Page 91 of Cruel Kiss

I look toward the front of the store. I can't see Anton. There's a display of cereal blocking the window.

"He can't see you from there," Lev says, following my eyes. "I would not have come to say hello if he could. I am an old man. I do not want any trouble in a grocery store. I only want to talk to you for a moment, and then I will go, and you will finish your shopping, and you will make your chicken for your children. Happy as could be."

I keep my face calm. "So talk."

"I will make this simple, because I respect you, and because you deserve to hear it plain and not wrapped in pretty paper." He picks up an avocado, rotates it in his old hand, sets it down. "You are a very smart woman with a very powerful—and very useful—tool at your disposal."

"I'm just a housewife," I try to lie. "I don't know?—"

"Calista, please," he tuts. "Don't disrespect me like that."

I gulp and nod.

Satisfied, he continues. "You built the thing that found your husband. It found me, I think, in a manner of speaking. And as far as I have been able to discern, you are the only person who can run it properly. This makes you very valuable. And avaluable thing that stands out in the open, alone—" He spreads his old hands—"it gets taken. Like a ripe avocado. This is simply the way of the world. You know this."

"And you want to be the one who takes it?"

"I want to offer you something better than being taken." He leans on the cane now. "You come and work for me. You run the machine. I am an old man; I do not need forever, I need a few good years for my house to stand strong again. And in exchange, your children never have to be afraid. Not of me. Not of anyone. No more men sneaking up your stairs or knocking at your door with false badges. You have my word, and my word is worth more than these young ones with their guns and their theater. Your Hayden and your Isabella grow up safe. This is my guarantee."

"And my husband?"

A shadow passes across his face.

"Your husband is already finished," he says sympathetically. "I am sorry to say it to you, because I think you have come to care for him, which surprises me, but the heart is a foolish thing, I know this. But it is true. He shut off the money. He is bleeding, and everyone who used to stand near him is walking away, one and two at a time. The feds are at his door. The story is out that he turned rat, and it does not matter that it is not true—the story is enough. He is a dead man walking, Calista. This is not a threat. It is only what I see, and I have seen it many times. I am never wrong about it." He looks at me with those soft grandfather eyes. "The only question left is whether you go down with him, or whether you and your babies come out intact on the other side."

I don't say anything. I can't.

"You do not need to answer today," Lev says. "I would not respect you if you did. You are a careful woman. You collect your—what do you call them? Your receipts. So." He straightens his cardigan. "I'll give you seven days. One week. You think, you look at your children, you look at your soon-to-be-dead husband, and you decide what course you will take. If you say yes, you will know how to reach me. If you say no…" A small, sad shrug. "… then I am sorry for what comes, but it will not be my doing. It will be the way of the world."

He reaches into his cardigan pocket and takes out a folded bill. A hundred. He presses it into my hand, closing my fingers around it with both of his, warm and dry and papery.

"For your groceries," he explains. He picks up his cane. "It was very nice to finally meet you, Calista. I hope very much you make the right choice, because I would hate to see the smart one go to waste."

And then he just saunters away. An old man in a gray cardigan, past the endcaps, past the cereal, out the automatic doors and into the afternoon, gone.

I stand in the produce aisle for a long time with two perfect avocados and a hundred-dollar bill crushed in my fist.

I don't remember paying. I must have. I have bags.

I don't remember Anton driving me home, but here we are, pulling into the garage, and Ronan is already there. His car's in the garage; he beat me home after all. He's standing by the doorinto the house with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled, and the second he sees my face, he knows.

"What happened?"

I get out of the car. My legs work. That's good, at least.

"Calista. What the fuck happened?"

"Lev," I say. "He found me in the grocery store."

I have never in my life seen a person go so still and so violent at the same time. Ronan doesn't move a muscle, but the whole garage fills up with something toxic that makes the air hard to breathe.

"Anton," he hisses, and his voice is the warehouse voice, the Mikhail voice, the voice that made a man wet his pants in a bar. "You weresupposedto bewithher."

"He waited up front," I interrupt. "I told him to. It's a grocery store, Ronan, it was?—"

"It wasnotjust a grocery store." He rounds on Anton, who has gone pale, and I get between them before I even decide to.

"Hey. Look at me.Me." I put a hand flat on his chest. His heart is pounding like a war drum. "I'm fine. He didn't touch me. We talked and he walked out. I'mfine."