Chapter 18 MAKSIM
MAKSIM
I wake to the sound of running water behind a cheap door.
For a fleeting moment, I don't recognize my surroundings.
The mattress beneath me is too soft, sagging in the center.
The air is thick with the scent of industrial detergent, struggling to mask years of mildew and stale smoke.
A thin strip of gray daylight seeps around the edges of the synthetic curtains, casting the room in a dim, dusty haze.
Then the pain in my leg brings everything into focus.
It's no longer a sharp sting; instead, it's a deep, rhythmic throb that syncs with my pulse.
The stitches Ivan placed yesterday—thread meant for shirts, piercing through torn muscle—have held my skin together.
However, the surrounding tissue is swollen and radiates heat, feeling tight as if my skin is two sizes too small for my leg.
Infection isn't a possibility; it's a countdown.
The bathroom door is ajar, steam escaping in slow, white wisps. The water stops, and a moment later, the door swings open.
Ivan steps out.
A thin white towel hangs around his neck, and his damp hair is darker than usual. Stubble roughens his face, a stark contrast to the clean-shaven look he had when we fled the Tower—now a shadow darkens his jaw, making him appear tired and dangerous.
For a moment, my mind struggles to reconcile his current appearance with the image I've held of him.
He's not in a charcoal suit, silk tie, or cufflinks that catch the light. There's no watch heavy enough to buy a mid-sized sedan.
Instead, he wears dark, stiff jeans and a faded gray henley with worn cuffs. A canvas jacket hangs off the back of the peeling laminate chair by the door.
He catches me staring.
"Thrift store," he says, his voice rough from sleep or smoke. He crosses to the window, lifting the curtain slightly and scanning the parking lot below. "Cash. No receipts. I washed them in the sink and ran them through the motel dryer three times so they wouldn't smell like someone else's life."
Of course he did. Even in disguise and while running for his life, he can't help but optimize, stripping the variables from the equation.
He gestures toward the bathroom. "Your clothes are in there. I guessed the size."
I swing my legs off the bed carefully.
The movement tugs at the stitched flesh. My vision narrows, white spots dancing in the gray room, but my leg holds—barely.
I limp into the bathroom. It's small, humid, and smells of bleach.
On the closed toilet lid lies a pile of clothes: jeans, a black T-shirt, and a dark hoodie with a broken zipper pull. Nondescript. Cheap. The uniform of the invisible men who keep the city running.
I dress slowly, maneuvering the denim over my bandaged thigh without snagging the gauze. I catch my reflection in the spotted mirror above the sink.
Hollow eyes. Dark circles resembling bruises. A genuine bruise blooming purple and yellow at my collarbone, one I don't remember earning. My mouth is set in a line that feels permanent.
If Subject 43 were alive as Ivan described him in that file, he wouldn't recognize this man.
Subject 43 was maintained. Calibrated.
This man is used.
When I step outside, Ivan stands at the door, keys in hand. He scans me quickly, checking for blood seepage and stability.
"We need resources," he states. "Clean phones. Ammunition. A vehicle that isn't stolen from a seasonal cabin and reported by now. Cash we can spend without leaving a digital footprint larger than us."
I touch the pistol tucked into the waistband of my new jeans. We have what's left in the magazine and one spare that isn't full. That's it. In a war against Boris, this isn't an arsenal; it's a suicide note.
"Do you have a source?" I ask. "One that isn't monitored?"
"I might." He looks at me, hesitation in his eyes, a flicker of something he's trying to suppress. "You're going to have to trust me."
I almost laugh.
Trust. After the files. After the conditioning. After realizing my entire relationship with him was engineered in a notebook five years ago.
But he didn't leave me on the walkway while the cabin burned. He didn't trade my life for his when Boris offered an easy way out.
I nod once. "Drive."
The truck rattles as if it resents being alive. The suspension is shot, feeling every crack in the pavement.
Ivan maneuvers it out of the motel lot and into a stretch of commercial sprawl that looks like any American highway—fast food joints, gas stations, plastic signs screaming bright colors against the gray morning.
Then he veers off the main road. Again. And again.
The neighborhoods change. The glass towers of the Loop vanish behind us, replaced by the city's bones.
Asphalt patched and repatched until it's more tar than stone.
Brick buildings with boarded windows and iron bars.
