesn’t answer. He’s about to say something else when the door slams open.
Victor. His face is storm-dark, his fists clenched at his sides. He doesn’t bother closing the door behind him. Doesn’t greet us. Just stalks into the room like it owes him an apology.
