The screen lights up.
An alley. A parked car. Grainy black-and-white footage, but the resolution is high enough. The glow of a streetlight catches skin and motion.
My face.
Maksim's.
Me leaning over the console, my hand on his neck, kissing him as if I were starving.
There's no ambiguity, no plausible denial. Thirty-seven seconds of truth, captured by a camera I had seen and dismissed in my exhaustion. The video loops. The kiss happens again. Thedesperation is evident in how I grip his jacket and how he pulls me closer.
It looks reckless. It looks undeniable.
When it ends, Sergei taps the screen. The image disappears.
Silence floods back in, heavier than before.
"Explain," my father says.
One word. Soft. Patient.
Then he adds the knife:
"Explain why my heir is servicing his bodyguard in a public alley."
Servicing.
The word is chosen with surgical precision. Not kissing. Not wanting. Not even fucking.Servicing.As if I'm an employee and Maksim is a client, as if our actions can be reduced to a transaction stained with shame.
Language is one of my father's favorite weapons. It costs him nothing, yet it makes others bleed.
I prepared for this on the drive. As the mist hung over the estate gates and Maksim sat beside me in silence that felt like a vow, I constructed the argument that might keep him alive. Not the truth—my father doesn't always reward truth—but the argument.
"It is a control mechanism."
The words come out steady and clean, the tone I've used in boardrooms and execution basements alike. The voice my father taught me to use when emotion threatens to surface.
Maksim goes very still beside me. I don't look at him; if I do, I will crack.
"The bodyguard's psychological profile indicated high dependency needs," I continue, following the script I wrote. "I identified an opportunity to deepen loyalty through... alternative reinforcement."
Sergei's face remains unreadable. That doesn't mean he believes me; it means he's letting me talk. He wants to see how far I will go to sanitize this.
"The conditioning was effective," I assert. "His performance was exemplary. During the restaurant attack—eight trained assailants—he eliminated them. In the cabin assault, he took a bullet meant for me. His dedication is absolute."
I am speaking my father's language: efficiency, reliability, outcomes.
The same language that harmed Maksim in the first place.
It tastes like ash.
"The physical component reinforces the dependency," I add. "It is not sentiment. It is strategy."
I can feel the lie trembling in my chest, desperate to break free.
Because it is no longer strategy. It hasn't been since the night in the gym when he pinned me, and I realized I wanted him to destroy me.
But strategy is the mask that keeps Maksim alive in this room. If I have to wear it until my face bleeds, I will.
