Page 60 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

Maksim cooks dinner himself. Buckwheat, mushrooms, onions, and chicken thighs browned in a cast-iron pan, with sour cream and dill on the side. He works without asking me to praise it.

We eat by the fireplace, plates balanced on our knees.

“You cook?” I ask.

He cuts into his chicken. “You’re eating it.”

“It’s delicious,” I say between mouthfuls.

The first day holds. On the second, I start counting sounds. By the third, I know the house too well.

The faces change routinely. One man carries groceries in and leaves through the side gate. Another walks the fence with a phone to his ear. A different car sits two houses down, engine off, windows reflecting the street.

No one stands at the door. No one looks like a guard. When I test one with a question near the kitchen entrance, he gives me a polite nod and keeps moving.

Maksim moves through it with a schedule he never writes down. He checks the doors in the morning, the windows after lunch, and the locks before dark.

Irina comes in the mornings, and the house shifts for a while because she fills the kitchen with movement and talk, and I find myself standing there just to listen. She wipes the counters, sets water to boil, and tells me things, and I listen to her anyway because it breaks the stretch of hours that sit too still.

She tells me about winters that froze pipes solid and men who broke ice with hammers before breakfast, and then she moves on to women she knows now, women with businesses, office keys, and no patience for permission. But her stories run out and circle back on themselves, and the kitchen goes back to being just a room with a table and a stove.

Irina finishes her work and leaves before noon, and the door closes behind her without a sound.

Every evening, Maksim changes the dressing on my wrist, checks the bruising at my ribs, and asks if I’ve taken the meds. I start resenting the pills less than the fact that he remembers.

He moves through the house with his phone in one hand and a gun close enough to reach. He speaks to the men outside through half-open doors, and his voice never changes. Orders come clean and clipped, whether he’s telling Dima over the phone to lock down a road, sending a guard to check the shed, or telling me to sit before my ribs make the choice for me.

“Abramov takes internal security until I say otherwise,” he tells Dima on the phone. “Anyone who has a problem with that can bring it to me.”

Then, through the kitchen door, he tells one of the men, “Front lane twice before dark. No headlights after the turn.”

He turns to me and points at the chair. “Sit.”

I look at him over the rim of my cup. “Same voice for everyone?”

“You’re the only one who argues with it.”

He cooks every meal because he doesn’t trust anyone else near my food. Eggs and black bread in the morning. Soup at lunch. Meat, potatoes, buckwheat, mushrooms at night. He sets the plate in front of me, stays near the table, and waits until I pick up the fork.

By the weekend, I’m worn down in places I can’t cover. The house has five doors, eight windows, two guards outside, and no way out that doesn’t pass through Maksim. My phone is gone. His side room stays locked. His laptop shuts whenever I get close.

At dinner, it finally catches.

He sets down chicken cutlets, fried potatoes, and cucumbers with dill, then waits beside my chair.

I don’t touch the fork.

“Elena,” he says.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You said that at lunch.”

“And it stayed true.”

His hand settles on the back of the chair across from me. “Eat.”

I look up at him. “Give orders to the men outside.”