Chapter 12 Maksim
MAKSIM
I've been counting since the gym.
Not on a clock. It's a running mark scratched into the back of my mind. The moment Ivan hit the mat and I was on him, when my hands pinned him—something tore loose.
I keep replaying it because my body keeps replaying it.
The memory lives in my fingers when I flex them. It lives in my throat when I swallow. It lingers in the air when Ivan walks past me, because he's the one who looked up at me from the floor with his eyes bright and hungry, as if he'd just found proof of something he'd been digging for.
I should have held still.
Stillness is safety. It's what kept me alive when I was too young to understand why other boys disappeared after night watch. It's what kept me alive when the concrete bit into my knees and the lesson was simple: don't move until you're told.
But in that ring, I moved.
I moved fast. I moved hard. I moved like something that belonged to violence instead of something built to contain it. When my weight settled over his hips, my control split.
Then it snapped back.
I left him on the mat and put myself back into the shape that works.
That shape has been holding ever since.
It's why I don't sleep.
Sleep means letting go. Sleep means the room goes black and whatever I've been choking down gets room to crawl up. I don't trust myself unconscious.
So I stand.
I stand where Ivan expects me. By the kitchen entrance. Near the corridor that leads to the bedroom. I watch the elevator doors in the reflection of the glass. I listen to the soft hum of the climate system. I smell the building, the cedar soap, and the food the staff prepped before they left.
The penthouse has a different quiet at night. It isn't peaceful. It's sealed. The walls are glass and stone, and the air doesn't move unless a machine tells it to. Even the city below feels muted, distant enough to forget it has teeth.
Ivan eats at the island.
He's been eating more lately. He sits with his shoulders tight and his tablet propped up beside his plate, his eyes moving as he reads. He doesn't eat for pleasure. It's just another task.
Pasta tonight. The smell travels—garlic and oil, bread warmed and torn. Even from where I stand, it feels like the food is trying to climb inside me, reminding my body of what it's been missing.
I tell myself I don't feel hungry.
My stomach twists—a low, sour ache that makes me want to press a fist into my abdomen to silence it.
I keep my hands at my sides. I keep my shoulders squared.
Ivan doesn't speak. I don't speak. The only sounds are the faint scrape of his fork, the tap of his finger against the tablet, and the soft click when he sets the utensil down.
My eyelids start to drag.
At first, it's subtle—a slow blink that lasts half a beat too long. Then it worsens. The lines of the room soften at the edges. I focus on the cabinet seam. The seam blurs. I focus on the corner where the ceiling meets the wall. The angle swims.
I force my eyes wider.
That helps for a moment. Then the world tilts again.
I've pushed through this before. I've worked with blood in my eyes and pain in my ribs. Exhaustion is supposed to be something you grind down with discipline.
Tonight, it hits differently. It's not just fatigue. It's the way my body feels scooped out, left upright out of habit.
There's a glass on the counter near my hand. Water left behind earlier. The condensation has made a dark ring on the stone.
I reach for it because the motion is automatic, because my fingers want something solid to hold onto.
My hand closes—
And then it doesn't.
The glass slips through my grip as if my fingers have forgotten how to work. It hits the tile and shatters with a crack that snaps through the silence.
Water sprays cold against my shins.
Shards skitter across the floor.
I'm down on my knees before the sound finishes echoing, hands already reaching, grabbing, trying to undo the failure.
A piece bites into my palm. Another catches the side of my finger. I don't stop. I keep scooping, quick and reckless, trying to gather every fragment into my hands as if I can fix the glass through sheer force of will.
"I'll replace it," I say. My voice is flat. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
Blood beads and runs.
It mixes with the water, thinning out, streaking the grout lines pink. I see it, and my brain tries to file it away as irrelevant data.
I pick up another shard.
My fingers shake.
Not the controlled tremor after a fight. This is worse. This is structural failure.
"Maksim."
Ivan's voice cuts through the fog.
I keep going. There are still glints on the tile. I need to get them.
"Maksim. Stop."
His hand clamps around my wrist.
Warm. Solid. A grip that anchors me so hard my breath catches. I freeze with a shard caught between my bleeding fingers, the edge pressed into the cut it has already made.
I look up.
Ivan is standing over me. His face is tight, jaw set. It looks like anger until you're close enough to hear what's beneath it.
"Leave it," he says, voice low. "Sit down."
The order should slide into me clean and easy.
Instead, something in my chest jerks. I want to argue. I want to finish the job. I want to prove I can still do the basic things I was built to do.
My legs feel wrong. My hands are bleeding. The tile is cold against my trousers. My mouth tastes like copper.
I let him pull me up.
He guides me to the stool at the island, his hand at my elbow as if he doesn't trust my balance. He pushes his own plate aside to make space.
I sit there, staring at my hands.
The cuts don't look dramatic—small tears, raw and stinging. Blood smears where I tried to wipe it away with my thumb. Bandages would fix it. It's nothing.
