Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 31

The croissants crackle on the rack behind me. “Pri... Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s been coming since the summer,” she says, her chin dropping to her chest. “It’s not a fight or abuse or anything like that. There wasn’t some big night where somebody threw a plate. It just… isn’t working. It’s like trying to revive a dead body, and there’s just no heartbeat left.”

I frown. “But Pri… you worked Christmas week. You worked doubles, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, well.” She lifts a shoulder. “The money situation is about to get a little tougher, so I figured it was good to get it in while I can.”

“Priya, I⁠—”

“The lease is in both our names through September,” she continues over my protests. “So there’s that. And then there’s the fact that I’m about to be paying for an apartment with one income. And Zara’s four, so she’s in daycare, which is eighteen hundred a month.” She rubs her thumb along the seam of her apron. “You’re not the only one who’s been up in the middle of the night wondering what to do.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Because you had a lot of your own s**t going on,” she says. “Clearly.”

“That’s not—” I stop and swallow. “You could’ve told me the second it happened. You should have.”

“I know. I’m stubborn like that. Maybe that’s why you and me get along so well.” She sniffles and rubs at her dripping nose with the back of one hand. “Ugh, I’m sorry. God, the timing is so selfish. Look at me. You come in here with your dream on the line and I hijack the whole thing to talk about my problems. That’s disgusting of me. Who does that?”

“Pri.”

“I mean it. Forget I said anything. Tell me about the loan man.” She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, fast, and takes one more sniffling inhale before she brutally cuts off her tears through sheer force of will. “What else can you tell me? I’ll ask better questions.”

That, I think, is the moment I make my choice.

I look at this beautiful, strong, confident, wise woman falling to pieces in front of me. It’s funny how moments like this make abstract words become so real and so human.

Friend.

Love.

Loyalty.

Even something as silly as payroll.

A few days ago, Skye listed that out without a second thought, stuck between “ingredients” and “insurance,” just one more in a long list of problems.

But payroll isn’t just payroll.

Payroll is Priya. Payroll is her daughter, the cutest little cherub who’s ever been born, who’s spent Saturdays here for as long as she can remember, eating the broken cookies out of the tray. Little Zara, who calls me Miss Delilah in a teeny, tiny, delicate voice.

Payroll is Angelica, who is putting a brother through school in Queens.

Payroll is Cameron, who I know for a fact has forty dollars in his account at any given moment.

Payroll is Jolene, who is sixty-four years old and works because Social Security isn’t enough to make ends meet anymore.

Payroll is people who trust me to do right by them.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I wrap my arms around Pri and hug her as hard as I can. She holds on right back. She’s smaller than me by a lot, and shaking badly, but I try to hug her in a way that keeps all the pieces together. She deserves that.

She’s right: I don’t have to be her keeper or her savior or her servant. I don’t have to do that for anyone.

But I’m choosing to do it anyway.

That’s what love is.

“Listen to me,” I tell her fiercely. “This place is going to be here.”

She sniffs with her face pressed against my shoulder.

“This place is going to be here,” I say again. “I’m not losing the bakery. Whatever happens with Connor and the loan and my mother and the whole rotten circus, this building is going to stay mine, and you are going to keep your job, and every single thing under the sun is going to be okay.”

“You don’t have to make me promises⁠—”

“You and Zara are not going hungry,” I say, “and you’re not losing that apartment. That’s the promise. Not a maybe, not we’ll see how it goes. I’m telling you as your boss and I’m telling you as your friend. We. Will. Be. Okay. All of us. Do you hear me?”

She pulls back and looks up at me. Her eyes are swimming with more tears.

But she nods and says, “Okay.”

“Again,” I say, with a firm shake of her shoulders. “One more time with feeling.”

“Okay,” she says, cracking the tiniest of smiles. “We’ll be okay. All of us will be okay.”

“That’s the spirit. I love you, Pri.”

“I love you, too, Delilah.”

We hug once more, then struggle to our feet. It’s been a lot of emotions in a short and unexpected window, so we separate and lose ourselves in manual labor for a little while.

In a strange way, I almost feel settled. I don’t know what the future holds. There are a lot of holidays between now and Easter, and there’s so much I don’t know about what it means to spend them with Kane Makov.

But I know one thing:

I’m about to find out.

I have never in my life waited on a woman’s answer.

That’s not a boast. It’s just the truth of how my life has gone. Women say yes to me before I’ve even finished asking the question. Half the time, I don’t have to ask at all.

I know why. I’m not stupid. I’m rich and I’m tall and my word carries weight in this town. There’s a certain type of woman who can smell that across a room.

They come to me. They always have.

And then, if history is any indicator, we f**k and part ways. If they throw a fit, I have Niko escort them out of my home. As soon as they cross that threshold, they’re out of my mind, too. Never to be thought of again.

I’ve never once lain awake wondering what one of them was thinking.

I’ve never once cared what one of them decided.

I’ve lived that way on purpose. I like being in charge. Not in some kinky way, though that applies, too. I mean it simply in the sense that once I decide something, it is done, and I don’t have to waste my life waiting on others to decide if they agree.

So Thursday is a strange f*****g day.

Because I spend the whole day waiting.

I do my best to stay busy. I’m up at five as usual to run the standing calls. My lieutenants ring or visit all morning to update me on cash flows and shipment manifests, on drug production labs and territory disputes. A fiery young captain in Brighton Beach begs permission to cut off a subordinate’s hand over a minor theft, and I have to talk him down from the unnecessary bloodshed.

In between bouts of work, I eat, pace, take notes, and lift weights in the downstairs wine cellar that I had converted to a basement gym.

By ten in the morning, I’ve done everything a man does in a day—and there is still an entire goddamn day left.

And I haven’t heard a peep from her.

I’m still brimming with energy, so I go for a savagely fast run around Central Park, pushing myself harder and harder and harder still. Only when it feels like there are shards of glass in my lungs and battery acid in my legs do I call it quits.

Shower.

Shave.

Dress.

Still nothing.

This is not a good look on me. I’m extremely f*****g aware.

She’s got a bakery and it’s New Year’s Eve. She’ll be buried in work for a while still.

But knowing that truth in my head is a very different thing than accepting it in my nervous system. As reasonable as it is—and, for f**k’s sake, I’m the one who agreed to let her have a day to think over my offer—I’m still irritable and impatient.

What I want is for it to be last night again, with the counter between us, because in that moment, I had her. I f*****g had her.

I could feel it. She wanted to say yes so badly that her mouth was already open. Then she closed it and asked for a day to mull things over.

I’ve been paying the price for that generosity ever since.

By the time noon arrives, my unspent energy is reaching a dangerous breaking point. Niko comes barreling in from wherever he’s been all morning, veering straight to the kitchen to make himself a plate of food from my meal prep.

“There are forks in the drawer,” I inform him. “You don’t have to eat over the sink with your bare hands like a feral rat.”

He grins with a mouth full of roast pork and mashed potatoes. “Where’s the fun in that?”

I roll my eyes and stride into the dining room, where the map is still rolled out across the massive oak table. It’s held down at the corners with two crystal ashtrays, a stapler, and a bottle of vodka. The one white square in the plane of green is pissing me the hell off.