Chapter 5 Ivan
IVAN
The vodka should burn. It should scrape going down, a punishment for reaching for the bottle again.
It doesn't.
It slides into me like warm water, a sign that I have passed the point of chemical utility. I used to have rules about this. Rules that kept me sharp when the city tried to dull the edges. Tonight, I stepped over them without breaking stride.
The penthouse is dark. The only light comes from the city below—headlights dragging lines across the grid, neon bleeding into the low clouds. I left the lamps off when we returned from the Estate. Brightness makes the room honest. Brightness reveals what you are pretending not to see.
The dark hides the smell of stale smoke still caught in the wool of my coat. It doesn't hide the metallic taste in my mouth when I think about the alley. The body. The cut. The neat handwriting pinned to flesh like a receipt.
Maksim is standing by the door.
He has been there for an hour.
Not leaning. Not fidgeting. Just existing in the same space, posture rigid, as if the apartment was built around him. I have been careful not to look at him while I drink. Looking at him rearranges the room. It changes the geometry of my chest.
So I stare at the glass in my hand. The clear liquid catches the city light, turning it into something cold and hard.
Boris knows I suspect him.
He didn't say anything in the study. Boris has spent fifty years learning how to let silence do the heavy lifting.
But he gave himself away. A micro-adjustment in his stance when I mentioned Volkov.
A fraction of a second when his blinking stopped.
The way his hands—clasped politely in front of him—didn't look polite at all.
He didn't show fear. Fear is for amateurs. He showed recalibration.
Now I need to know his next move.
He can't come at me openly. Not with Sergei watching. If Boris makes a move that leaves a blood trail back to his office, my father is forced into a binary choice: son or brother. Legacy or history.
Boris won't gamble on that coin toss.
So he will work sideways. Pressure. Confusion. Little nudges meant to make me look unstable. He will try to thin my world until I am the only thing left in it.
Maksim is the easiest lever.
Boris will move faster now. Whatever timeline he was working on accelerated the moment I walked into Sergei's study with Maksim at my back.
It was a mistake to show that card. I made it visible—to guards, to staff, to witnesses—that Maksim stays where I put him.
That I prefer him close. That when Boris tries to order him away, I override the command without hesitation.
Boris will dissect that information looking for the seam.
If you can't attack the man directly, you attack the foundation he stands on.
And the foundation—the only thing I rely on—stands by the door in the dark.
I swallow the rest of the vodka. It goes down too easily.
I tell myself it isn't attachment. That's a word for poets and victims. It's a word Boris would love to label me with. Something to exploit.
It is structure. It is tactical sense. Maksim is consistent. He is where he's supposed to be. He doesn't leak intel. He doesn't posture for applause.
The fact that my lungs loosen when I hear him breathe is irrelevant. The fact that I slept without nightmares because he was on the other side of my door is coincidence.
I set the glass down. It hits the table harder than I intended.
"Maksim."
He doesn't answer. He shifts. A realignment of attention.
"Come here."
His steps are silent on the parquet. He crosses the room, and suddenly he is close enough that I can make out his silhouette against the window. The city light draws a hard line along his shoulder. I can hear the slow rhythm of his breathing.
"The Estate," I say. My tongue feels thick. "It's full of cameras. My father sweeps regularly. But Boris has technicians—men who know where to place things."
Maksim stays still. Listening.
"If he wanted to plant a device on one of us," I continue, "he could have."
No question. Just a statement to keep my mind occupied.
Maksim waits.
"Take off your jacket."
There is a beat where nothing happens. Not refusal. Processing. He takes the instruction and slots it into the hierarchy of commands.
Then his hands move. Buttons click. Fabric shifts. The jacket comes off. He folds it and places it on the chair without looking. He knows where the furniture is.
He removes the holster next. Unfastens the straps. Places the SIG Sauer on the pile. Then the backup piece from his waistband.
When he's done, he stands in front of me in his undershirt, hands relaxed at his sides, eyes forward.
I stare at him.
The shirt is thin, black cotton, meant to disappear under armor. It doesn't disappear now. It clings. It outlines the slope of his traps, the hard transition from chest to stomach, the way his waist narrows. He looks carved rather than built.
I should stop.
If there's a bug, it's in the jacket or the rig. There's no practical reason to push this further.
My mouth opens anyway.
"The shirt."
This time the pause lasts long enough to have a texture. The air between us pulls tight.
Then his hands go to the hem. He lifts it over his head in one fluid motion.
The city light catches his bare skin. It isn't bright enough to show everything, but it shows enough. Muscle laid beneath skin like cable. A body built for utility, not aesthetics.
Scars stripe him in pale lines. One across his ribs. Another near his shoulder. Old marks worn smooth by time, and newer ones raised enough to catch the light.
I didn't know about these.
He has stood in front of me for years with his history pressed under cloth, and I never asked to read it.
"Turn around," I say.
He turns.
More scars. Across the shoulder blade. A long, jagged mark near the spine that makes my stomach churn. Some look like knife wounds. Some look like burns.
