Chapter 34
Ayla
The estate looks like the kind of place people get buried in without anyone ever finding the bodies.
Not literally…probably.
But the thought lands the second the gates open.
Black iron, tall enough to scrape the sky, parting soundlessly after a man in a guard booth checks the SUV and gives a sharp nod.
Beyond them, the driveway curves through rows of trees stripped nearly bare, their branches webbing overhead like dead veins.
The grounds look damp, the earth dark and soft in patches where the light doesn’t reach.
The house—if it can even be called that, waits at the end of the drive like something old and watchful.
Stone.
Columns.
Too many windows, most of them dark. Of course Maksim’s father doesn’t live in a normal fucking house.
The entire flight here, Maksim barely spoke.
At the hotel he spoke even less.
A room key pressed into my hand. A suitcase dropped by the door.
His jaw locked so hard I thought he might crack a tooth.
I changed in silence because the air around him felt unstable, like one wrong word would make him put his fist through the wall or drag me onto the bed and fuck the temper out of himself with mean hands and a worse mouth.
He didn’t do either.
Just stood by the window, staring out over Saint Petersburg like he hated every light in the city.
Now he’s driving, hand wrapped around the wheel so tight the leather creaks under his palm.
I glance at him from the passenger seat.
His face is blank. That’s what makes it worse. Not anger you can see. Not shouting. Not threats.
This is colder than that.
His mouth is a hard line. His shoulders are rigid under his shirt. There’s no music in the car, no sound except the hum of the engine and the quiet crunch of tires over gravel. Even his breathing feels controlled in a way that doesn’t calm me.
It warns me.
I look back at the house.
“It’s ugly,” I say.
His eyes don’t leave the windshield. “Da.”
I wait, but that’s all I get.
The driveway opens into a wide circular sweep in front of the estate. Stone steps lead up to double doors black as lacquer. Lights glow in sconces on either side, gold against the gray evening, but they don’t make the place look warm.
Instead it looks guarded.
Like a jewel box for a family made of knives. Maksim parks hard. Cuts the engine. For a second neither of us moves. Then he turns to me. The force of his attention feels physical.
“Stay close to me.”
He doesn’t say it in the possessive in the way I’ve gotten used to.
Not the half-sexual growl he uses when he wants to pin me somewhere and make me fight him for sport. This is different.
I hold his stare. “Are you planning to kill someone?”
“Maybe.”
He says it so flat I almost believe him immediately.
A little shiver works down my spine, but I keep my face still. “Good to know.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes.
“If I tell you to leave, you leave.”
“No.”
His jaw flexes.
I can almost hear the snap of his patience.
“Ayla.”
“No,” I repeat, quieter this time. “You dragged me across an ocean, Maksim. I’m not turning around and running because your family is unpleasant.”
A bitter smile touches his mouth for half a second. It’s not amusement. More like I said something that proved a point he didn’t want proven.
“They’re worse than unpleasant.”
Before I can answer, he gets out.
Cool air hits when my door opens a second later. I step onto the gravel, the wind off the grounds needling through my clothes as I come around the front of the SUV.
Maksim is already at the steps, waiting. Not impatient. Just... still.
I hate stillness in men like him. It usually means violence is deciding what shape it wants.
He doesn’t offer me his hand. Just watches until I reach him, then opens the door himself and ushers me inside with one cold palm at the small of my back.
The heat hits first.
Then the silence.
The foyer is enormous, all marble floors and dark wood and chandeliers dripping crystal from impossibly high ceilings.
There’s a curved staircase at the back, sweeping up to a second level like something out of a period film.
Portraits line the walls in gold frames of people with hard eyes and expensive clothes, all of them looking like they disapproved of being painted.
The place smells faintly of polish, smoke, and something older underneath. Dust. History. Money that never had to prove itself.
Maksim’s hand stays on my back, guiding me forward, and I realize after three steps that it’s not affection.
It’s containment.
He’s keeping me where he wants me. The thought should piss me off. Instead it makes me more aware of how tense he is. Every inch of him feels wired too tight.
A man appears first.
Dark hair.
Dark eyes.
Older than Maksim by maybe twenty years, maybe more.
Hard to tell. Some men go from handsome to cruel so gradually it ages them strangely.
