Chapter 16 MAKSIM #2
"You better," he mutters as the lift motor whines, lowering the boat toward the lake.
Metal squeals. Chains rattle. The boat splashes into the water with a slap.
Ivan jumps in immediately, hands on the ignition. The engine coughs once, then roars to life, echoing loudly in the enclosed shed.
"Get in," he snaps. "Now."
I push off the wall.
Pain consumes everything.
I force my leg to do what it resists—hold weight—just long enough to reach the gunwale.
My hands grasp.
My body heaves.
I collapse into the hull like a sack of broken parts.
Ivan releases the boat.
The shed doors swing open to reveal the lake.
Gray water stretches before us, wind ruffling the surface, spray lifting like a breath.
The boat surges forward.
Cold water slaps my face. My teeth click together.
Behind us, smoke and flames billow out from the trees.
There are men on the dock—dark silhouettes against the firelight, rifles raised.
One fires.
The round strikes the hull with a sharp crack and a splintering thunk near the stern. The boat shudders but keeps moving.
Then something goes wrong for them on shore.
A propane canister—one of the ones stored by the stove for winter—ignites.
The explosion blooms quickly and violently.
A fireball erupts from the side of the cabin, engulfing the dock in orange. A shockwave slams into the lake a moment later, rocking our boat so violently that I grip the gunwale with my good hand, holding on as if the water is trying to pull me under.
Secondary pops follow—ammo cooking off, fuel reserves igniting, small blasts woven into the larger inferno.
Men scream.
Their cries pierce the air, cutting through the crackle of the fire—high, ragged, human.
Some are on fire. Some hit the water. None are pursuing us.
Ivan doesn't slow until we're well out in the middle of the lake, far enough that rifles from the shore are nothing more than distant guesses.
Only then does he cut the engine.
The sudden silence is almost painful.
Water laps against the hull. The wind stirs. In the distance, the fire crackles like a beast gnawing at its prey.
Ivan climbs back toward me, soot and streaks of blood smeared across his face—some his, most not.
"Let me see."
I pull my hand away from my thigh.
The stain on my pants resembles a murder scene. Ivan doesn't react to the dramatic sight; he focuses on the injury beneath.
He tears the fabric, revealing the wound—entry and exit points, ragged edges, muscle torn apart.
"Through and through," he observes clinically, though his voice carries an edge. "Missed the artery."
"Lucky," I rasp, the word tasting bitter on my tongue. "We lost the recorder. We lost the cabin. Now we're floating in the middle of a lake with one working leg and a boat that just took a hit."
Ivan is silent for a moment.
He removes his shirt, tears it into strips, and skillfully binds my wound with firm hands. The pressure makes me see white again, but the bleeding slows. My head clears slightly as my body stops protesting the blood loss.
When he finishes, he sits back, breathing heavily for the first time since all this began.
"We're alive," he says. "Both of us. That wasn't supposed to happen."
I stare at the shore.
The cabin—his sanctuary, his contingency plan, the place he trusted enough to bring me—burns like a signal flare. Black smoke billows into the sky, and ash drifts over the water in tiny fragments.
"You should've left me," I say.
His head snaps toward me.
"We already had this conversation," he replies, his voice firm. "The answer hasn't changed."
"Without the recording, it's our word against Boris's," I say, hating how steady my voice sounds despite the fire in my leg. "He's spent decades building loyalty. He'll tell your father we staged everything, that the Italians did it, that we—"
"Then we get something else," Ivan interrupts. No poetry. No speeches. Just determination. "We take it from him."
"And if we can't?"
He looks at me as if he can't believe I'm asking.
His hand finds mine—blood-slick fingers intertwining—and he squeezes hard enough to hurt.
"Then we lose together," he says. "That's the deal."
The same words echo in this cold reality, stripped of adrenaline and drama.
I feel something shift in my chest, though I can't name it.
Not hope. Not yet. Hope is clean.
This is messier.
This is a man making a choice he was never meant to make, even after paying the price for it.
"You're terrible at being what everyone thinks you are," I say, almost laughing despite the brokenness in my voice. "The cold heir. The man who doesn't—"
"Don't," he interrupts, but not harshly this time. "Not right now."
His thumb brushes over my knuckle, a small gesture that grounds me, reminding me I'm still here.
The boat drifts.
The fire consumes the shore.
Somewhere in the city, Boris will hear reports: cabin destroyed, property burning, bodies, explosions. He will assume we're dead because that's what makes sense.
He won't imagine we're out here on the water, bleeding, alive, furious.
He won't understand what it feels like to have nothing left to lose.
I lean my head back against the gunwale. My leg throbs with every heartbeat. My hands carry the scent of smoke, blood, and lake water.
Ivan's shoulder presses against mine, solid and warm.
We've lost the cabin.
We've lost the proof.
But we're still breathing.
And the man beside me didn't abandon me.
That's not victory.
Not yet.
But it's the first thing in my life that feels like it could become one.