I’m not even sure if it’s fear or fury. Maybe both. “If Sergei really did want me dead, why risk Yulia? She was with me that day. She could’ve died.”
He leans back slightly. “I don’t know. While I don’t want to accuse him of anything… there are reasons a father would want to kill his own child. Especially if he has a sizeable life insurance and an insurmountable pile of debt looming.”
“Is he broke?”
“As far as I know, no. But then again, I don’t comb through his financial records when we meet.”
Before I can push further, his phone buzzes on the table. He glances at the screen, his expression tightening just slightly, shifting instantly from casual conversation to damage control. The mask that had been slipping very slowly throughout our conversations is now back in full force.
Without another word, he picks it up, answers in rapid Russian, and listens for all of ten seconds before ending the call.
“Lunch is over. We need to go,” he says, rising to his feet.
I blink. “Are you taking me back to the estate?”
“No.” His coat is already in his hand, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You’re coming with me.”
“Coming with youwhere?”
“To a job, Ivy. Up, let’s go. I don’t have time to waste.”
I should argue. Hell, Iwantto argue, but he’s already throwing cash down on the table and moving toward the front door. Something in the way he says it, like the negotiation is done whether I like it or not, makes me fall into step behind him.
The drive is short, maybe twenty minutes, and when we pull up outside a sleek, glass-fronted building in the center of the city, I realize this is one of his “business fronts” judging by the men in suits waiting outside it.
Inside, it’s all polished chrome and muted lighting, employees moving with the kind of deference that says they know exactly who he is and what he’s capable of and are more than happy to stay the hell out of his way.
Maksim doesn’t just walk through the space. Heownsit. The air seems to bend around him. People step aside instinctively, lowering their eyes, offering quiet nods like he’s royalty.
I hate the way it makes my pulse quicken. Not out of fear but out of somethingelse.
He moves with the same controlled precision as the first time I saw him at the Sorokin estate. Every step is planned, every glance calculated. When he speaks to the manager at the front, his tone is quiet and razor-sharp, leaving no room for negotiations.
Watching him in this mode—hisPakhanmode—is terrifying. And maybe it’s also a little… something else.
A little… dare I say, hot as hell.
Maksim Antonov, in full force like this, is a dangerous thing.
16
MAKSIM
By the time I’ve handled business and we’re back in the car two and a half hours later, Ivy still refuses to look at me.
In fact, she hasn’t looked at me once since I was forced to get my hands dirty. Since I tied one of my contact’s employees up in a foldable chair and beat the truth out of him with my bare fists.
She saw it all.
The way I moved without hesitation. The way I issued commands like they were gospel. The way I stood there with blood on my knuckles as the man in front of me sobbed for mercy, my chest rising slow and steady, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just taken place.
And now she won’t look at me.
The whole drive back to the estate is silent, pointedly so. She’s angled toward the window, silently watching the city pass by with her hands laced in her lap.
I tell myself I should’ve known better. Taking her with me on a few stops had been… indulgent. I don’t take civilians out on business, not unless I’m making an example out of them. It always ends up getting far messier than I want it to, and that never makes for a great collaboration.
If I’m honest with myself, I took her with me because I didn’t want the day to end so soon after we’d finally found a rhythm, some fragile, fleeting middle ground where she wasn’t trying to claw my eyes out with every other sentence and had actually begun to let me see what had been hiding underneath all that self-preservation.
