Unlike my new wife, who looks at me like I’m something she’d scrape off her shoe.
After spending the next two hours reviewing financial projections, I hear footsteps in the hallway. Heavy. Deliberate. Maxim doesn’t knock, just pushes the door open and walks in.
“Pavel said you wanted to see me.” He stays near the door, arms crossed.
“Sit down.”
He doesn’t move. “Is this about Anna?”
“It’s about whatever concerns you have that made you call Pavel instead of me directly.”
That gets him to move. He crosses the room and drops into the chair across from my desk with the kind of forced casualness that tells me he’s more bothered than he wants to admit.
“I want to know how this changes things,” he says.
“Be specific.”
“You got married. To a woman with children. Children who are going to be living in this house, part of this family. I want to know if that affects my position.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
I close the file in front of me and give him my full attention. “You think two four-year-olds threaten your inheritance?”
“I think people make decisions based on new families all the time. You have a wife now. You might have more children with her. Children born into the marriage instead of—” He stops.
“Instead of what?”
His jaw tightens. “Instead of outside it.”
There it is. The insecurity he’s carried since he was old enough to understand what his mother’s death and my lack of a legal marriage meant for his standing.
“Maxim. Listen to me carefully. You are my son. You are my heir. You have been training to take over my operations since you were twenty years old. You know this business. You know my contacts. You’ve proven yourself capable in every situation I’ve put you in. Anna’s children don’t change that. Any future children I might have don’t change that. Do you understand?”
He watches me for a long moment. “And if she pushes for her children to have a role? If she wants them involved in the business?”
“They’re four years old. By the time they’re old enough to be involved in anything, you’ll already be running most of my operations. This conversation is about ghosts that don’t exist yet.”
“But they might exist.”
“Then we’ll deal with them when they do. Not before.”
Maxim leans back in his chair. Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “Alright.”
“Good. Now I need you to handle Dmitri for me. He’s been pushing for a meeting about the new shipping routes through the Baltic. He wants better terms on the transport fees. I want you to make it clear that our terms are final. He either accepts them or we find another partner.”
“And if he threatens to walk?”
“Let him. We have three other operators who’d take the contract within a week. Dmitri knows that. He’s posturing.”
Maxim nods, the conversation shifting to familiar territory. We spend the next twenty minutes discussing logistics, contract terms, backup plans. This is what we do well together. Business. Strategy. Clear objectives with measurable outcomes.
When he stands to leave, I stop him. “Dinner tonight. Seven o’clock. Be here.”
He turns. “Why?”
“Because Anna and her children will be here. Because this is a family dinner. Because I’m asking you to be here.”