Alleys that smell of oil and wet metal. Faded murals on concrete walls.
Chain-link fences guarding lots filled with rusted machinery that no one bothered to steal because it's too heavy to move.
This isn't the Chicago I know.
The Chicago I know has glass walls, controlled entrances, and private elevators. It smells like money, perfume, and polished wood.
This place doesn't bother pretending.
"You know people here?" I ask, watching a stray dog trot across an empty lot.
Ivan's eyes remain fixed on the road. "I wasn't born in a suit, Maksim."
It's the closest thing to an answer he gives.
But Ivan's hands on the wheel look different here—less about performance and more about memory.
He takes turns before the street signs even register, intuitively knowing which lights take too long and which stops are monitored.
He drives like someone who mastered this part of the city long before he learned what it meant to be an heir.
We pull into a lot behind a mechanic shop that seems frozen in time.
The corrugated metal siding is rusted at the bottom, and the brick is stained black near the ventilation fans.
The windows are clouded with decades of grime.
Above the side door hangs a sign in faded Cyrillic: ВОЛКОВ АВТО—Volkov Auto.
The letters are half-peeled, as if the city has been trying to erase them for years but has failed.
Ivan parks in the shadow of the building and shuts off the engine.
"Wait here," he says.
He steps out, and I watch him cross the lot through the cracked windshield. His posture remains controlled—he can't help it—but it's looser at the joints. He walks like he knows the ground beneath him.
The side door opens before he knocks.
A man steps out. He is shorter than Ivan but stockier, built like a whiskey barrel.
His hands are scarred and permanently stained with grease.
Gray hair is cropped close to a skull that looks like it has taken a few beatings.
His face has been chiseled by time, cigarettes, and an unspoken history of violence.
He sees Ivan and freezes, as if confronted by a ghost.
Then his mouth twists into something that could be affection if it were stripped of its rust.
"Little Prince," the man calls, his Russian thick and guttural. "I heard you were dead."
"Rumors," Ivan replies.
He steps forward and clasps the man's hand.
The grip is old, familiar—not a business shake or a Bratva performance, but something that existed before Ivan learned to measure every interaction for profit.
"I need your help, Lev," Ivan says.
The man's eyes shift to the truck.
To me.
His gaze feels like a physical pat-down. He assesses my posture, my weight distribution, the way my right hand rests too close to my waist. He notices the limp I'm trying to hide, the bandage under my jeans, and the fact that I'm still standing.
"Bring your shadow," he says. "We talk inside."
The shop smells of grease, metal shavings, and cold cigarette smoke trapped in the drywall.
An old radio crackles with Russian folk music from a speaker that should have died years ago.
Tools hang on pegboards in obsessive military order—wrenches sized and spaced, screwdrivers lined up like soldiers.
Not pretty, but efficient. The kind of efficiency I respect, even when it's dressed in rust.
Lev leads us past a half-dismantled engine block into a back office that looks like paperwork has waged a war and lost. Invoices, work orders, receipts, and handwritten notes are spiked onto metal spindles. It's either a legitimate business or a convincing imitation of one.
He sits behind a metal desk marred by cigarette burns, while Ivan takes a seat in the visitor's chair without prompting.
I remain standing.
My leg protests immediately, a sharp, tearing sensation in the stitched muscle, but I refuse to let my guard down in an unfamiliar room. Training is not something you switch off just because you're tired.
Lev pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, taps one out, and lights it with a Zippo. He peers between us through the smoke.
"So," he says, "the Little Prince comes to old Lev. Did your father finally push you too far?"
"My uncle," Ivan replies flatly. "Boris is trying to kill me. He nearly succeeded."
A hardness settles on Lev's face; the amusement fades.
"Boris," he says, as if the name leaves a bitter taste. "He always had worms in his soul. Even thirty years ago, when we were young and foolish together. I warned your grandfather to take him out before he became a problem. Dmitri was too soft on his own blood."
"You knew my grandfather?" I ask.
Lev snorts, smoke escaping from his nose. "Knew him? I worked for him. I bled alongside him. I watched him build what your father pretends he inherited clean." His eyes narrow at Ivan. "You resemble him more than Sergei ever did. Dmitri Baranov would have liked that."
Ivan remains largely unresponsive, but I detect a flicker behind his eyes—perhaps a memory, a burden unrelated to our current conflict.