Not no one.
No one but the Bratva.
There’s a difference there. A hidden layer. One of those truths men like Maksim keep folded inside other truths, the kind you only notice if you’re paying close attention.
The lock releases with a thick mechanical click.
Then the door swings inward. And everything on the other side gleams.
Steel.
Shelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, matte black and brutal, every inch of them arranged with the kind of order that feels almost religious. Handguns. Rifles. Shotguns. Knives in rows. Ammunition stacked in labeled cases. Cleaning kits. Body armor. Lockboxes. Things I know the names of and things I don’t.
The overhead lights catch on metal and oil and polished wood until the whole room looks cold enough to bite.
I stop in the doorway.
For one second, all I can do is stare.
Not because I didn’t know he had weapons.
Of course I knew.
He’s Maksim. He sleeps with a gun hidden under his pillow.
But this—
This is a collection.
An armory.
A shrine.
I take a slow step inside, coffee still warm in one hand, sandwich in the other, and the door shuts behind us with a heavy click that seems to settle into my spine.
My eyes drag over the walls again.
There are handguns I recognize. A few rifles I’ve seen carried at the compound. Others that look expensive enough to belong in glass cases, not underground behind a reinforced door.
“Wow.”
Maksim moves past me like none of this is strange.
“This is the useful shit,” he says. “The rest is stored elsewhere.”
I look at him sharply. “This is theusefulshit?”
He shrugs.
I hate that I almost laugh.
Instead I set the sandwich and coffee on the nearest worktable because suddenly holding breakfast in a room like this feels ridiculous.
My fingers trail along the edge of the metal table. Cool. Clean.
“Why are you showing me this?”
He opens one of the cabinets and starts checking something inside without looking at me. “Because if you’re mine, you need to know what you have access to.”