It doesn't feel like nothing.
Ivan moves around the kitchen. Water runs. A cabinet opens. Something shuts with a click. I hear the soft beep of the microwave.
I try to remember the last time I ate.
The answer is a blur: coffee, water—nothing that counts.
I blink, and the edges of the room smear again. My eyes sting.
Ivan returns with a first aid kit and a cloth.
He sits beside me and reaches for my hands without asking.
I should pull away, but I don't.
The cloth is warm. He wipes my palms slowly, careful where the skin is split. He pulls a small shard free that I didn't even feel lodged there. The sting makes my shoulders jump.
His fingers are steady.
He doesn't speak; he just cleans the blood away, applies antiseptic, wraps gauze around my palm, and tapes it down tight enough to hold.
His touch isn't gentle in a soft way. It's deliberate. He is choosing exactly how much pressure to use, refusing to let me handle this alone.
I hate how my body reacts. I hate the way my shoulders ease without permission. I hate how my breath slows because he is close.
A beep sounds again.
Ivan finishes the second hand, stands, moves to the microwave, pulls something out, and plates it.
He sets the dish in front of me.
Pasta. Steam rising. Garlic and herbs climbing straight into my face.
My stomach cramps so hard it hurts.
"Eat," Ivan says.
I look at him, then at the plate.
"I'm not hungry, sir."
"I don't care." He nudges the plate closer. "Eat."
His voice drops—not louder, just lower. The tone my body knows even when my mind is refusing.
My hand picks up the fork.
I watch it happen as if I'm outside myself. The fork twists pasta up and lifts it.
The first bite hits my tongue, and my throat clenches.
The flavor is a punch: garlic, butter, salt—real food.
My body responds like it's been starving.
I take another bite. Then another. Faster now. My mouth works, my jaw aching with the simple effort of chewing. It is humiliating how desperate I feel.
Ivan watches me.
He sits still, close enough that I can feel warmth in the air between us. He tracks the way I eat, as if trying to decide what broke first—my pride or my biology.
When the plate is empty, I stop.
I stare at the last smear of sauce.
"Better?" Ivan asks.
I don't answer. The fullness in my stomach doesn't feel like comfort; it feels like a debt. I let him take care of me, and owing him is dangerous.
He leans closer.
"You need sleep."
"I can stay up," I say automatically. "I'm fine."
His eyes harden. Not with cruelty, but with refusal.
"The place you came from taught you to grind yourself down until you don't know what you are anymore," he says. "That's not happening here."
The words hit a place I don't want touched.
I look at him—the man who built me, the man who just cleaned my blood off his floor and fed me.
Part of me wants to spit in his face.
A bigger part wants to lean closer until my forehead touches his shoulder.
"Where do you want me to sleep, sir?"
Flat. Professional. The question of a man turning a need into an assignment.
Ivan's expression shifts; something flickers behind his eyes.
"The bedroom," he says. "Like before."
Before the file. Before the gym. Before I realized how much of me had been shaped to fit.
I should refuse.
I'm too tired to fight.
"Yes, sir."
It tastes like rust.
I stand. My legs feel steadier with food in me, but my body still feels thin, stretched tight. I walk toward the bedroom, feeling him behind me—close enough to register as heat.
The chair by the door waits.
My body angles toward it without thinking.
"The bed," Ivan says.
I stop and look back.
He's in the doorway, backlit by the main room. Up close, his face looks worn—heavy, not soft.
"Sir—"
"Not tonight." He crosses to the bed and pulls the covers back. "Here."
I stand there too long.
His bed smells like him—cedar soap and skin. Closing my eyes in that scent feels like stepping into something I won't be able to climb out of.
"Inappropriate," I manage. It's the only defense I have left.
Ivan's mouth tightens, then his voice changes.
Not command. Not cold. Just tired.
"Please."
The word hits harder than any order.
It doesn't belong in his mouth. It doesn't belong in our structure. And he says it anyway, as if stripping something off himself to get it out.
My throat closes.
I move.
I cross to the bed, take off my shoes, and slide under the covers. The mattress dips around me, soft where the chair is hard, and my body reacts with a near-sick relief. My muscles unclench.
The pillow smells like cedar.
Ivan doesn't get in beside me.
He walks to the chair by the door.
And he sits down.
Taking the place I've held for so long, I can picture the imprint my body made in the leather.
Guarding me.
"Sleep," he says quietly. "I'm here."
My eyes close before I can fight it.
Exhaustion pours through me, thick and immediate. I feel myself sinking, and I hate it—hate how quickly I give in once my body realizes it's allowed.
My bandaged hands rest on his sheets. My fingers twitch once, reaching without permission.
I hear Ivan shift in the chair, a soft creak. His breathing steadies.
The last thing I register is that sound—the steady rhythm of him staying awake on purpose, just as I've done for him, except he's doing it for me.
And my body unclenches around it.
I fall.