Chapter 7 Ivan #2
Maksim's blade opens a throat, and the candlelight catches the spray for a moment, a glittering arc of red before the body hits the floor. Maksim is already shifting, pivoting on his heel toward the next threat.
I should be crawling away. I should be finding cover, an exit, anything.
Instead, I'm crouched under the table, staring, unable to tear my eyes away from him.
He takes a hit to the ribs—a heavy, dull impact from a rifle butt that would drop most men. His body absorbs it and turns with the momentum. He doesn't stumble. He drives the knife into the gap under the attacker's arm where the armor doesn't cover. He twists once and pulls free.
Men are down all over the room. The attackers regroup near the kitchen entrance. One raises an automatic weapon toward the shadow moving between overturned tables.
Maksim doesn't slow.
He snatches a heavy oak chair and hurls it—not to harm, but to break the rhythm, to make the shooter flinch. The muzzle shifts just enough. The burst of fire goes wide, chewing up the ceiling plaster.
Maksim is already there.
The knife finds the man high in the chest, fast and brutal. The automatic weapon clatters to the floor. Maksim catches it on the bounce, swings it toward the remaining threats, and fires.
The gunfire is deafening. The room flashes in stuttering bursts. Bodies jerk and collapse.
Then the sound stops so abruptly that my ears ring as if someone struck a church bell inside my skull.
Smoke hangs low, smelling of sulfur and copper.
Candles flicker, indifferent to the carnage.
Maksim stands in the center of the wreckage.
Blood coats his forearms and speckles his face. Dark smears stain his tactical clothes in patches that won't come out. The knife remains in his hand, red dripping onto the white linen tablecloth like a signature.
He turns toward me.
His eyes lock on mine through the smoke and candlelight. His breathing quickens, chest heaving but controlled. His expression is stripped down to one thing: focus. He's still scanning. Still ready.
"Clear," he says, flat and professional.
I crawl out from under the table.
My legs feel wrong when I stand. Not from fear—something else. Adrenaline sharpens everything: the stink of gunpowder, the wet sound of someone groaning near the entrance, the candle wax melting and running down the walls, and the sight of Maksim with death still on his hands.
Lorenzo Rosetti is alive.
He crouches behind an overturned table near the kitchen. His suit is ruined—dust, debris, and dark stains that may not be his. His guards aren't moving; both lie near the far wall, cut down in the first volley.
"Get up," I tell him. "We're not finished."
Lorenzo rises slowly. His face is gray. Whatever composure he brought into the room has been shattered by recent events. His gaze jumps from the bodies to Maksim, then down to the blood pooling between the tables.
"Your uncle," Lorenzo says, his voice unsteady, "did not mention men were coming tonight."
"Boris didn't send them." I step toward Lorenzo, over a body and shattered glass, not looking down.
"Boris wanted this meeting. He wanted to know what I'd offer you.
He wanted to know what I know." I stop close enough to see the pulse working frantically in Lorenzo's throat.
"These men came from someone else. Someone who wanted you dead, too.
Someone who wanted to wipe the board clean. "
Lorenzo's face shifts as he processes this. Fear gives way to something harder—something that resembles respect he doesn't want to show.
"You have more enemies than your uncle," he says.
"I have the enemies my uncle created," I reply. "Our business is done. Tell your people the Baranov organization isn't available for games. Tell them trying to play both sides ends the way this ended."
I gesture toward the back door.
Lorenzo doesn't argue. He steps around the bodies meant to ensure neither of us walked out and leaves without looking back.
Maksim is at my side before I can turn to find him.
His hand closes around my arm, firm, guiding me toward the service entrance at the back. He moves me like an asset that needs to be secured. The car will be there. The route will be clear. He plans as if the world is always ready to explode.
We reach the car. The driver opens the rear door without a word, his expression blank in that trained way, even with Maksim covered in blood beside him. Maksim pushes me into the back seat and climbs in after me, pulling the door shut.
The lock engages. The vehicle surges forward.
I should be thinking about the attack, about what it means, about how someone beyond Boris just tried to erase both sides of this conversation. I should be calling my father. I should be contacting the cleanup crew.
Instead, I look at Maksim.
Blood is drying on his hands, with flecks on his high cheekbone. I notice the way his chest rises and falls as his breathing finally starts to slow.
"You're hurt," I say.
My hand moves to his ribs without permission, finding the spot where he took the blow from the rifle butt.
Maksim catches my wrist.
His grip is careful, almost gentle, which doesn't match what I just witnessed him do. It doesn't align with the violence clinging to his skin.
"Bruised," he says. "Not broken."
"Let me see."
He releases me.
I shove his shirt up. The bruise is already blooming dark across his lower ribs, a purple welt against his pale skin. It will spread by morning, but there's no break, no puncture, no blood.
My hand lingers on his skin.
It feels hot. Alive. The muscle under my palm is hard and tense.
It should move away. There's no tactical reason to keep touching him now. The assessment is done.
I don't withdraw.
Maksim's breathing shifts—small, but I feel it beneath my palm. A hitch in the rhythm.
"You killed..." My voice comes out rough. I don't bother finishing the count. The number doesn't matter; the fact does. "I watched you."
"I know," he replies.
The car cuts through the city, streetlights slipping across the leather interior in quick, rhythmic bands. Maksim's blood darkens as it dries, turning from red to a dull, rusty brown. I drag my fingertip lightly along one vein in his wrist, following it down to his bruised knuckles.
His body reacts.
A shiver. Not from cold. Not from pain.
"I can't let you go," I say.
The words come out raw, ugly in their honesty. Not a strategy. Not a decision. A truth that slips free before I can suppress it. It hangs in the air between us, heavier than the smoke in the restaurant.
Maksim looks at me.
In the dim light, his eyes are black holes. His expression isn't one of obedience or submission. It pulls tight in the pit of my stomach. It is the look of a man who knows exactly what he is—and exactly who holds the leash.
"Then don't," he says.
I stare at him.
Blood on his face. A bruise spreading under my hand. His breathing steadies, his heat radiating into my palm.
I pull my hand away as if I've burned myself and force my body back into my seat. I fix my eyes on the partition separating us from the driver.
Neither of us speaks.
The car continues moving, tires humming on the wet asphalt as the city slides past behind the tinted glass.
I turn my head anyway.
I look at him.
And he looks back—still and fixed, as if he's waiting for the next order.
Or for me to say the thing I already said and pretend I didn't mean it.