"Arms out."
He extends his arms, crucifix style.
I stand up. I set my empty glass down. I close the distance.
My hand is cold from the drink. I feel the contrast the moment my palm touches his back. He is warm. Alive. A heat that radiates through the room, making my fingers want to linger.
I move my hands as if searching. Along the scapula. Down the spine. Across the floating ribs. Checking the waistband where a wire could be taped.
I tell myself that's what I'm doing.
The truth is uglier: I am touching him because I can. Because I gave an order and he obeyed. Because the line between control and desire is razor-thin, and tonight I am walking on it barefoot.
I listen for a reaction. A twitch. A flinch. Any sign that he is human beneath the programming.
Maksim doesn't move. His breathing remains steady.
My fingers find the scar on his side—the thick one, ridged, running low along the ribcage. I trace it. The texture changes under my fingertips. Smooth skin. Scar tissue. Smooth skin.
"This one," I say, my voice dropping. "Is older."
"Yes."
"The Kennel."
"A match," he says. "I was a child."
The word lands like a punch to the throat.
A child.
I picture him smaller. Bare skin in the Russian cold. Blood on the snow. Instructors watching with bored eyes as boys tore each other apart for food. I picture the moment that scar opened, and I hate the years between then and now.
I move around him until I am facing him.
He still has his arms out. His eyes are fixed on a point past my shoulder, looking through the window rather than at the room. Waiting.
"You can lower your arms."
He does.
Now the distance is wrong. Too close. I can see the hollow of his throat, the faint shadow of his collarbone. I can see the swallow working in his neck. I can see the small pulse beating there.
I lift my hand.
I press two fingers to that pulse point.
His skin is hot. Under my fingertips, his blood moves like a secret. I feel each beat—quiet, measured, steady against my hand.
And the moment I touch him there, my own heart stumbles.
Not a surge. Just a misstep. A hard, stupid misfire inside my chest, like the engine missed a firing cycle.
Maksim's eyes shift and meet mine.
The city light makes his irises appear black. His pupils are wide, swallowing the color, giving him a stare that feels stripped raw.
I keep my fingers on his throat.
From here, I could hurt him. He knows it. I know he knows it. The knowledge sits between us, heavy and unspoken.
His pulse maintains the same pace.
"You're calm," I say.
"Yes."
"You're not afraid."
The words slip out before I can think.
His throat moves under my fingers as he speaks. "Should I be?"
That question doesn't sound defiant; it sounds genuinely curious. He is trying to understand the rules of a room that just changed shape.
I stare at him.
The answer isn't about tactics, microphones, or Boris.
It's about what I am doing with my hands.
And what I am doing with my hands has nothing to do with security.
"No," I say, my voice rougher than I intended. "You shouldn't."
Something flickers in his face—a loosening around the eyes. A quiet release, as if he had been holding a breath I couldn't hear.
I step back.
The air hits my fingers, cold now that they aren't on his skin. I curl my hand into a fist to trap the warmth.
"I didn't find anything," I say, forcing the lie into place. "But we need to be careful. If Boris wants to listen, he'll find a way."
Maksim nods once, waiting for the release.
"You may dress."
He pulls on the undershirt, the holster, the backup weapon, the jacket. Layer by layer, he disappears back into the weapon the world expects to see.
It happens too quickly.
The room felt different when he was bare. It felt smaller. The dark had edges. Now the edges recede, and the emptiness returns.
The obedience is complete. That is what I set out to confirm. He followed every instruction without hesitation. No line was drawn. He would have stood there as long as I told him to.
That should calm me.
It doesn't. It leaves me restless, irritated with his control, irritated that I want to break something just to hear a different sound.
I look away before I do something I can't pretend was about security.
"Resume your position," I say. "We have a meeting with the logistics team at 0800. I need to see who is still solid."
Maksim returns to the door.
The distance becomes correct again. The posture. The arrangement. The roles put back in their boxes.
And still, my fingertips burn.
I pour another drink. The bottle clinks against the glass, loud in the silence. I carry it to the window.
Somewhere out there, Boris is moving pieces on the board. Somewhere, my father is deciding how much blood he is willing to spend.
I should be thinking about names, evidence, routes.
Instead, I keep thinking about the scar along Maksim's ribs and how he said I was a child as if it were weather.
I drink.
Behind me, Maksim breathes. Slow. Even. An anchor in a room that feels like it's drifting.
I set the glass down.
"Maksim."
"Yes."
"Tonight," I say, keeping my eyes on the city because I don't trust my face. "You sleep in the room again."
A brief pause. He isn't slow to answer; he is careful with the moment.
"Yes."
I don't turn around.
If I turn around, I will look at him. And if I look at him, I will remember the pulse under my fingers and the way my heart stumbled as if it didn't recognize itself.
So I stare at the city until the lights blur. I let the ache sit there. Physical. Simple. A sensation I can handle.
I refuse to chase it into meaning.