His men watched.
Ray looked like he was praying to every saint of small business survival.
Misha, however, looked pleased.
“See?” he said to his father. “I told you.”
Mikhail glanced down. “You told me what?”
“That she was not pretending.”
The words caught me off guard.
I sat slowly on the edge of the booth across from them. “Pretending?”
Misha turned the paper bag in his hands. The top of it crinkled.
“Some people are kind when Papa is watching,” he said. “Some people are kind when they want something.”
Mikhail’s jaw tightened.
I could hear years inside that sentence. Years of adults bending toward a powerful man’s child with careful smiles and hidden motives. Years of a little boy learning to measure kindness before accepting it.
I wanted to say something comforting, but nothing came.
So I simply said, “Well, your papa wasn’t here.”
Misha nodded. “That’s why I knew.”
Mikhail looked away toward the rain-blurred windows, and for the first time, I wondered what kind of life taught a nine-year-old to think that way.
The bell over the door swung gently in the draft, though no one had opened it.
Outside, the storm kept roaring.
One of the men at the entrance touched a hand to an earpiece and murmured something I couldn’t understand. Mikhail heard it anyway. His attention sharpened.
“We should leave,” the man said.
“In a moment,” Mikhail replied.
The man’s face tightened, but he stepped back.
Mikhail turned to me again. “You have my gratitude.”
I nodded. “I’m glad he’s safe.”
Misha looked up at him. “What about Nina?”
A shadow crossed Mikhail’s face.
“We are still looking.”
“She wouldn’t leave me,” Misha said quickly. “She told me to stay by the fountain. She said she’d buy me hot chocolate. Then she didn’t come back.”
Mikhail crouched again so they were eye to eye.
