Chapter 7 Maxim
MAXIM
Ilet Grace go. I never thought telling her who I really was would be met with joy, but I wasn’t expecting her to have a mental breakdown over it either.
You just told her you kill people for a living.
That would freak anyone out, especially one you have kidnapped and are currently holding hostage. I suppose that’s right.
Shit.
I don’t want her to be scared of me. She should be, she’s just a job.
This is true, but … then you saw her walk in tonight in a dress you chose for her.
You spent too many hours thinking about how she would look in the dress for it to be healthy.
Why don’t you just keep her? Do you really need another million dollars?
Do you want to give this woman to Dmitri?
I shake my head at these questions I shouldn’t be asking myself.
She’s a job.
Just a job nothing more.
Liar.
Pushing myself away from the table, I throw my napkin down on the table as I’m unable to enjoy my steak while Grace is missing.
Would she have run again? Wouldn’t blame her if she had.
I stare down at my phone, but there are no alerts on it.
Moving away from the dining room table, I walk out into the corridor and stare down the vast lengths on both sides. Where the hell is she?
Then I hear her sobbing in the distance. The sound pulls something in my chest, and I don’t like it. I can’t like it. I head toward the sound and open the powder room’s door. There she lies curled up in a ball shivering against the marble floor.
Shit. I did that to her.
“Go away, Maxim. Unless you’re here to kill me. Give me this moment, please.” She sobs.
“I’m not here to kill you, Grace,” I explain softly to her.
“Yet,” she says, looking up at me through mascara-soaked lashes.
I don’t answer her as I’m not sure what to say.
“Why did you save me? Did you do it as an ode to your sister, the one you couldn’t save?”
Her accusation hits me in the chest like a bullet.
“Do you have a fucked-up hero complex? Can hitmen be heroes? Did you want to make yourself feel good about saving the fucked-up whore? Do a decent thing to balance out all the bad karma you have.”
No amount of goodness could atone for all the bad that I have done in the world.
“To you, I’m a job, not a human. I know when the time comes for me to be offloaded, you’ll do it.”
She looks up at me as mascara runs down her cheeks.
I’m not sure if I’m being honest with myself because the thought of offloading her to Dmitri makes my stomach turn.
“Your silence speaks volumes, Maxim.” She sneers at me.
“Do you have a gun on you now? Can you use it? Kill me now because if you’re going to give me to anyone else other than my family then I’m as good as dead.
I would rather be dead than live through that hell again.
I can’t do it. I won’t do it. Just take me out into the vines and shoot me? ”
She’s serious. I can see it on her face. She isn’t afraid to die in this moment. She’s given up.
What the hell am I doing?
“No. I won’t do that.”
Grace chuckles darkly. “Oh, that’s right. If I’m dead, you won’t get paid.”
That’s not it.
She’s confusing me with her words. I rake a hand through my hair nervously trying to get a grip on this unfamiliar feeling inside me.
“Maybe I’ll take my own life then.” She pulls out the steak knife.
Everything turns into slow motion as soon as I see the glistening silver knife in her hand. I never noticed her taking it from the table. I lunge for her, but I’m not quick enough, and she slices her wrist, luckily not badly. Grabbing the knife from her hands, I throw it away from her.
“No. I want to die,” she screams.
“Not tonight,” I tell her, pulling a handkerchief from my suit pocket and wrapping it around the wound.
“I’m not going back, Maxim. Do you hear me?” she says, grabbing the lapels of my suit jacket. “I would rather die than go back to Dmitri.”
I know Dmitri isn’t the best of people. But I’ve only heard how well looked after the jewels were. That they adore them and treat them all as if they were real precious gems. They are revered in the Bratva circles.
“What did he do to you?”
Grace laughs wildly. “Everything. Every depraved thing you could think of doing to a woman and then times that by ten. And I only got a small portion of it, he and his fucked-up cousin had my sister for months, and they did so much worse to her,” she tells me before breaking down again.
I stare at a clearly traumatized woman who is willing to kill herself than ever go back to being a jewel.
Does the Bratva know what Dmitri and Nikolai have been doing to these women?
Have I been na?ve over what goes on with them?
Technically, I’m a free agent, I’m not affiliated with anyone.
