Page 65 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

“I touch many things,” I say, setting apples into the basket.

His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second. “I noticed.”

He pays in cash while the guard shifts at the door. For ten minutes, we buy food in a small grocery, and I hate how close it feels to normal.

In the afternoon, we sit at the kitchen table with tea, bread, and broth Maksim keeps pushing toward me. He sits across from me with his sleeves rolled up, and I keep both hands around the cup.

“You think Sergei wanted to trade me?” I ask.

“He wanted to display you first,” Maksim says. “Alive, scared, and visible. That would prove he could still move the structure he built around your name.”

“And Karpov?”

“Karpov wanted my men to know he could reach me through you.”

I look toward the window, where the guard passes the fence with his phone at his ear. “He was right.”

Maksim’s cup stops halfway to his mouth. “No.”

“He got me out.”

“He lost men and exposed himself.”

“He still got me out.”

Maksim sets the cup down. “He opened a wound. That isn’t winning.”

I press my thumb into the cup handle. “You really believe this house buys us time?”

“It changes the pattern. The estate was expected. This place makes men work harder for less certainty.”

“I don’t trust certainty.”

“Good,” he says, then stands and checks the window lock.

Two days later, Maksim says we are going back to the estate.

I am halfway down the safehouse stairs when he tells me, and my hand locks around the rail hard enough to hurt. The estate comes back at once. The corridor. The alarm. A hand over my mouth. Men dragging me through a service passage while the house broke behind me. I remember the smell of the cloth, the shove into the vehicle, and the words they used because dead women are worth less than movable ones.

Maksim steps down until he is beside me. “Elena.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re standing here trying to turn panic into manners.”

Something in me snaps. “Don’t manage me.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you what I see,” he says, his eyes shifting from my fingers to my face. He then offers his hand, a choice I can refuse.

I take it.

His grip closes around mine, warm and firm. “You walk in with me. No one moves behind you without my order. If you stop, we stop.”

I nod.

“What about Mrs. Wentworth?” I ask after we reach the bottom.

“She got out through the service corridor when the alarm tripped. Lidiya pulled her into the laundry room and locked both of them inside the supply cage until my men cleared the wing.” He gives a short laugh. “Lidiya told me which way you went.”