Page 52 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

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Dima

EVENING—SOMEWHERE ALONG INTERSTATE 90 BETWEEN NEW YORK CITY AND CHICAGO

An hour passes with no one on our trail.

I check the rearview again and again. I change lanes. I take highway exits, loop around, and get right back on.

Still no one following.

I don’t fucking like it.

I don’t buy Gennady’s explanation that we frightened them off. There’s something else happening here. And it’s bugging the hell out of me that I can’t figure out what.

But that’ll have to come later. For now, we need to stop.

Lukas has begun to cry. Soft whimpers at first. But growing louder and louder with each passing moment.

“We have to pull over,” Arya says at once.

I pull to the side of the road and put the car in park, but I keep the engine running. “You have five minutes.”

For once, she says nothing. No sassy comeback, no snide retort. She just clambers into the backseat and frees Lukas from his car seat. He quiets as soon as she takes him into her arms.

“Did Brigitte stop, too?” Arya asks after a moment has passed.

My eyes are trained on the cars whizzing past us on the highway. I shake my head. “I haven’t seen her in a bit.”

“Did she pass us?”

“I don’t know. I was a bit too busy looking out for the cars of the people who want to kill us to see where your ‘friend’ was at.”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” she huffs.

“Say what?”

“‘Friend,’” she repeats in the same sarcastic tone I used. “She’s my best friend and has been for years. She’s more like family, really. If you want to be in my life and Lukas’s life, you’ll have to deal with her.”

“You’re not going to threaten me into doing anything.”

“It’s not a threat!” Arya almost sounds like she’s amused. Almost. “It’s a fact. I’m the one getting the shit end of the stick anyway. I have to deal with the fact that my son’s father is some big bad mob boss who is regularly getting shot at. And you have to deal with the fact that my best friend is pretty vocal about her opinions.”

“She’s not the only one.”

Now, she is definitely amused. Frustrated, but amused.

She laughs and kicks the back of my seat. “Watch it, buster.”

“I’m watching,” I mutter darkly, scanning the traffic yet again. “I’m always watching.”

* * *

Once Lukas is re-settled and asleep, we hustle through a drive-thru to grab food. Then back on the road. We can’t afford to stop for long.

Arya folds down the paper on my sandwich and lays a napkin across my lap to protect my pants from grease drips. It’s very motherly, very tender, and so fucking weird for a man like me that I actually mumble an awkward, “Thanks.”

She looks at me like I just sprouted a third arm from the middle of my forehead. “What’d you just say?”

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