Chapter 2 Maksim
MAKSIM
The click of the deadbolt sits in the base of my skull.
It happened hours ago—long enough for the mechanical snap to stop being a sound and turn into a physical weight. I stopped tracking the minutes when Ivan's breathing changed—from the shallow, controlled rhythm of a man anticipating a threat to the heavy, dragging cadence of actual sleep.
Now the penthouse is just a box of glass and silence. The HVAC system pushes recycled air through the vents, a low hum that vibrates in the floorboards. The wind off Lake Michigan leans against the sixty-story glass, making the tower's steel skeleton groan.
I sit in the wingback chair by the door. The leather is cold against my spine. I've angled the chair to cover both the primary entrance and the panoramic wall of windows—a single field of fire for both threats.
My hands rest on my thighs, my feet flat on the hardwood. This is how I was taught to sit before I could read.
The situation requires it.
What it doesn't require is my attention sliding toward the bedroom doorway—the rectangle of absolute dark where Ivan lies unconscious.
The door is open.
He left it open. I've been dissecting that choice for three hours, stripping it down like a malfunctioning weapon. Ivan Baranov does not leave perimeters unsealed. Is it a test? A lure?
With Ivan, nothing is accidental. Every movement is a transaction.
I shift my weight. The holster digs into my hip bone, a familiar, bruising pressure.
The penthouse transforms at night. During the day, the floor-to-ceiling glass makes the space feel exposed, a display case for the sky.
But now, with the interior lights off and the city burning amber and white beneath us, the windows have become mirrors.
My reflection hangs suspended over the Chicago skyline—a dark shape seated against the grid of the streets.
This is the first time I have been inside the perimeter after the city goes quiet.
Five years of service. The elevator was always the hard line. I would escort him to this floor, sweep the rooms, verify the panic buttons, and descend to my quarters on the forty-fifth floor. Close enough to respond. Far enough to remember I am an employee.
Tonight, he erased the separation with five words.
You don't leave this room.
I force my eyes back to the main door. I should be calculating entry angles. Instead, I am cataloging sensory data I have no use for: the density of the silence, the smell of ozone and expensive sandalwood soap—it stings the back of my throat.
The training facility in Volgograd had a word for boys like me: Sobaki. Dogs.
It wasn't an insult; it was a classification. Soldiers imply rank, decision-making ability, and pride.
We were raised to be triggers.
Command. Movement. Compliance.
They stripped away the friction that slows the chain down—every instinct that said pause, every soft impulse that said consider.
The Kennel. That's what the survivors called it. Officially, it had a long, bureaucratic title, but that didn't capture the smell of bleach and wet wool in the concrete walls or the cold that started in the stone floor and crept up through your boots until your toes went numb.
Instructor Voronin. I can still hear the squeak of his boots on the tile. He taught us that sleep was a commodity, not a right.
Alertness is survival.
I hear his voice now, layering over the hum of the refrigerator—flat, bored.
He would stand over the bunk of a boy who had drifted off during night watch.
The boy would wake to the toe of a boot.
By morning roll call, that bunk would be empty, the mattress stripped.
We didn't ask questions; we learned the lesson the absence was meant to teach.
Attachment makes you brittle.
If you liked another boy, they would pit you against him in the ring, telling you that only one of you would eat that night while they watched to see if you pulled your punches.
If you pulled your punch, you both starved.
So we became smooth—no handles, no edges.
Before I had a name, I was a number stenciled on a grey shirt. I slept in a bunk with that number and answered to it. I understood that the number was all I was allowed until I proved I deserved the dignity of a noun.
The match that gave me my name happened in January. The yard was hard-packed snow, stained pink from previous fights. I fought a boy who was faster than me, a wiry striker with a tell in his left shoulder.
I took the hit to the face to get inside his guard. I broke him down systematically: ribs, knee, throat. I heard the wet snap of cartilage and didn't stop until Voronin dragged me off by the collar.
When they asked what I wanted to be called, I didn't hesitate.
Maksim.
My father's name. A drunk I barely remember. I had no reason to honor him, but the name was mine—the first thing in the world that belonged to me.
I wonder if Ivan knows that. If he read the file and understands I claimed my name in blood because violence was the only currency I was ever given.
Probably. Ivan hoards information like ammunition.
A sound from the bedroom cuts through the memory.
Fabric shifting against fabric. The friction of high-thread-count cotton. My body goes rigid, muscle memory taking over before my brain processes the noise. My hand is already on the grip of the SIG Sauer at my hip.
I hold my breath.
Nothing.
Just a long, heavy exhale. Ivan turning in his sleep.
The adrenaline spikes and then sours. I force my hand away from the gun. I've never been close enough to hear him move like that.
The urge to stand hits me hard—stupid and primal. To cross the distance between this chair and his bed. To verify. To see his face in the dim light and confirm that the movement was comfort, not distress.
I have to anchor myself to the leather chair.
That is not my function.
My function is the perimeter. My function is violence when required, and absolute stillness when it is not.
I am a weapon. Weapons do not soothe. Weapons do not tuck people in. Weapons sit in the dark, cold and heavy, until a hand reaches for them.
It is cleaner this way.
People are messy. People want things they can't explain. They carry pain that doesn't come from a wound. I watched the boys who tried to be human in the facility. They died loud.
Purpose makes you hard.
Ivan looks at me like a weapon. I have felt his gaze travel over me a thousand times. He looks at me the way he looks at the reinforced steel of the door—checking the integrity, ensuring the asset will hold when the pressure comes.
He doesn't ask what I dream about. He asks if I'm ready.
