35. Viviana

"Mama, you hide and I'll count to sixty-seven!" Dante slaps his hands over his eyes and turns to the nearest tree.

I laugh and groan simultaneously. "I thought we were on a walk."

Hands still over his eyes, he turns to face me. "Walks are boring. I want to play hide-and-seek!"

Considering this is the first walk Dante and I have taken on a weekday while the sun is still up, I don't find it boring at all.

Mikhail didn't come into the office at all today, but he texted me at quarter to four. No more business today. Head home.

Calling the mansion "home" felt like a slap in the face at first—a reminder of our shouting match this morning. Then Pyotr pulled down the drive towards the mansion and I realized… I like it here.

And I mean, yeah, of course I do. What kind of person is upset when they come home to a personal chef making five-star dinners and enough clean toilets for a whole football team? Mikhail lives in a kind of luxury that I didn't even have growing up. My father was don of the Giordano mafia family, but he wasn't God. Which is almost who you have to be to live the way Mikhail does.

But it's more than the luxury. It's also the ancient oaks and the sprawling lawn. The stone trail that winds through meticulously landscaped gardens. It's the vines that twine around the bars of the wrought-iron fence and the birds that flit from post to post.

It's the fact that my son greeted me at the door the moment I walked in, his arms around my legs and a smile on his face.

"Let's go for a walk!" he declared.

Five minutes later, here we are.

The guards trailing a respectable distance behind us at all times are a bit of a dark cloud on the otherwise beautiful day, but hey, nothing can be completely perfect, right?

"Mama!" Dante has pulled his hands away from his eyes and is blinking at the brightness. "You're supposed to go hide!"

"Fine, but sixty-seven is kind of a big number. What if we do fifteen?"

He shakes his head, his hair flopping over his forehead. "I can count high now. Today, I counted to sixty-seven. Mrs. Steinman said it was a big im-poo-ver-ment." He sounds the word out slowly and shakes his head. "What's that word?"

"Improvement."

He beams. "Yeah, it's a big improvement. So I'll count and you hide, okay?"

Two weeks ago, he couldn't count past fifteen. His teacher kept sending me passive-aggressive emails to work with him at home since "he should be able to count to twenty-five by now."

"Okay," I agree. "I'll hide."

Dante turns back to the tree and starts counting like it's a race to sixty-seven. I stand and listen as he flies right past fifteen like it's nothing. It's incredible. I want to cheer him on, but there isn't time. I jog down the path and duck down behind a bush that is way too small.

I keep expecting him to bring up our conversation at breakfast this morning. The way Mikhail snapped at him. About wanting to go back to his old school and see his old friends. But Dante seems… fine.

He's learning a lot, we have more time together, and he's safe. These are all good things… So why does it still feel wrong?

Dante pops his head over the bush. "Found you!"

"Wow. That was fast." My knees go snap, crackle, and pop as I stand up. Getting older is no joke.

"Because you didn't do a good job hiding. I could see your leg sticking out."

"Look around, kiddo. There aren't very many hiding options out here for me." I ruffle his hair. "I'm bigger than you are."

His forehead squishes for a second while he thinks. Then he grabs my hand and drags me towards the house. "Let's play inside!"

Dante drags me back up the hill, through the back door of the mansion, and down the hall towards the guest suites. "I'll count again, but find somewhere good to hide," he orders, eyes narrowed. "Really good. Not a baby spot. Actually try hard."

I hold up my hands in surrender. "Fine. I'll give it my best shot."

He starts counting and I hurry down the hallway.

The only time I've been in this wing of the house is the day Dante and I moved in. I saw it briefly during the tour, but otherwise, there hasn't been much reason for me to venture over here.

I test a few doorknobs and find them locked. Then, as Dante's counting enters the forties, I find a door that opens. I duck inside and softly pull the door closed behind me.

It's a sitting room with connected bedrooms on either side. Leave it to Mikhail to have a guest suite in his house that is nicer than any hotel I've ever stayed in.

But what really catches my attention are the three bouquets of red roses gathered on the coffee table. There have to be six dozen roses here, at least. But why are they sitting in some unused room in the back of the house?

There's a ribbon wrapped around one of the vases, a small card attached to it with a little heart scrawled in the corner.

Just like the one I saw in Mikhail's office the first day after his takeover of Cerberus Industries.

The day I accused him of having a wife—only for me to become his wife the very next day.

Does he have some girlfriend on the side?

Do I care?

I made it part of our arrangement out of spite, mostly. I didn't think Mikhail would agree to marry me if I told him he had to be celibate.

Maybe that's why he agreed… because he isn't celibate.

All of these thoughts run through my head in a matter of seconds as I turn the card over and see the loopy writing on the other side.

One rose for every hour I thought of you today.

I drop the card like it's poisoned and count the roses in the vase. Twenty-four. One for every hour.

Aside from being nauseatingly corny, my stomach twists for a very different reason. Someone out there with neat penmanship and enough money for hundreds of dollars' worth of roses is thinking about Mikhail. She's leaving him cheesy notes and he's hoarding them away in a back room.

