The park was a lie.
It was a carefully constructed diorama of normalcy that Eva's soul rejected. Happy mothers, polite pigeons, a man eating a hot dog without spilling a drop of mustard. A city pretending it had no dirt. Eva kept one hand on the stroller's handle, the other in her jacket pocket, her thumb brushing the familiar, comforting groove of her knife's handle.
Sophia gurgled under the stroller's canopy, clutching her stupid stuffed fox. For a moment, the world softened at the edges.
Then she saw him.
Faded blue delivery uniform. Wrong logo. Hands empty. His gaze wasn't scanning for an address; it was locked on the stroller, calculating, hungry.
Eva's body knew before her mind did. Her muscles coiled, her breath shallowed—the old, familiar cocktail of adrenaline and ice.
"She's ready now," he murmured, his voice a greasy smear in the clean air. His hand shot out, grabbing the stroller's frame.
Time didn't slow down; it crystallized.
The brake was on. His pull jerked the stroller, startling a cry from Sophia. The sound was a bullet in Eva's heart.
Her training took over. No thought, just motion. Wrist twist. A wet, sickening pop. Her boot drove into his chest, not to disable, but to destroy. The frame rattled but held.
"Wrong baby," she spat, the words cold and final.
He went down hard, gasping, still reaching.
The world snapped back into chaotic motion. Sophia's cries sharpened. Before Eva could scoop her out, a black sedan braked hard at the curb.
Alessandro.
He didn't run; he moved, crossing the grass in strides that ate the distance, his focus a physical force. His eyes went to Sophia first—a frantic, sweeping check—then to the man writhing on the ground. The relief in his gaze was there and gone in a nanosecond, replaced by a cold, terrifying fury.
"Tell me he's still breathing because you wanted him to," he said, his voice low enough to vibrate through her.
"His usefulness expired," Eva snapped back, her own heart hammering against her ribs. She was already folding the stroller, moving fast, creating a barrier with her body between Sophia and the world. Her palm brushed against something taped to the stroller's frame—small, sticky.
She peeled it free without looking, shoving it into her pocket as she secured Sophia's carrier.
Sirens wailed, growing closer. Two cruisers skidded to a stop. The nearest officer took one look at the man on the ground and froze. "Shit. That's Lemoine."
He turned to Eva, his professional mask slipping back into place. "Ma'am, I'll need to see ID. And proof you're the child's guardian."
"My papers are at home," Eva said, her voice dangerously even. She kept her body angled, subtly placing herself between the cop and Alessandro. An old Bratva instinct: present a united front to the outside world, even if you're bleeding out from each other inside. "You're welcome to follow us. But you are not taking her anywhere without me."
"That's not how this works, ma'am—"
"That's exactly how this works," Alessandro's voice cut through, smooth as polished glass and just as cold. He stepped beside her, not touching, but close. A wall of Italian silk and implied threat. "Unless you want a custody suit, a harassment complaint, and three very expensive lawyers parked outside your precinct by sundown. The evening news loves a good 'cops harass kidnapping victim' story."
The cop hesitated, his eyes flicking from Alessandro's expensive watch to Eva's dead-eyed stare. He handed back her ID.
As they turned to leave, Eva's gaze caught a man across the street. Gray hoodie, leaning against a lamppost, phone up. Not filming the cops. Filming them. He didn't look away when she met his eyes.
In the car, the silence was thick, choked with things unsaid. Sophia's soft, sleepy breaths were the only sound. Alessandro checked the mirror, his jaw tight.
"He's still there."
"Good," Eva said, her fist clenched around the note in her pocket. "That means we're easy to find."
At the mansion, Eva carried Sophia upstairs, the adrenaline crash making her limbs feel heavy. She settled her in the crib, humming a shaky lullaby until her breathing evened out. The fox slipped from Sophia's tiny hand, hitting the floor with a soft thud.
Eva bent to pick it up—and felt something. Lumpy. Wrong. Not stuffing.
Her blood went cold. With a quick, precise slice of her knife, the seam gave way.
Hanna's handwriting. Sharp. Familiar. A final message from the grave.
If you're reading this, it means Luca and I are dead. Trust no one. Not even Alessandro.
The words hit like a blade between the ribs. No warning. No explanation.
Not even Alessandro.
The floor seemed to tilt. The note wasn't just a warning; it was an echo. It was the ghost of her own naïveté, laughing at her from the grave.
A memory, sharp and unbidden, flashed behind her eyes: Alessandro's mouth on her throat in that dim hotel room, his whisper warm against her skin. "Tell me, Eva. You can trust me. Always." And she had, God help her, she had. She'd whispered secrets into the dark, thinking she was weaving a future, when all she was doing was giving him the rope to hang her family.
The front door clicked shut downstairs. Alessandro's footsteps echoed in the marble foyer, confident, assured. The sound made her nauseous.
That was his rhythm. The calm stride of a man who had already calculated every variable and won. She could still see him standing in that courtroom weeks after their night together, a barely-there smirk on his face as her uncle's case collapsed. He hadn't even looked at her. He'd just collected his win and walked away, leaving her to face Viktor's cold, disappointed fury.
She had bled for that mistake. Not just emotionally. There had been a price to pay for her indiscretion, a price extracted in blood and pain by her own family. Alessandro had gotten power; she had gotten scars.
And now Hanna was telling her he was dangerous? Now?
Her hand trembled as she folded the note, tucking it away, sealing this new betrayal next to the old, festering one. She looked down at Sophia, innocent and trusting in her sleep.
Downstairs, she could hear Alessandro pouring a drink. The quiet clink of crystal was a sound of normalcy, of domesticity. It was a lie. Everything with him was a beautiful, perfectly tailored lie.
The war outside had just become a war within. The man downstairs was both her only ally and the living embodiment of every reason she had to stay alone. And for the first time, with Hanna's warning burning a hole in her pocket, Eva Ivanova felt utterly, terrifyingly alone.