Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 19

That’s when I notice the man.

He’s on the opposite side of the street, maybe forty or fifty feet back, in a dark jacket with his hands deep in his pockets. When we slow down, he slows down, too, never taking his eyes off us.

Then a car goes by. A black sedan, no plates I can read at this distance. It passes slowly, U-turns at the end of the block, and returns.

“Am I losing my mind?” I ask aloud.

Kane looks at me. “What makes you say that?”

“That guy is staring right at us, and I could almost swear I saw his identical twin like half a mile back. Plus that car keeps circling… I dunno. It’s like they’re following us, but not approaching. Watching, but not watching. And they’re not trying particularly hard to be subtle about any of it.”

“They’re not trying at all,” Kane says. “They’re with me. Their job is to keep us safe.”

“Us,” I repeat. “As in you and me?”

“Do you see anyone else out here who needs armed escorts?”

I do a slow turn on the promenade, but it’s just us and the shadow army following in our footsteps. As I look, two more appear that I missed on my first scan.

My brain, which has been running on fumes since Vivian’s videos first hit my phone, finally gets around to the obvious question.

Who is this man?

I thought he was some cousin’s kind if arrogant plus-one hiding out from my family in the pantry.

That was wrong.

Then I thought he was some sort of strange party crasher.

That was wrong, too.

It’s wild how quickly my problems have escalated. Two hours ago, my biggest problem was my husband cheating on me with my ungrateful sister.

Now, the stakes have risen to “life-or-death” territory.

“You know what my night was supposed to be?” I say. “Run the party, present the slideshow, go home, sleep for ten hours, then go to work in the morning.”

“Things change without warning.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

We resume our walk without talking for a while—until, with no warning, Kane stops at a corner near the piers, where an old storefront sits behind a roll-down gate. The gate is halfway up, revealing a pair of feet standing in the dark. I see tendrils of cigarette smoke leaking out into the night.

“One minute,” Kane says.

“Should I come⁠—”

“Stay where it’s lit.”

I shrink back into the pool of light beneath the closest streetlamp.

As I watch, a man ducks out under the gate. He’s older, weathered, in a Knicks beanie and a work coat. When he sees Kane, his shoulders rise up around his ears and he bends into an awkward half-bow.

“Mr. Makov.”

“Sasha.” Kane stands tall. “You know why I’m here.”

“I got most of it. I got most of it together, I swear to God⁠—”

“How much is most?”

“Not all.”

“That’s not what I asked, Sasha.”

The man tries to reply, but he’s shaking so badly he can’t get the words out. The cigarette he was smoking falls from his lip and hisses in the snow.

Eventually, the man manages to stammer out a number.

Kane sighs and rubs his temples. Then he says, “You have until Friday. You bring it to Niko at the yard. Not to me, not to the office. Niko, at the yard, Friday.”

“Friday,” the man agrees, nodding so hard that I’m worried his head is going to fall off into the snow just like his cigarette did. “Yes. Friday.”

“If it’s Saturday, I come back and we will be having a much different conversation.”

“It won’t be Saturday. Mr. Makov, I swear to you, it won’t be⁠—”

“Good,” Kane says. “Go home, Sasha. It’s Christmas.”

And that’s it.

Under five minutes, the entire thing. Kane never took his hands out of his pockets, and the man in the beanie ducked back under his own gate.

Kane comes back to me and adjusts his cuff. The sedan goes past us again. The men lurk at their hundred-foot distance.

What was this? A lesson? A demonstration? A warning that I’ll be worse off than Sasha if I don’t do what Kane wants?

Or is this merely another day in the life of Kane Makov?

I’m going to go ahead and update my mental model. The man standing in front of me in an open black shirt in twenty-six-degree weather is not eccentric. He’s not charming. He’s definitely not f*****g nice.

He might’ve given me his coat, offered me his phone, stopped me from falling, said I could go.

But none of that was out of the kindness of his heart.

