It’s all the warning I need to dive down to the floor, flattening my body at Anton’s feet. Gunfire erupts from Maksim’s Glock. Bullets fly over me in a deafening storm. A sickening squelch gurgles up from Anton’s throat, his gun falling to the floor close by.
My head snaps toward him, catching the sight of his body tipping back and collapsing onto the ground like dead weight. His chest heaves, blood pooling out of his mouth and running down his cheeks. He chokes on it, suffocating from the holes punched through his chest.
For some fucked up reason, I can’t tear my eyes away from the sight. I have to see it through. I have to watch the man who tried to use me as a weapon finally take his final breath. For my own sanity, I need to see him die.
Anton’s body gives one last shuddering jerk before going still.
Maksim drops to his knees beside me, hands already lifting me up from the floor and into his arms.. Up close, I can smell the gun residue clinging to him, the faint trace of his natural musk beneath it. His hands are steady, but his breathing comes out in small gasps, as if holding back the warring emotions colliding inside his chest.
“You’re safe now,” he rasps.
I can barely breathe, but through the pounding in my own ear, I hear something much more calming—his heartbeat.
It races in time with mine, but it’s there, thrumming.
His hands cup my face, tilting it toward him and away from the gory sight. His thumb brushes over my split lip, his eyes dark with something I can’t name. Maksim’s head turns slightly,shoulders coiling, but his hands stay on me, grounding me in the middle of a warzone.
“I’ve got you.”
23
MAKSIM
Two weeks later, the ride to Sergei’s is silent except for the low, steady hum of the car’s engine.
The sound vibrates through the leather seat beneath me, filling the absence of conversation. The city outside blurs past the tinted glass, gray buildings stacked like tired sentries, streetlamps flickering against the creeping dusk.
My eyes are fixed ahead through the windshield, one hand loose on the steering wheel and the other gripping the gearshift like a lifeline. Every so often, I glance over to my right, watching my passenger out of the corner of my eye.
Ivy has barely spoken since I pulled her out of Anton’s hands. The silence that hangs between us isn’t the same as before. No barbed words masking as flirtations, no defiance sparking in her gaze from denying me. It’s worse. It’s just… nothing.
The bruises mottling her face have turned the color of storm clouds, sickly purples and yellows blooming along her jaw, her cheekbone, the fragile skin beneath her eye. They’ve faded, but not enough.
Seeing them form, deepen, shift hues over the past two weeks has lit a fresh fire in my chest every time I looked at her.
I should have killed Anton slower. I should have made him choke on his own blood before I ever put a bullet through his skull. Instead, I ended it too quickly. Rage makes men sloppy, and for once, I let myself be sloppy.
My grip on the gearshift tightens until the leather creaks.
Ivy stares straight ahead, hands folded loosely in her lap, posture stiff. Her silence is a wound I can’t stitch, one I don’t even know how to mend in the first place.
I’ve tried. Simple questions, attempts at conversation, reassurances that she won’t ever have to face those same horrors ever again. But nothing works. She keeps herself locked tight, a vault slammed shut and the key tossed, long forgotten.
I’m desperate. Not because I need her to talk to me, but because I can’t stand the emptiness in her eyes that accompanies her silence.
The guilt gnaws at me. Choking me.
I should’ve done more.
I should’ve never put her in this position in the first place.
I should’ve returned her back to Sergei’s and left him to deal with her.
Because of my selfishness, I’ve broken her completely.
Sergei’s estate looms ahead. We get past the checkpoints, past the iron gates that guard his empire, and up to the front of his house where I park the car in the circular drive. I kill the engine, the hum dying into a silence that feels thicker than the air itself.Ivy’s fingers twitch in her lap, the first movement she’s made in miles.
Two guards step down from the front entrance, moving quickly over to my side. One of them gestures for me to lower the window. I press the button, letting the early morning air cut into the warm interior inside the car.
