Chapter 30 Ayla #2
He braces his hands on the edge of the sink, shoulders flexing as he dips his head forward—offering the back of his neck like it’s nothing. Like he doesn’t understand how intimate that is.
I squeeze dye into my gloved palm and work it into the nape, fingers massaging close to the skin. The purple is colder than I expect. Slick. Heavy.
His throat bobs once.
His eyes close for half a second, and then they open again, hard in the mirror, as if he caught himself enjoying it and didn’t like that.
I coat every missed spot. Slow. Thorough. Not rushed like him.
When I’m done, I drag my fingers through the longer top and pause.
“It’s getting long,” I say quietly. “The sides are grown out too.”
His gaze lifts to the mirror. He studies his own reflection like he’s checking for weaknesses.
“Cut it,” he says.
Just like that.
I blink. “With what?”
He opens the drawer and pulls out clippers.
He sets them on the counter. “Two guard.”
“You’re letting me do this?” The words come out before I can stop them.
He angles his head, eyes flat. “If you fuck it up, I’ll shave it.”
I don’t know whether that’s reassurance or threat.
I pick up the clippers and attach the guard with hands that are steadier than I feel.
The buzz fills the bathroom, angry and alive.
I start at the side, guiding the blade up and out in clean passes, careful around his ear. Damp hair drops in purple-black strips onto the tile.
Maksim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t give me suggestions. Doesn’t praise. He just watches me in the mirror like he’s memorizing the way I concentrate. The way I don’t shake.
I move to the back next, tapering it so it doesn’t puff under the longer top. When I switch the clippers off, the silence rushes back in.
He turns his head once, checking the line.
A single nod.
“Good,” he says.
It should annoy me—how he gives approval like he’s grading my work, but it does something else too. Something hot and stupid and helpless.
I set the clippers down and peel one glove off, then the other, tossing them into the trash with the dye box.
Maksim’s eyes track the movement. He reaches out and takes my wrist. Not gentle. Possessive.
“You next,” he says.
I stiffen automatically. “No.”
His gaze lifts to my hair. “Yes.”
“I don’t need—”
“You hide behind it.” His voice is quiet, but it hits harder than if he shouted. “Your hair.”
I swallow. My hand goes to my hair. It’s grown out since him, long enough to twist up, long enough to use like a curtain. I hate it.
“I don’t hide,” I lie.
He looks at me, eyes sharp. Then he turns and opens the drawer again and pulls out shears.
He holds them up for a second, letting me see the choice. Letting me understand this is a line he’s about to cross.
“Sit,” he says.
My body obeys before my pride catches up. I sit on the closed toilet lid, staring at the fog-stained shower glass while he stands behind me.
He gathers my hair low at the nape, collecting it like he’s taking control of something that has been slipping through his hands.
“Stay still,” he says.
My throat tightens. “Maksim—”
“Still.”
The first cut is decisive.
Weight slides off my shoulders in a single heavy drop, and my stomach turns over as cool air hits the back of my neck.
He doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t ask again. He cuts the rest with quick, clean motions, then goes back in with smaller snips—tightening the line, evening it out.
Just blunt. Intentional. Clean.
He works like he does everything: as if he refuses to be uncertain. When he’s finished, his hands land on my shoulders.
He tilts me slightly toward the mirror.
My hair sits at my chin now—soft blunt, the ends neat, the shape sleek. It frames my face. It makes my jaw look sharper. My eyes too exposed.
I look… different.
Less hidden.
I reach up and touch the ends, breath catching on something I can’t name.
Maksim watches my reflection like he’s waiting for me to flinch. Waiting for regret. Waiting for me to run.
“You’re not allowed to hate it,” he says.
I let out a breath that almost becomes a laugh. “That’s not how that works.”
His mouth tightens, then loosens—almost a smile, but not quite. “It is with me.”
I should argue. Instead I stand and step in front of the mirror, staring at myself, at the line of my throat, at how much of me is visible now.
He moves behind me chest close behind me and picks up the dye again.
“What are you doing?” I ask quickly.
“Adding,” he says, like the word covers everything.
He drags a little purple through the ends, just a whisper, not a full dip. Enough to mark.
I tense. “Maksim—”
“Stay,” he says.
One word. That word.
My body stills.
“Why?” My voice is smaller than I want.
He holds my gaze. Doesn’t blink.
“We have to match, because you’re mine,” he says, simple as math.
“And if I’m yours—” he pauses, like it costs him to say it, “then you wear what I wear.”
He finishes, steps back, and looks at us in the mirror like he’s checking the fit of something he’s claimed.
“Twenty minutes,” he says. “Then we rinse.”
And just like that, the softness snaps shut again.
He starts wiping the counter, rinsing the sink, gathering hair from the floor with bare hands like he doesn’t care that it’s clinging to him.
Like he wants it to.
I slip back into the bedroom just as my phone buzzes on the bed.
Gabriel
Report. Or I’ll start with Fuentes.
My heart drops so hard it feels like my ribs crack around it.
Air turns thin. My palms go damp. For a second, I don’t hear anything but the thud of my pulse in my ears—loud, frantic, betraying me.
Ricky.
My mind flashes him like a photograph: his laugh, his hands, the way he looked at me like I was still a person. Like I wasn’t just… a leash Gabriel kept around his fist.
No.
Not him. Not because of me.
There’s nothing I can give on Maksim. Nothing Gabriel doesn’t already know. Meetings and moments with Maksim strobe behind my eyes—his house, his mouth, his hands, the way he watches everything like the world is a target.
I have nothing.
I type it and my heart pounds.
The ellipses appear.
Gabriel
Wrong answer.
My fingers hover over the screen. My throat tightens. I swallow and it feels like swallowing glass.
Think.
Think, Ayla.
Something—anything—small, harmless, useless, just enough to buy time.
And my brain, traitorous and fast, grabs the first thing it can, the office at the club.
Maksim’s desk.
That violent sound, metal and plastic and a sharp crack as his laptop hit the floor.
I remember the way he barely reacted. His mouth and hands still on me.
A broken computer is a broken computer.
Which means it gets tossed.
Which means it ends up in trash that leaves the building.
And Gabriel… Gabriel has men for that. Men who can follow a route, pay off a driver, dig through black bags with gloved hands like it’s nothing. Men who can pull a shattered machine out of garbage and hand it to someone who knows how to peel secrets out of dead things.
My stomach twists.
Because the thought feels disgusting. It feels like betrayal even if it’s scraps, even if it’s nothing. Maksim’s face flashes in my mind—cold, sharp, unreadable, and guilt hits so hard it makes my vision blur.
But then Ricky again.
Gabriel will kill him.
My friends don’t deserve to bleed because I couldn’t come up with a sentence.
I inhale, lungs shaking, and force my thumbs to move.
I don’t have meetings or names. But I saw his laptop break in the office at Exile. If it gets replaced, the old one will be discarded. Your men can retrieve it from trash pickup and see what’s salvageable.
I hold my breath.
The message comes soon after.
Gabriel
It better be good.