Maksim stares at the names, something shifting in his expression. "Yes. That's—yes."
We spend hours refining the scholarship criteria, making sure each one reflects something about the victim it honors.
By 5:00 PM, we have a comprehensive memorial structure built into the foundation framework. Each scholarship personalized, each victim honored not just with a name but with a mission that reflects what they needed and didn't receive.
"This is how we honor them," Maksim says quietly, reading through the final document. "By protecting the living."
By Wednesday evening at 7:00 PM, foundation plans are complete, and we shift to intimacy.
The weight of seven women's deaths and disappearances presses on us both.
Dinner is quiet. Maksim tells me stories about Elena—not sad ones, but memories of her dancing, her laugh, her dreams for the foundation she never got to build.
"She would have loved this," he says, gesturing to our scholarship plans spread across the table. "Every detail. The personalized approach."
"Then we're doing it right."
"Tell me about your dancing," he asks. "Before Anton. When it was pure."
I share memories I haven't accessed in years. Early training at the Vaganova Academy, the joy of movement. My first performance as a soloist..
We're giving each other our full pasts. Not just the trauma, but the beauty that came before. The people we were when the world was different.
Wednesday night at 10:00 PM, we make love in our bedroom.
Passionate. Claiming. Maksim pins me beneath him, his hands everywhere—gripping my throat carefully, marking my neck and thighs.
"Mine," he growls, driving into me harder. "Not his. Never his. Mine."
The possessive claiming is about more than jealousy. It's about affirming I belong to myself and choosing him. That Anton's selection of me five years ago means nothing against my agency now.
He marks me deliberately—bites on my neck that will bruise, fingerprints on my thighs that will purple. Visual evidence of ownership that I welcome, that I want.
When we finish, both breathless and sweaty, I trace the scratches I left on his back.
His mind is elsewhere.
"What are you thinking?" I ask.
"Promise me something." His voice is serious, heavy. "If it goes wrong Sunday, if there's a choice between catching him and staying safe—you choose safe. You run."
"Only if you promise the same."
Silence.
He doesn't promise. Neither do I.
We both know we'll do whatever's necessary in the moment, regardless of promises made in the safety of his bedroom.
In four days, we make sure I stay a survivor.
And we make sure no one ever adds an eighth name to Anton’s list.
Chapter twelve
Public Claim
Maksim
