We both watch it shatter, my gasp loud in the heavy quiet of the office. He looks down at his hand like it’s foreign to him, horror showing on his face. I rush to him and take his shaking hand in both of mine.
“It’s okay,” I soothe, unsure what torrent of emotions races through his mind, only wanting to ease the thoughts which I can almostseespiral him some place darker. He looks haunted at the broken glass on the floor. “We’ll clean it up.”
“I’m like him.”
“You’re not,” I say, firm.
“I am, he raised me to be just like him, he made me do awful things, Marianna, I am no better than him.”
“You are better than him. Better than me, even. He never would have aligned himself with my family, he probably would’ve tried to kill Vanessa ten times over by now.”
“I’ve killed plenty.” He sounds desperate, whether for me to understand or for this to not be true, I don’t know, but I hold his hand tighter.
“So have I.Just now! I didn’t think twice about it. We’ve all had to do horrible things to survive, to protect ourselves and the people we care about. It’s not like we do this for fun.”
“What is the reason for all of this? This killing, people selling other people in our own city, my wife having to fight and to murder to protect this bloody fucking empire?”
“It’s not the empire, it’syou,” I say without forethought, confessing too much. “It’s you I want to protect, Maxim. Like you want to protect me. That’s why we do this, because we don’t have another choice. If we don’t, that’s it. The end of everything.”
His face, normally so stern and solid, has twisted in anguish as he studies mine.
“I hate myself for who he made me. Hate that this was the inheritance I had to take,” Maxim whispers, and my heart aches for him. I pull the hand I’ve been holding to the side of my face, and he holds on like I hoped he would, sliding his fingers through my hair.
“I don’t hate you,” I say. “Your father would’ve killed me if I’d spoken to him like I’ve spoken to you. And still you treat me like I’m something precious.”
The very thought makes the cocktail of treacherous emotions on my husband’s face even stormier. “You are.”
“He’s dead, Maxim. Stop letting him hurt you.”
Maxim takes a shaky breath and lets out a huge exhale before pressing his forehead against mine. I close my eyes and hold onto his wrist as his thumb swipes against my cheek in a way that’s become too familiar, too comforting.
“You’regood, Maxim. You’re not all rotten.”
After another moment of our heads pressed together, he exhales again.
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like you like me,” he echoes. I can’t help my lips curving into a relieved smile.
“Only sometimes. Only a little.”
“Oh, Mary.” Maxim shakes his head against mine. Somehow, after calling me Marianna for so long, the nickname feels foreign and all the more intimate coming from his lips. “Don’t you ever tire of the work it takes to pretend you care so little?”
“I don’t care much,” I say, but even now I’m thinking of how I can help him feel better. How I can convince him that his monstrous parts don’t make up a treacherous whole. That he’s fine exactly how he is, wonderful, even.
I can feel his breath on my lips, so it’s not a jump for me to close the distance and press mine to his. This helped me when I was spiraling in the kitchen, kissing him in the all-consuming way that we tend to. I’m hopeful the same can be true for him now.
He lets out a sound almost like a whine, and deepens the kiss, using his other arm to tangle me closer to him, lifting me a few inches from the ground as he does. The front of his shirt twists in my grip while he turns, depositing me on the desk, where I part my legs to let him closer.
“Darling.” He exhales, and kisses me deeper still, his tongue intense in the fight against my own.
“I know,” I say, my voice coming out way too high and needy. I don’t know, actually, only that it’s always this intense with him, always consuming and enlivening—the kind of thing I used to fruitlessly seek in his club. I wanted to escape my incessant running thoughts and feel alive in my body, but it was hollow then.
With him, it’s different. Like every time we are together like this we are discovering something the rest of the world hasn’t yet.
So I do the thing we do best. I slide my hands between us and fiddle with his belt and button until his pants are open.
“Stop that,” he growls, and grips my wrists.
I try to free my hands, but he holds tighter, pulling my hands behind my back.
