And again.
Until blood stains the stone and the bridge of my hand is raw, split open, flesh peeled back and red. It hurts, but Ineedit to hurt. I need something to scream louder than the echo of Ivy’s voice in my head. Louder than the sound of her shutting me out. Louder than the finality of“go back to Russia”stabs me with.
I sit there for hours, slumped on the floor, knuckles seeping crimson, my vision vacant. The room is dark now, only faint moonlight spilling through the windows overlooking the back gardens.
Eventually, I move.
I peel myself up off the ground one limb at a time, shaking, teeth clenched against the fresh waves of pain as I brace against the wall and stand. I look down at my bloodied hand, at the smeared stain on the floor, and I breathe.
Enough.
I can’t stay down. I may be shattered, humiliated, rejected, and stripped to nothing, but I am stillMaksim Antonov.I didn’t claw my way out of a blood-soaked civil war to fall apart now.
I lick my wounds, I suck up the last bitter dregs of my pride, and then I go looking for Lev.
I find him exactly where I expect him to be—alone in my study, one hand nursing a glass of vodka, the other scrolling absently through his tablet. He doesn’t look up when I enter, doesn’t flinch when I shut the door behind me. He simply lifts the glass to his lips and swallows slowly.
“What did you decide?”
I cross the room, drag a clean rag from the bar cart, and begin wrapping my hand in silence. My blood stains the linen red as I tie it off tight. When I’m done, I pour myself a glass and collapse into the chair across from him.
I down half of the liquor before saying, “I need a plan.”
He sets the tablet down immediately. His brows lift in a quiet show of surprise.
“I’m going to get my family back. One way or another,” I say.
He nods, the faintest trace of a smile curling at the edge of his mouth. “Good. Then let’s get to work.”
24
IVY
Lettie’s words refuse to leave me.
Wouldn’t it be better to be under Maksim’s protection when his enemies come sniffing around again, than to be here alone without it?
I tell myself to forget them, to let it go like everything else I’ve been trying to shove into the back of my mind lately. But they echo again the moment the house gets quiet, looping through my thoughts with ruthless persistence like a song I can’t stop humming. A question I can’t stop turning over in my head a hundred different ways.
Protection.
Such an innocent word when not attached to something as terribly unpredictable as a Russian Bratva.
For so long I mourned a version of my life that could never be, the one where Leo had a father, the one where I had a partner who loved me. I mourned it like a widow even though I was never really a wife.
Then Maksim appeared again, alive when I had buried him in my mind and heart years ago, and suddenly, all those dead fantasies clawed their way back to life inside my heart.
I thought I would feel joy. Relief.Hope.
Instead, all I felt was terror.
Because what once lived only in daydreams is now a possibility, and possibilities carry the weight of decision. They demand for choices to be made.
I am scared shitless.
If I go back to Maksim, back to the Bratva, I don’t know if we will survive. Even if he swears he’d keep us safe, even if he swears he’d keep Leo separate from that world, I know better. APakhan’sson is never truly separate. He can’t be as the next heir in line.
Would Maksim evenwanthim to be his heir one day? It seems likely. He’s the kind of man who sees lineage, legacy, and inheritance not as abstract concepts but as obligations.
