Chapter 6 Maksim
MAKSIM
I try to picture my own quarters, but it comes back wrong, like a room from someone else's life.
White walls. Gray industrial carpet. A bed so tightly made that the sheets look painted on. I smoothed the corners every morning, a reflex drilled into my hands since I was six. If I stopped, I felt it in my skin—an itch beneath the surface that wouldn't clear until the fabric was flat.
The closet held identical sets of clothing, hung like tools on a rack. The suit for formal occasions hung at the far end, shrouded in plastic, untouched until the schedule demanded it.
There was nothing personal. No photographs. No objects with stories. Nothing to prove I existed outside the hours I was clocked in.
I haven't gone back in three days.
The penthouse has swallowed my life. I sleep in the wingback chair by Ivan's bedroom door, or on the floor when my lower back starts to seize and I need a hard surface. I shower in the master bathroom while Ivan eats breakfast, keeping the door cracked so I can track his reflection in the mirror.
I use the soap on the marble ledge because he told me to.
And because stepping out to grab my own supplies means leaving him unguarded for four minutes.
Clothes arrived on the second day. Folded. Pressed. Delivered without a word by a member of the household staff.
She held the bundle out like it was contaminated. Her eyes moved over me—unshaven, shirt wrinkled—then flicked toward the open bedroom doorway. It wasn't disgust; it was curiosity. She had heard stories about bodyguards, but none included a man living outside the heir's bedroom like a sentry dog.
I took the clothes. I didn't explain. There wasn't a version of the truth she would understand.
I smell like him now.
The soap is cedar with a chemical undercurrent—expensive, sharp. It clings to my skin after the shower and settles at the base of my throat. When I stand close to Ivan, the scents blur. I can't tell where he ends and I begin.
It should make me step back.
Boundaries exist for a reason. Distance keeps the sight picture clean. Distance stops the work from bleeding into something messy. Distance keeps you alive.
Those lines blurred the night Ivan put his fingers on my throat and counted my pulse.
I can still feel the cold of his touch, the way my skin tightened, the pressure of his thumb against my carotid, the way his fingertips traced the scar on my ribs like he was reading Braille.
I asked him a question I shouldn't have asked.
Should I be afraid?
And he answered.
No.
I'm not afraid of him. That's the problem.
I should have felt wary when he ordered me to strip in the dark. I should have felt anger. I should have felt the instinct to create space the moment his hand came near my throat.
Instead, my body went still—not the stillness of a target, but the stillness of waiting.
And then something worse: I wanted him to keep touching me.
That realization sits in my gut like swallowed lead, making me stand a little straighter when I'm alone.
Ivan is at his desk across the room. He has been there since the light outside shifted from morning gray to the hard, bright white of noon.
Files arrived earlier by courier—security reports, financial records, the paper trail of an empire running on debt and violence.
He is hunting for fractures, places where Boris has been pressing his thumb.
Ivan hasn't spoken to me for four hours.
That's standard; he treats words like ammunition—he doesn't waste them. But I can see the tension in his trapezius muscles. It shows in the way his jaw locks when he reads a line that confirms a suspicion. He looks like a wire pulled to the breaking point.
The paranoia is getting worse.
Yesterday, he refused to let me leave the penthouse to meet with the tactical team, forcing me to conduct the briefing over video.
He stood behind my chair, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him.
When the team lead hesitated before answering a question about the perimeter, Ivan's breath hitched—a sharp intake of air, as if the hesitation were a physical threat.
The day before that, he canceled three meetings because the routes felt "wrong."
He isn't sleeping.
I hear him in the bedroom—sheets twisting, low sounds of distress. I've found him at the window at 3:00 AM, staring down at the grid as if he's trying to memorize the pattern of the traffic lights.
I can stop a bullet. I can break a wrist.
I can't stop whatever is eating at his mind.
He looks up from his desk.
His eyes lock onto me instantly. I've been by the door, holding the same stance for hours. Field of view: 180 degrees. Elevator. Windows.
He watches me for a beat too long.
"Too far," he says.
His voice is rough, scraped.
"Sir?"
"You're too far away." He gestures to the floor beside his chair. "Here."
My stomach drops.
The space he is pointing to isn't a tactical position. I can't see the elevator or the windows. I have zero situational awareness from that angle.
It's the floor.
Close enough that he could reach down and touch me without leaning, close enough that I would be looking at his knees.
I don't hesitate.
I cross the room, stop beside his chair, and lower myself down.
Knees on thick wool carpet, weight settled back on my heels. The softness is offensive; my body is calibrated for concrete.
The posture pulls a memory out of me.
I was fourteen the last time I knelt like this.
Voronin caught me with a book—a contraband paperback about a prison break. He didn't take it away immediately; instead, he made me hold it above my head while I knelt on the training yard floor. The concrete bit into my kneecaps as he paced in front of me, lecturing the squad about distraction.
He spoke until my knees went from pain to fire to numbness. I remember swallowing the bile in my throat, terrified that if I moved, he would see my weakness.
I learned to keep my expression blank while my body screamed.
After that, I stopped reading. It wasn't a conscious choice; the desire just... evaporated.