Does he like this?

Is he sweet with her?

Does he think of her, too?

Voices in the hallway just outside the door stop my spiral in its tracks.

"I'm looking for my mama," Dante says. "We're playing hide-and-seek."

"Don't let me get in your way," Stella tells him cheerfully. "I'm just dropping something off."

If the flowers are all the way back here, Mikhail clearly doesn't want me to see them. I'm not sure what he'll do if he finds out I know about his secret admirer. So I'd love for Stella not to see me looming over them like the jealous snoop I am.

Just as the door is opening, I dive into a tall, narrow wardrobe in the corner and close the door.

Stella walks in and I can hear Dante plodding along behind her.

"Mama is hiding really hard," he explains. "She used to hide in easy places when I was a baby, but I'm big enough to find her now."

Things shuffle around on the other side of the door. Blankets moving, Dante's footsteps heavy on the wood floor.

After no more than fifteen seconds of searching, Dante declares, "I don't see her."

Stella chuckles and the door clicks closed.

One bullet dodged.

Now, I just need to get out of this room before I discover Mikhail's secret stash of love letters from this woman wrapped up in her lingerie—oh my God, does that really exist? I don't want to know—and find a new place to hide.

First step: get the fuck out of this wardrobe.

The worry that I'd get caught by Stella overrode my claustrophobia for approximately thirty seconds, but now, my lungs are tight and panic is creeping in.

I reach for where the handle should be, but it's too dark to see anything. My fingers scrape against flat wood again and again.

"There has to be a handle," I whisper out loud, mostly to keep myself calm. "There has to be."

But given the fact that I've clawed my way across every inch of the inside of the wardrobe door without finding one, I'm starting to think there doesn't actually have to be a handle, after all.

I'm also starting to think I'm going to suffocate and die in here.

Whatever reason I had for hiding in here in the first place—I genuinely can't remember through the fog of panic—it isn't a good enough reason to die for. So I pound my fists on the door.

"Help!" It's hard to scream when my lungs are so tight, but I push through the crushing fear and yell as loud as I can. "Help me! Please!"

Dante is right outside. He'll be here to save me in just a second.

Except this house is a literal mansion. He could be ten rooms away by this point—way too far to hear me.

Maybe no one can hear me. No one is coming to save me and I'll be stuck in here. I'll die here, trapped and alone.

Tears pour down my face now. I pound on the door, screaming inconsolably. I have no idea how long it has been. Minutes? Hours?

I'm fighting for my life right now. If I don't get out of here, I'll die.

I've had this nightmare too many times to count over the years. Nightmares of being locked in a trunk, a few meager holes drilled in the lid to provide oxygen.

When I close my eyes, I can still see the men who peered down at me through the holes, laughing as I cried for my father—for anyone.

Suddenly, the wardrobe door opens.

Light blinds me, but I throw myself out of the door, fists swinging.

These assholes kidnapped the wrong girl.

"What the hell?—"

A large hand grabs my fist out of the air and deftly twists me around. Arms curl under my armpits and around my shoulders, pinning my arms back so I can't move.

"Let me go!" I shriek, thrashing and kicking back at the person holding me. "Let me go!"

"Holy fuck, Viv. What is happening?"

Anatoly?

I blink and, all at once, I realize… I'm in Mikhail's mansion.

I'm in a guest room.

I'm not in a warehouse trapped in a trunk. I'm not twelve years old. I'm not dying.

"Calm down." Anatoly loosens his hold on me as I go limp with relief. "It's me. You're okay."

The panicked tears shift to something else. Something soul-deep I've kept buried for a long, long time. I drop to the floor, sobbing while also trying to suck in deep lungfuls of air. I sound like a broken vacuum cleaner, heaving and coughing and weeping.

Anatoly kneels next to me, his hand firm on my back. He doesn't say anything or do anything. He just sits with me until I can breathe again.

When I finally look over at him, his face is white. "What in the fuck was that, Viv?"

"Claustrophobia," I croak.

"No." He shakes his head. "That wasn't a normal fear. That was—I don't know what that was."

And if I have it my way, he never will.

"Where's Dante?"

There's a long pause. I know Anatoly wants to push for answers. I can see in his face that he doesn't believe me, that he's worried about me. Finally, he pushes himself to standing.

"I think he forgot about hide-and-seek when Mikhail got home." He offers me his hand and helps me to my feet. "I was supposed to come find you. Dinner is ready."

I swipe at my sticky cheeks. I am not ready for a formal dinner right now. I need a shower and Xanax and twelve hours of dreamless sleep.

Unfortunately, I'm at the beck and call of Mikhail Novikov.

I hold my arms out to the side. "Do I look okay?"

"No," he drawls, studying me. "You don't."

That's because I'm definitely not.

I grimace. "Gee, thanks, Anatoly. Is that how you catch all the ladies? Insulting them?"

Without waiting for a response, I shove past him for the door, suddenly desperate to get out of this frying pan and into the fire.