It was just proof that it wouldn’t change what happens to me next.

He looks at me. Green eyes shine bright against the darkness and the blue-tinged snow. Flakes of the stuff have started to come down around us, light and dancing like spilled sugar in the bakery. He’s huge and I’m so very alone.

He opens his mouth. Full lips parting, a peek of tongue and teeth.

And then he says…

“Are you hungry?”

That is… not how I expected this to go.

I was ready for a death threat, at the very least.

But I’m now realizing that actually, yes, I’m starving. I’ve been too worked up to eat much of anything all day. And at my mom’s house, I was too busy to get even a second to myself. I hauled a dozen trays of sandwiches into my mother’s kitchen, I plated ham for fifty people, I refilled the ice bucket over and over, I ruined my sister’s and husband’s lives, and at some point in the middle of all that, one of the catering crew handed me a mint.

That’s my Christmas Eve dinner. One sad little mint.

My stomach picks that exact moment to say something about it, loudly, in front of the pakhan of whatever Bratva.

“I could eat,” I say.

“Then let’s go eat.” He nods up the avenue. “There’s a place off Fifth that stays open. I’ll take you.”

“No,” I blurt.

He raises an eyebrow.

This is a bad idea. I know that even as I’m saying it. But there’s only one thing in the world I want right now, because I don’t know how much longer it will be mine.

I want my own oven, my own key, my own counter to stand behind. I want to pretend, at least until the sun rises, that everything is going to be okay.

“No?” he asks, curious.

“I know a better place,” I explain.

For the first time all night, he grins without restraint.

“Then by all means,” he purrs, “lead the way.”

And that is how I walk the mob boss to my own front door.

“I could help you with that, you know,” I offer as Delilah struggles to turn the key in the lock of her bakery door.

“No thanks.”

“I can open a door.”

“So can I. It’s my door.” She puts her shoulder into it and jiggles the key in some secret combination that only she knows. “Also, you’d break it, and then I’d have a broken door and a mob boss in my kitchen instead of just a mob boss in my kitchen.”

So be it.

With a resigned sigh, I lean against the glass and watch her work.

This is not the night I planned. Not by a f*****g long shot. If it had all gone the way I’d anticipated, I’d already be home, reclining on my couch and drinking much better whiskey than the swill I stole at Delilah’s mother’s house.

More importantly, Connor Boyd would have gotten the message, and sooner or later—almost certainly sooner—I would have gotten my money.

Instead, I’m standing in the cold on Fourth Avenue at ten on Christmas Eve, watching a woman who just ruined her life hissing insults at a deadbolt.

“… stupid, stubborn motherfucker… Think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you…? Piece of s**t ass rusted clanking garbage son of a b***h… I’ll kill you, I swear I will…”

It’s been hard work not to smirk at her too much. She’s funnier than she gives herself credit for. The way she shrinks after every joke, the flinch like life is about to smack her back into the place it’s designated for her…

I despise that s**t.

Someone taught her to hate herself. Multiple someones, probably.

I have pretty good guesses as to who those someones are.

She’s also braver than she gives herself credit for. She’s made it clear that this isn’t her normal self and tonight’s insane circumstances have broken something loose inside of her.

But I like this version. She’s fearless.

And quite possibly has a death wish. After all, she’s willingly stayed with me even after I made it clear who I was and what kinds of things I’m capable of doing. That’s unusual, to say the least.

“There!” she declares triumphantly as the key turns and she goes stumbling in. “Told you. Say, ‘Good job, Delilah.’“

“Good job, Delilah,” I drawl in a sarcastic monotone.

She grimaces. “Oh, sure, you’re theatrical, right up until I need you to fake a little enthusiasm. Don’t quit your day job, Kane Makov. You’d never make it in show biz.” She pushes the door with her hip and holds it for me. “Come in. Don’t touch anything.”

I start to walk across the threshold, but then I pause for a moment.

The address hangs over the door.