I never wanted anything outside of function.
Until now.
Ivan doesn't acknowledge me as I settle on the floor. He turns a page.
From this angle, the soundscape changes. I hear the creak of the leather chair, the slide of paper, the scratch of his pen. His breathing is steady but heavy—the sound of a man forcing air into lungs that don't want to expand.
My knees start to ache. I let them. I stay still.
I can't see the elevator. I can't see the door.
I can only see Ivan—his wrist as he writes, the tendons flexing, the white cuff of his shirt against the dark wood of the desk.
His hand moves.
I don't anticipate it.
One moment he is writing; the next, his left palm rests on the top of my head.
The touch is light—barely a weight.
My whole body goes rigid.
It isn't the pressure; it's the contact. It's the fact that he can do it and that he chose to. The warmth of his hand sinks into my scalp, sending a shockwave down my spine that I hate because it feels good.
His thumb moves in a slow arc through my hair.
I stare at the wall, forcing my breathing to stay regulated: inhale, hold, exhale.
In the Kennel, touch meant correction. A hand on the neck meant submit. A fist to the ribs meant stand up.
I learned to take touch without flinching.
This isn't correction.
It makes my throat open up, my jaw unclamp, my chest loosen—a physical release of tension I didn't know I was carrying.
Ivan doesn't look down. He keeps reading, his hand resting on my head like I am an anchor point.
He turns another page.
"The logistics coordinator," he says quietly. "The one the feds took. He talked."
My mind snaps back to the job. "What did he give up?"
"He named more captains. Payments from the Italians."
More traitors. More men who smiled at Ivan while holding a knife behind their backs.
"Do you want me to contact Alexei?"
"Done," Ivan replies. His fingers tighten slightly in my hair—not painful, but possessive. "He's bringing them in tonight."
Ivan exhales—a sharp, frustrated sound.
"Boris is moving faster than I projected. He's trying to strip my support network before I can walk into Sergei's office and force a confrontation."
"You have evidence," I say.
"I have suspicion," Ivan corrects. "Sergei doesn't act on blood without certainty."
His thumb resumes its pattern, back and forth, making the room feel small—intimate.
I think of the Estate. The hallway. Boris sneering dog. Ivan overriding him. Sergei watching it all unfold with that X-ray stare.
"Your father let me in," I say. "He didn't object when you told Boris no."
Ivan's hand stills.
Not pulling away—just pausing.
"What are you saying?"
"The Pakhan watches," I say carefully. "He waits."
I swallow. This is dangerous ground. "Maybe what you need isn't a file proving what Boris did. Maybe you need Boris to show his intent where your father can't ignore it."
Ivan doesn't answer. The silence stretches. I hear the faint hum of the hard drive on the desk.
"You think my father is letting him run—giving him rope," Ivan says.
"I think Sergei didn't survive this long by being blind," I reply. "Boris tried to push you in that hallway. He attempted to dictate your security. You refused. Sergei saw it."
I lift my gaze just enough to see Ivan's face.
He is looking down at
me—not like he looks at a weapon, but as if he is measuring the weight of what I just said.
"You've been thinking about this," he observes.
"Yes."
"You don't usually offer strategic analysis."
His words are neutral, but his eyes are not.
My mouth moves before I can stop it.
"You don't usually tell me to sit on the floor."
The sentence lands hard—too sharp, insubordinate. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't have said three days ago. Before the soap. Before the scars.
Ivan's expression doesn't change.
His hand slides from the top of my head to the back of my neck.
His fingers curl around the muscle there, firm—like a collar.
My breath catches in my throat.
"No," Ivan says quietly. "I don't."
He holds me there.
My eyes stay forward. If I look up while his hand is on my neck, I don't trust what I will see or what I will do.
Then he releases me and turns back to the file as if he didn't just pull a wire tight inside my chest.
"Stay," he says. "I have work. Then we eat."
I settle back onto my heels.
The carpet presses into my knees. The ache builds, steady and familiar. I don't shift. I let the discomfort sit there because it grounds me. It's easier to focus on physical pain than on the ghost sensation of his hand on my neck.
I'm not guarding him—not really.
I'm here—beside him, below him—so he can reach for me when his mind starts to slip.
He doesn't say that. He doesn't have to.
I feel it in the way his hand finds me without looking, in the way his thumb moves.
And I am letting it happen.
The Kennel taught me that connection is a weakness. It taught me that boys who cling to each other get broken.
But this doesn't feel like weakness.
It feels like standing next to a fire after freezing to death and realizing, too late, that I am burning.
I stay on the floor.
The light outside shifts, turning the penthouse from gold to blue. My knees burn. My thighs tighten. I hold still. Every time Ivan turns a page, every time his pen scratches the paper, it reminds me he is still focused, still functional.
When he finally closes the last file, the sound resonates in the quiet room.
He looks down at me.
His eyes hold my face.
"Tomorrow," he says, "I'm going to need you closer than this."
I don't ask what he means.
The question rises hot in my throat, but I swallow it.
Ivan stands and walks toward the bedroom.
I rise. My joints pop. I follow him.
The distance between us disappears.