He isn’t speaking to me through them—thank God—but I can feel him there anyway. Listening to my every breath. Watching my every move. Waiting for me to slip up.
And the worst part—if I do, I’m not the one who’ll pay for it. My son will.
So I walk faster with my head down, trying to disappear into the sea of bodies moving through the street. I don’t make eye contact with anyone. My job now is to find Maksim, convince him I broke out and somehow, without letting him suspect the truth, convince him to hand over the Bratva to Mikhail.
A shadow cuts across my path.
I look up, blinking through the hazy blur clouding my vision. I brace instinctively, adrenaline flooding my limbs, expecting someone to grab me and drag me screaming into one of the nearby alleyways where the city won’t bother to look.
But then arms are wrapping around me, pulling me into a warm body that smells familiar. A woodsy scent that I forgotI knew by heart. It shatters me, breaks whatever final fight I had left in me.
Maksim.
I crumble.
My body sags against him as if every thread keeping me stitched together has just been unraveled. A sob claws its way up my throat, ripped out of me before I can stop it. My fingers clutch at the lapels of his coat like they’re the only thing tethering me to the earth. My knees buckle, but he doesn’t let me fall.
He catches all of me, wraps me tight in the kind of embrace that feels both healing and hurtful. One hand cups the back of my head, cradling me with a tenderness that burns. The other anchors against the small of my back, fingers splayed wide, holding me as though if he lets go, I’ll vanish like smoke between his fingers.
“Ivy,” he breathes. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
He says it again and again, whispering it into my hair like a vow, like a prayer. I want to believe this is over. That I’m safe now, that I don’t have to fight anymore. But Ican’t.
Soon, darkness pulls me under.
The next time I wake,I’m surrounded by warmth.
Not the biting chill of concrete floors. Not the sterile, metallic smell of antiseptic or the distant hum of fluorescent lights overhead and always on to torture me. Not the chokehold of fear tightening around my ribs with every passingfootstep on the other side of the door like it has for weeks on end.
No, this is something else entirely.
I’m wrapped in cotton sheets. They’re thin and a little scratchy, probably motel-grade, but it’s such a far cry from what I’m used to that I melt into them anyway. A mattress cradles my back, lumpy but heaven compared to the slab I’ve been curled up on. There’s a blanket tugged up around my waist. My arms are unbound. The ache in my joints is a dull background noise.
It’s quiet. Not eerily so, just…still. When I turn my head, I see him.
Maksim sits beside me, perched on the edge of the mattress like he hasn’t moved in hours. One arm is braced against the bed, elbow bent while his hand strokes gently through my hair in a slow, steady rhythm. He’s not even looking at what he’s doing, his body moving on instinct alone.
I blink slowly, my lashes fluttering while his face swims into focus.
His eyes are bloodshot, red-rimmed and tired. The dark circles beneath them look etched there permanently. His jaw is shadowed with stubble, his mouth set in a tight line that trembles at the edges. He looks like hell. Like he hasn’t slept in days.
Maybe not since I disappeared.
“Maksim…”My voice is barely audible, a breath more than a whisper.
He leans in immediately, reacting like the sound of my voice is something holy. His forehead hovers close, nearly touching mine. His scent, warm and familiar andhome, wraps around me like a second blanket. His hand pauses in my hair for only a brief moment before resuming, gentler this time, if that’s even possible.
“You’re safe,” he murmurs. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
My throat closes up again, a knot of emotion swelling too fast, too fierce to swallow down. I reach for him blindly, curling my fingers into the collar of his shirt like it’s the only thing tethering me to this new, fragile reality.
My grip trembles but I pull anyway, urgently pleading for him to get closer. I don’t want distance. Not after what I’ve been through. Not after what I’ve been forced to leave behind. I need to feel something real, something solid.
I needhim.
He doesn’t hesitate, not even for a heartbeat.
Maksim comes to me fully, rising from the edge of the mattress and slipping beneath the blanket and into the small, warm space beside me. The bed shifts with his weight. He wraps his arms around my waist without a word, one strong arm sliding beneath my shoulders, the other curling around my hips as he presses in, molding his body to mine like he’s afraid I’ll disappear again if he doesn’t hold on tight enough.
