Page 87 of Sweet Ruin

“And you get this.” He picks up the four stapled pages off my counter, the ones with my blood dried brown on the corner, and he holds them up between two fingers. “Come Easter Sunday, if you’ve kept your end, I’ll burn it. The note, the pledge, the guaranty with your husband’s handwriting on it—all of it, in front of you. It’ll be yours. And nobody will ever come for this building again.”

I look at the note in his hand. Then at the planner in mine. Lose everything in sixteen days, but keep my dignity? Or submit to Kane Makov and retain the bakery that’s been my life’s dream?

I want to say yes right now, before he changes his mind. My mouth is already open to do it.

That’s why I don’t.

“I need a day,” I say.

Kane sets the pages down on the counter. “Alright. Take it.”

“That’s it? No ‘you have until midnight,’ no—I don’t know—ominous countdown?”

“One day,” he agrees. “Call the same number when you’ve decided. If the answer is no, then I’ll see you again on January 15th, under less accommodating terms.”

He pulls his gloves out of his pocket and tugs them back on. At the door, he stops.

“A man will be here tomorrow morning about the lock,” he says. “Let him in. He’s not coming to bother you.”

Then he goes. The bell over my broken door rattles in the cold. The two coats on the sidewalk peel off after him, until the entire black-clad trio disappears into the winter gloom.

I stand there in the dark with the pendant bulb over my head and the bloodstained note lying on the counter where he left it. I don’t have any idea what just happened.

Then I open the planner and find Easter.

I look at the X on it for a long, long time.

Three months spending holidays with a mob boss. That’s not so bad, right?

17

DELILAH

The nice lady on Facebook Marketplace who sold me this cot is a filthy liar. It is not comfortable enough to sleep on for the rest of my life. Not by a long shot.

So it goes without saying that I don’t sleep much on Wednesday night.

I guess I should go a little bit easier on that lady, because I have had some good naps here. But there’s a big, big difference between a twenty-minute I’m so tired I could fall asleep anywhere snooze with your mouth wide open and an eight-hour session of tossing and turning and replaying every mistake you’ve ever made.

“Ever saying a single word to Kane Makov” is currently at the top of the list.

I’m not even sure why I asked for a day, because one measly little twenty-four-hour window is not nearly enough to wrap my head around the enormity of his offer.

A day to decide the fate of my bakery.

A day to decide the fate of my life, really.

Because one thing is clear: Stepping into Kane’s world is a one-way ticket. There’s no world in which I return to my little old life, intact and unchanged.

Even the way he grabbed my hands over the counter has left an impression on me. That touch, those eyes… He carves off a tiny piece of me every time and keep it for himself.

A day to decide if I can spend three months with that?

Yeah, right.

It’s not even close to enough.

At quarter past four, I quit pretending I’m ever going to sleep and get up.