I’ll do jobs for the Bratva, motorcycle gangs, dictatorships, politicians, and whoever can afford me.
Reaching down, I pick her up in my arms. She buries her face into my chest. I walk out of the powder room and down the corridor toward the staircase.
I make my way up the grand stairs and turn toward her room, thankfully the door is open as I walk in.
She’s still sobbing as if all the hurt, grief, and sadness is purging from her body.
If what she says is true then I understand now why she was medicating herself with the drugs, trying to block out whatever Dmitri and Nikolai did to her and her sister.
Gently, I lay her down on her bed, tucking her in under the blanket.
She curls up on her side, her shoulders still shaking with her tears.
It’s as if I’ve broken through a block inside her, and now everything she’s hidden is coming out of her.
Staring down, I take my phone from my pocket and type out a message before placing it back.
Then I kick my shoes off, slide my jacket over my shoulders and place it on the chair.
I unbutton my dress shirt and roll up the sleeves before I do the stupidest thing I’ve ever done before and get into bed with her.
I wrap my arm around her and pull her tightly against my chest. She’s so lost in her mind she doesn’t fight me on touching her.
What have I got myself into with this woman?
“Is she asleep?” Sergei asks, walking into my office hours later.
I’m sitting, staring out over the estate, lost in my thoughts as I watch the stars on the horizon. Tonight has been a mindfuck.
I’d spent the past hour in the gym trying to clear my head. A couple rounds with the punching bag usually helps me.
“Yes, it took me a long time to get her to settle.” Grace cried for an hour as I held her, soothed her, and protected her.
“And the cut?”
“Only surface, it’s wrapped up now,” I tell Sergei. I can’t forget the look in her eyes when she pulled that knife out. She was done. If I hadn’t come when I did, I don’t know if she would be alive. “Something fucked up happened to her.”
“You think we should look into her then?” Sergei asks.
“I do. Something doesn’t sound right about this situation.”
“I’m not willing to send a girl back to a monster, Max.
She’s the same age as Anna. She reminds me too much of her.
” The sadness of losing his daughter creeps across Sergei’s face.
Now I understand why he’s developed a soft spot for Grace since she arrived.
“Wasn’t there media coverage about Nikolai and Dmitri?
That’s why the higher-ups want him dealt with,” he suggests.
That’s right.
I type their names into the computer, and all these searches come up.
Sergei and I look at each other surprised at the coverage in the mainstream media about Nikolai especially.
No wonder the Bratva is upset, they have outed them.
I press play on the first video, and there’s a blonde interviewing two men.
We watch the interview in stunned silence as the two men explain how they found a woman called Zoe bloodied at their gate and went on to explain how she had no memory of who she was.
They spoke about how over the months of her living with them they slowly fell in love with her.
That must be Grace’s sister the two men are talking about as they explain that she used to date Nikolai.
He took her home to Russia under the guise of meeting the family, and instead, she was sold into a human trafficking ring.
And that they had come back and found her again, but this time they had stolen her sister Grace as well.
They then go on to explain every aspect of Nikolai’s operations and how he used the jewels; he traded a night with a jewel to get what he wanted.
“We might have been na?ve in believing what the jewels really were,” Sergei states.
I think he’s right. This is not at all the reputation of the jewels as portrayed in the underworld. Anger bubbles through my veins as my fist slams down against the desk.
“How did we miss this? It’s our job to know every detail about our marks. We let our focus slip on this one, old man.”
He claps me on the shoulder. “We know now. She’s safe here with us.
That was our one rule, we never involve the women.
We broke that rule for her. We made assumptions and thought we understood the object.
We were wrong, Max. Now that we know we are, it’s hard to ignore it.
Let me investigate this for you. Your responsibility now is that girl upstairs. ”
I give the old man a nod. He’s right. Grace is my priority now and especially after tonight where she thinks I’m throwing her back to the monsters. I understand her desperation that she tried to harm herself.
I stare at the video on my screen. What the hell happened to you, Grace? Next thing I know, I’m googling her name. Up pops her smiling face and information about her time at the International Court of Human Rights. What hits me is the life behind those jade-green eyes—they sparkle.
Something I’ve only seen when she’s fighting with me.
I promise you, Grace, I will protect you. You’re safe with me.
Then I hear a blood-curdling scream.