When he protects her…

“Hey. You!”

My stomach drops before I even face the customer at the diner. He holds the mug away from his body like it’s contaminated.

“What is this?” His lip curls. “I told you a splash of cream. A splash. Do you not understand what that means?”

The air thins around me. “I’m so sorry. I can remake it. It’s not a problem.”

“Oh, it is a problem.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Are you stupid? How hard is it to pour a splash? You people can’t even do the simplest thing right.”

The words slide right through my skin like they’ve been here before. Table four instantly dissolves, and I’m back in Mom’s kitchen with the hiss of her cigarette, her voice tearing through the house.

Look at this mess! Are you blind? How many times do I have to tell you? Dumb girl. Always messing up and ruining everything.

My throat goes dry. “I’ll get you a new one.”

I reach for the mug, but he jerks it out of my hands so fast the coffee sloshes over the rim and splatters across the table. A few drops hit my wrist, hot enough to make me flinch.

“Look what you did.” He jiggles the mug toward me like I’m the one who spilled it. “Christ, how incompetent can you be?”

My chest constricts. The room becomes smaller. The scrape of forks, the clatter of plates, Mandy talking somewhere near the counter…it all folds into a single buzzing blur.

I force my voice steady. “Let me clean that and get you a fresh cup.”

“You actually think your small brain can get it right this time?” He shoves the mug aside.

That old echo rises again.

Idiot. Why can’t you do one thing right? What’s wrong with you?

My hands quiver.

Hold it together. People don’t need to see you falling apart. The last thing you need is to lose this job.

But Mom’s cunning voice doesn’t go away. Stupid. Clumsy. A waste of breath.

The bell over the diner door chimes behind me, but my attention stays on the customer. On the volume of his voice, on the way every second he keeps going raises the chances of my boss hearing or someone pulling out a phone and recording this.

That’s the part that I dread the most. The idea that it travels farther than this diner and lands in the hands of people who can’t ever know where I am.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters loud enough for the whole place to hear. “They hire anyone these days.”

My stomach twists, but I force myself to wipe the spill. “It won’t happen again.”

He snorts like he already knows it will.

My cheeks warm and tears burn in my eyes as I pray he stops drawing more attention to us.

As I reach for the mug, it shakes and a few more drops spill.

He laughs. “God, you really are stu—”

The rest of the sentence dies in his mouth, like he forgot how to speak all of a sudden. His eyes lift over my shoulder and all the color drains from his face, while his jaw hangs slack and he barely blinks.

For a second, I think he might be having a stroke, and I wonder if his life is even worth saving.

Then a voice behind me, heavy with a Russian accent, burns into the space between us. “Choose your next words carefully, Benjamin, or you may find yourself unable to speak at all.”

Kirill.