Chapter 9 Ivan
IVAN
I wake early.
Usually, the ritual is straightforward: eyes open, breath steady, brain already categorizing the day into priorities and threats.
But this morning, there's grit in the gears.
Last night lingers under my skin, stubborn as smoke.
When I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, my ribs don't hurt, my hands aren't bloody—nothing about my body announces what happened—but the memory is there: candlelight, shouts, the sudden cut of the electricity, Maksim's shoulder driving me into the floorboards.
I move through the penthouse without turning on the lights.
The kitchen is a pale rectangle of city glow and chrome. Maksim is there. The espresso machine is already warm. A small porcelain cup waits on the counter, sugar already dissolved.
He doesn't look at me when I enter.
That's new.
Not the silence—we've lived in silence for days—but the way his gaze refuses to settle. It tracks the perimeter, the elevator, the window, skipping over me like I'm a blind spot.
I take the cup and drink.
It's perfect. He does not miss, not in any way that matters.
"I have work," I say. My voice sounds wrong in the quiet room—too formal, as if I'm speaking to an employee instead of the man who stood in the steam with me six hours ago.
"I'll be outside the door."
He says it before I finish speaking. No edge, no softness—just a statement of fact.
He came out of the bathroom last night scrubbed clean, dressed in the cotton clothes I handed him, and his eyes held something I couldn't place. This morning, that something feels simpler: a door closing.
I don't ask him why he pulled back.
I don't let myself chase it into questions. Questions turn into arguments, and arguments turn into weaknesses. Whatever happened in that shower happened. He made his choice. I'll live with it.
I take the cup into my office and shut the door.
The room is smaller than my father's at the estate, and I prefer it. Two walls of shelves hold books I've actually read. A desk sits beneath a window that looks down on the grid. A safe in the corner is heavy, dumb, and dependable.
I need something on Boris that my father cannot dismiss.
The conversation with Lorenzo Rosetti confirmed what I already suspected, but confirmation isn't proof. Sergei will not move against his own brother just because an Italian says something in a restaurant and looks sincere while saying it. Sergei doesn't gamble when blood is involved.
So I turn to paper.
The safe opens under my hands with the soft mechanical clicks of familiar steps. Inside are the files I don't keep on a server: old work, real work—names, routes, favors owed. The pieces people believe they can hide because they assume no one will ever bother to read the footnotes.
I carry a stack to my desk and start digging.
Boris has been in this world long enough to recognize how men look for betrayal. He buries his tracks in ordinary things: a payment disguised as routine maintenance, a meeting that appears to be charity, a favor masked as politeness.
Time moves without announcing itself. A paper cut stings my thumb. My espresso cools untouched. The desk fills with neat piles: dead ends, half-threads, small notes that might matter later.
I uncover plenty about Boris's history. He built relationships. He laid groundwork. He ensured the Baranov name opened doors in Washington and New York.
Nothing proves he's trying to cut my throat.
I return to the safe for another stack.
My hand catches a folder I had forgotten was even there. It slides out, spilling papers onto the floor of the safe. My stomach tightens before my brain catches up.
I know that folder.
I labeled it five years ago.
ORLOV.
Maksim.
I gather the papers and bring them to the desk.
I remember the selection room with unsettling clarity.
My father insisted I choose from the program he funded—the one designed to produce men for close protection.
Men trained to obey quickly and act faster.
The candidates stood in a line under harsh fluorescent lights, clean uniforms, and clean faces trying not to show hunger.
Most of them talked too much. They sold themselves with lists of skills and tales of violence. They smiled when they shouldn't. They attempted to charm me.
Maksim stood at the back and watched.
When I asked him what he was good at, he didn't perform.
"Following orders."
Two words. Flat. No plea for approval.
I chose him, then I did what I always do: I verified until there was nothing left to doubt.
The facility sent his records: medical notes, training evaluations, psychological profiles—the kind of documents designed to reassure men like my father that the weapon they were buying wouldn't misfire.
I read all of it.
Then I wrote my own notes.
My handwriting stares up at me from the top page—sharp, controlled, the voice I use when I want a result and don't care about the collateral.
He needs structure. He clings to it.
Praise softens him. Soft is dangerous.
Withhold approval and he sharpens. Keep him hungry and he stays close.
Make proximity the reward.
I turn the pages, and the words keep coming—cold instructions to myself, written as if I were programming a machine.
Do not reward too often. Do not feed pride.
Give responsibility in small increments. Let him feel the weight of it.
He will read proximity as approval. Use it.
I read it all without flinching, and then my fingers tighten on the paper, hard enough to wrinkle the corner.
Not because I regret it.
But because the language is too clean for what it truly was.
Some men would call these notes cruelty. They'd reach for moral language and wrap themselves in it. They'd label it exploitation, pretending they live in a world where those you rely on aren't first broken by someone else.
They wouldn't understand what the facility did to Maksim before I ever met him.
