5
MAKSIM
Amusement curls through me.
Sergei had mentioned in passing that he hired an American to tutor Yulia in English, but I hadn’t given it much thought. I assumed it would be some older woman—middle-aged, practical, no-nonsense.
Not at all the little bombshell that had been standing in front of us moments ago, practically wringing her fingers together while she stumbled over her words.
She was not what I expected at all.
And when her eyes slowly shifted back to me, and I’d watched them widen as if she were scaredandentranced, it made my lips twitch.
Not out of arrogance but from deep amusement.
I’m not a stranger to female attention. Clubs, bars, restaurants. Hell, sometimes even business meetings. Women have stared, flirted, propositioned. It’s something I’ve learned to tune out along time ago. When you carry power, and when you look the part, people want a piece of you.
It’s almost predictable.
But that one? That little American with her deep brown eyes and plush looking lips had stirred something in me for some strange, inexplicable reason.
Light footsteps echo from down the hall. Yulia appears around the corner like a burst of sunlight, her hair bouncing with each step and her eyes lighting up the moment she spots me.
“Uncle Maksim!” she squeals, launching herself at me full-force.
I squat and lift her off her feet easily. Beside me, Lev and Andrey shift out of the way to make room. Her arms wind tightly around my neck and her giggle bursts out of her chest when I spin her once for good measure before cradling her against my hip.
She’s grown now, but she still clings to me like she’s three years old and nothing’s changed.
“Look at you,malyshka. Almost as tall as me now. What am I going to do when you are too big for me to carry, hmm?”
Her grin is sunshine, gap-toothed, and utterly unbothered by the heaviness that always seems to cling to these halls. It’s impossible not to soften with her in my arms. It always has been.
“You’ll still carry me,” she says simply, like it’s a fact of life.
I chuckle, the sound rumbling in my chest. “Ah, will I now? Even when you're taller than your papa?”
She giggles again and lifts one hand to point back down the hallway, toward the kitchen where Ivy had disappeared justmoments before. “My English teacher, Miss Ivy, have you two met yet?”
There’s a sly note in her voice that I don’t miss.
“No, not formally.” My eyes flick down the hall before coming back to her. “But I saw her earlier. Has she been teaching you well?”
Yulia beams. “Yes! She lets me read to her in English. I get some words wrong, but she helps me fix them and then we read again.Andshe draws silly little pictures to help me remember what the words mean.”
I raise a brow. “Silly pictures?”
“She drew a cat with a crown yesterday to help me remember the wordregal.She’s really nice. I like her.”
“Yulia,” Sergei cuts in sharply. “Go follow Miss Bennett to the dining room,” he says. “I’ll have someone bring you both lunch.”
She pauses mid-giggle, her arms still loosely wrapped around my neck, her expression faltering at the tone. Even at her age, she knows better than to ignore that voice. There’s a pout, soft and reluctant, that tugs at her lips, but she doesn’t argue.
She never does, not with him.
She slides down from my arms slowly, her little boots hitting the floor with a softtap. I pat her head, giving her a small smile when she turns that frown up toward me. A soft sigh escapes her as she turns around and runs back down the hallway, disappearing around the corner to the kitchen.
Sergei exhales sharply and turns, resuming our slow path through the estate. The heavy silence returns the same as before,a presence of its own at this point. The weight of our earlier conversation settles over us again.