That is the right way to be seen. It is honest.
I have had a job since the day Ivan walked into the recruitment center in Moscow. He looked past the show-offs posturing in the ring. He looked at me, standing against the back wall, silent.
"What are you good at?" he asked.
"Following orders."
I stayed small. I understood something the others didn't. Ivan wasn't looking for a partner. He was looking for an extension of his own will.
Outside, the city churns on. Somewhere in the sprawling grid of lights, Viktor Sorokin is regretting his choices. Somewhere in this building, Boris is drinking vodka and making calls. The text on Ivan's phone burns in my memory.
One of them is family.
I don't know what that means for the organization. I don't need to know.
My world is narrower than politics. My world is the twenty feet of hardwood floor between me and that bed.
Another sound from the bedroom.
Different this time. Not the slide of linen.
A catch of breath. Sharp. Involuntary.
I freeze. The pattern of breathing changes instantly. The deep, heavy rhythm of sleep splinters into something jagged and thin.
I know that pattern.
I heard it in the bunks in Volgograd—the sound of a brain replaying a horror loop while the body is paralyzed by chemicals.
My hand tightens around the chair's arm until the leather groans.
Hold position.
This is not a physical threat. I cannot shoot a dream. If I go to him now, I am crossing the only line that matters, stepping out of my role as the sentry and into a space that has never belonged to me.
But the sound doesn't stop.
It gets worse. A low, strangled noise in the back of his throat. A whimper he tries to suppress even while unconscious.
He sounds young.
The realization hits me like a fist. Ivan Baranov—the Pakhan's heir, the man who stared down Viktor Sorokin without blinking—sounds like a terrified child.
I count the breaths. One. Two. Three.
The whimpering turns into a desperate, wet gasp.
I am moving before I decide to.
My feet make no noise on the floor. I roll my weight from heel to toe, avoiding the spots in the parquet that creak. I approach the bedroom doorway with the lethal caution of a clearing operation.
Except the enemy isn't in the room. The enemy is in his head.
And I don't know how to kill that.
The bedroom is a cavern. Blackout curtains seal the windows, thick velvet swallowing the city light. The air is cooler here.
I see him.
The shape on the king-sized bed thrashes. The sheets are tangled around his legs. Ivan is fighting something I can't see. His head snaps to the side, pressing into the pillow. His hands are fists, knuckles glowing white in the faint light from the hallway.
"No," he breathes, a cracked, broken sound. "Not the glass."
I stop at the foot of the bed.
This is wrong. I see the machinery beneath the skin. I should turn around. I should walk back to the chair and pretend I'm deaf.
But I can't make my legs move backward.
The nightmare peaks. Ivan's back arches off the mattress, a spasm of pure panic. A shout tears from his throat—a raw, formless sound of terror.
"Ivan."
I say it sharply, a command tone—the voice Voronin used to snap us out of shock.
He gasps, a violent intake of air, his body collapsing back onto the mattress.
Then he freezes.
The transition is terrifyingly fast. One second he is a thrashing, panicked victim. The next, the predator is online.
He sits up. The movement is fluid, violent, and precise. His hand blurs toward the nightstand.
"Clear," I say.
I keep my hands visible, away from my hips. I do not flinch as the barrel of his SIG Sauer levels at my chest.
"It's Maksim."
He stops.
For ten seconds, the room is dead silent. He breathes hard, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on his forehead. The gun doesn't waver. He looks at me, but I don't know what he sees—me or the thing from his dream.
Then, slowly, recognition returns.
He lowers the gun, placing it back on the nightstand with a heavy clack. He pushes the damp hair from his forehead, his hand shaking with a tremor he can't quite suppress.
He begins to rebuild the wall. I watch him do it. He straightens his spine. He fixes the sheet. He composes his face into the mask of the boss, but the cracks are still visible.
"You left your post," he says. His voice is gravelly and ruined by sleep, but his tone is steady.
"I heard a disturbance," I reply. "I came to assess."
"Assess." He spits the word.
"The perimeter is secure," I tell him. "You were... compromised."
He looks at me. Really looks at me. In the dark, stripped of the suit and tie, the hierarchy feels thin.
"I don't have nightmares," he lies.
"Understood."
"Go back to the chair."
"Yes."
I turn. I don't ask if he's okay. I don't offer him water. Offering comfort would acknowledge weakness, and Ivan would hate me for that.
"Maksim."
I stop in the doorway. I don't look back.
"Lock the bedroom door."
The order hits me in the chest. He wants the barrier back. He needs physical separation. He needs to know that if he breaks again, I won't be there to witness it.
"Yes, Sir."
I pull the heavy door shut and hear the latch click into place. A small sound, but it feels final.
I walk back to the wingback chair. I check the window. I check the main lock. I sit.
My pulse hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Seeing him like that—undone, raw, begging—felt more dangerous than the knife Viktor brought to the table.
Not the glass.
The car crash. The mother. The blood on the Kennedy Expressway. Everyone knows the story, but no one knows the damage.
I stare at the deadbolt of the front door.
I don't know how to fix a nightmare. I don't know how to heal a wound that's been festering for twenty years.
But I know how to break bones. I know how to make men disappear.
A cold, absolute clarity settles over me. The confusion burns off like fog.
I am not just guarding a door anymore.
I am guarding the man inside who is afraid of the glass.
And if anyone—Rosetti, Sorokin, even his own uncle—tries to touch him, I will burn this entire city to ash to ensure they don't reach that bedroom.
I lean my head back against the leather.
I don't close my eyes.