They didn't create a man; they shaped a tool. They stripped away the parts that pull a boy off-task—desire, curiosity, self-preservation—and handed him to us, calling it success. A tool that doesn't question.
A weapon without direction doesn't become noble; it becomes loose. It breaks in the wrong place.
I gave him direction.
I gave him a center.
I close the folder and set it on the desk. The sound is small, but it lands heavily in the quiet office.
This is old work. Finished work.
The fact that I now want him in ways that don't belong on paper doesn't change what I built. The foundation holds. It has endured through blood, knives, and bodies on white linen.
My secure phone vibrates on the desk.
My father's identifier.
I straighten before answering; some habits don't die.
"Father."
"The restaurant," Sergei says, his voice unhurried. "I've received conflicting accounts. I want yours."
"It was organized," I say. "Fast. Professional. The Rosettis didn't look like they expected it."
"A third party."
"Or Boris wiping fingerprints," I say carefully. "Lorenzo admitted Boris has been negotiating with them, offering access and territory for pressure on my operations."
Silence on the other end—not dramatic, just my father thinking. I can hear the faint scratch of a pen.
"You have proof."
"I have his words," I say. "I'm working on documentation."
"Words from an Italian who benefits from telling you what you want to hear." Skepticism isn't anger in my father; it's reflex. "That isn't proof, Ivan."
"I know."
"Then find it," he says. "I won't move against my brother on a story."
A pause.
"The bodyguard," Sergei says. The shift in topic hits me harder than it should. "He performed?"
"He stopped it," I say. "He took a hit meant for me."
"Good." My father sounds almost thoughtful. "Keep him close."
The call ends.
I set the phone down and stare at the desk.
Keep him close.
As if I haven't already. As if there is any version of this life where I send Maksim away and pretend distance is possible again.
Distance is something I eroded on purpose—slow and careful—until it became normal for him to sleep outside my door, use my soap, and stand in my shower while the city glowed behind frosted glass.
I push back from the desk and go to the office door. I need air. The next secure call needs privacy, and even inside my own penthouse, I assume the walls have ears.
I open the door.
Maksim stands exactly where he said he would: back to the wall, eyes forward, still as a blade waiting in its sheath.
"I need the balcony," I say. "Watch the office."
He nods once and moves past me into the
room, taking up a position near the window, angled to cover the door and the glass without appearing to try.
His eyes don't drift to my
desk; his attention stays where it should.
I step onto the balcony and close the heavy glass door behind me.
Cold air bites at my lungs. The city smells sharp—exhaust and metal, the edge of winter creeping in off the lake. I dial the secure line, wait for the connection to lock in, and keep my voice low.
The conversation is all work: routes, names, pressure points—instructions delivered in the tone men use when they've accepted that blood will have to be spilled.
When it ends, I linger outside a moment longer, watching the city wake up. Cars begin to move in the grid. Lights blink on in windows. People step into lives that will never intersect with mine except as collateral damage.
Then I go back inside.
Maksim is standing where I left him—same stance, same angle—but the air around him feels wrong.
His shoulders are set tighter, his spine straighter in a way that suggests not just alertness but restraint, as if he is holding himself still with muscle tension rather than discipline.
I look at my desk.
The files are stacked where I left
them, and the ORLOV folder is there too—closed.
I remember leaving it open, pages spread, my handwriting visible from across the room.
Now it's shut, squared away with a care that isn't mine.
I glance at Maksim.
He doesn't meet my eyes; he stares at a point on the far wall.
"Everything secure?" I ask.
"Yes."
His voice is flat, empty. It doesn't sound like the man in the car last night, nor the man who stood in the steam and almost let me close the distance.
I cross to the desk and start moving files back into the safe. Paper slides, stacks settle. The ORLOV folder goes back where it belongs, tucked away as if it never left the darkness.
I don't mention that it was closed.
I don't accuse him of reading it.
Maybe he didn't. Maybe it shifted. Perhaps I'm seeing patterns because paranoia has become a habit.
But I know what I left open.
Maksim shifts near the window, his movements controlled and correct, the way he moves when following rules he learned the hard
way—rules I wrote down, rules I exploited.
"You can return to the hallway," I say.
He nods once and leaves, no extra words, no glance back. The door closes, and the click lands in my chest like something small breaking loose.
I stand alone in my office with my hand on the edge of the desk.
I remind myself that nothing has changed.
If he read the file, he would see the truth. He understands who he is, what the facility made him, and that I gave him a place to stand.
I convince myself it was a gift.
I reassure myself that it was necessary.
Yet my throat tightens regardless.
The office is quiet. Outside, the penthouse hums softly, and the city beyond the glass remains indifferent as always.
I wait for the sound of his footsteps taking position outside my door.
They don't come right away.
That absence—small, ordinary, a silence that shouldn't matter—scrapes at me more intensely than any threat I can name.