The estate looks like the kind of place people get buried in without anyone ever finding the bodies.
Not literally…probably.
But the thought lands the second the gates open.
Black iron, tall enough to scrape the sky, parting soundlessly after a man in a guard booth checks the SUV and gives a sharp nod. Beyond them, the driveway curves through rows of trees stripped nearly bare, their branches webbing overhead like dead veins. The grounds look damp, the earth dark and soft in patches where the light doesn’t reach. The house—if it can even be called that, waits at the end of the drive like something old and watchful.
Stone.
Columns.
Too many windows, most of them dark. Of course Maksim’s father doesn’t live in a normal fucking house.
The entire flight here, Maksim barely spoke.
At the hotel he spoke even less.
A room key pressed into my hand. A suitcase dropped by the door. His jaw locked so hard I thought he might crack a tooth. I changed in silence because the air around him felt unstable, like one wrong word would make him put his fist through the wall or drag me onto the bed and fuck the temper out of himself with mean hands and a worse mouth.
He didn’t do either.
Just stood by the window, staring out over Saint Petersburg like he hated every light in the city.
Now he’s driving, hand wrapped around the wheel so tight the leather creaks under his palm.
I glance at him from the passenger seat.
His face is blank. That’s what makes it worse. Not anger you can see. Not shouting. Not threats.
This is colder than that.
His mouth is a hard line. His shoulders are rigid under his shirt. There’s no music in the car, no sound except the hum of the engine and the quiet crunch of tires over gravel. Even his breathing feels controlled in a way that doesn’t calm me.
It warns me.
I look back at the house.
“It’s ugly,” I say.
His eyes don’t leave the windshield. “Da.”
I wait, but that’s all I get.
The driveway opens into a wide circular sweep in front of the estate. Stone steps lead up to double doors black as lacquer. Lights glow in sconces on either side, gold against the gray evening, but they don’t make the place look warm.
Instead it looks guarded.
Like a jewel box for a family made of knives. Maksim parks hard. Cuts the engine. For a second neither of us moves. Then he turns to me. The force of his attention feels physical.
“Stay close to me.”
He doesn’t say it in the possessive in the way I’ve gotten used to.
Not the half-sexual growl he uses when he wants to pin me somewhere and make me fight him for sport. This is different.
I hold his stare. “Are you planning to kill someone?”
“Maybe.”