He’s sitting in one of the armchairs by the fireplace in the next room, a glass of something amber in one hand, one ankle resting over the opposite knee like he owns the floor beneath all of us.
Maybe he does.
He doesn’t rise when we enter. He just looks at Maksim. Then at me.
Slowly.
Like I’m an object being assessed for weaknesses.
My shoulders go instinctively tighter.
And then I see the women.
One sits on the long sofa near the fire, spine straight, hands folded in her lap.
Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Elegant in the kind of way that doesn’t need to announce itself.
Her face is beautiful, but severe, angles striking and cold.
Her gaze lands on me, then shifts to Maksim, and for one strange second, fear flickers over her features so fast I almost think I imagined it.
The second woman is standing by the mantel. Also blonde. Also blue-eyed.
But this one—
My breath catches.
She looks like Maksim.
Not exactly. She’s older, softer in the mouth, more polished where he’s all hard edges and damage.
But the resemblance is there in flashes that hit too fast to ignore: the shape around the eyes, the set of the cheekbones, the arrogant line of the chin.
It’s like seeing his face translated into another language.
Something cold slides through me. His mother.
Maksim’s hand leaves my back.
The loss of it is immediate.
The dark-haired man sets down his drink with a soft clink.
“Well, you came,” he says in Russian, then switches to English for my benefit with ease smooth enough to feel intentional. “Saved me a trip.”
His voice is low. Cultured. Controlled.
I know men like that.
The ones who never need to raise their voices because the room will bend itself into silence before they ask.
Maksim says nothing.
The blonde woman by the mantel looks at him a second longer, and when she speaks, her voice is cool but careful, as if she’s approaching something wounded enough to bite.
“You’re late, son. Your father doesn’t like to wait.”
Maksim laughs once. No humor in it.
“Then don’t wait for me next time.”
The seated blonde woman’s fingers tighten together in her lap.
No one misses it.
No one mentions it either.
My eyes move between them, piecing together fragments without knowing what picture I’m making yet.
His father looks at me again. “And this is?”
Maksim doesn’t speak, but everyone can feel his claim—violent, instinctive, ready to bare its teeth.
Instead he says, “Ayla.”
Just that.
No explanation. No softening. No label.
His father’s eyes narrow a fraction, like the lack of details tells him more than a full introduction would have.
His mother is still studying me. Not rudely. Intently. Like she’s searching my face for something specific and not finding it.
The other woman speaks.
She’s graceful about it, but there’s hesitation in her voice. She looks between Maksim and me, and her smile—when it comes, is small, strained, but real enough to feel different from the rest of the room.
“Welcome,” she says softly.
“Thank you,” I answer.
I don’t know why I lower my voice too.
Maybe because she feels like the only person in this room who isn’t trying to win something.
Or maybe because Maksim has gone even more still beside me, and it’s making the hair at the back of my neck lift.
His father leans back in the chair. “I expected you alone.”
Maksim’s expression doesn’t change. “I know.”
“Yet you brought company.”
“She goes where I go.”
The words hit the room like a challenge.
His father’s gaze sharpens. Maksim’s mother looks away first.
The other woman stands and goes to Maksim’s mother, their hands meeting immediately.
I glance at Maksim.
His face gives me nothing, but fury is pouring off him now. Dense. Radiating heat through frozen glass. I can feel it in the space between us, in the way his shoulders lock, in the way his fingers flex once at his sides like they miss having a weapon in them.
This isn’t just family tension.
This is something older.
Something rotting.
His father’s mouth curves faintly. “How serious of you.”
Maksim finally steps forward. Not much. Just enough to make the movement feel deliberate.
Every instinct in me sharpens.
“If you have something to say,” he says, voice low, “say it.”
The room goes quiet enough for the fire to sound loud.
His mother inhales softly, almost inaudible. A warning maybe. Or a plea. Hard to tell.
His father unfolds slowly from the chair and comes to his feet.
Tall.
Handsome in a severe, fox-like way. Dangerous without needing to prove it.
When he stands, I understand something immediately and viscerally: This is not a man who used to have power. This is a man who still thinks it belongs to him.
Even here. Even now. Even in the way he straightens his cuffs before looking at his son.
“I invited you into my home,” he says. “You might try remembering how to behave in it.”
Maksim smiles then.
And that’s when my stomach drops. Because I’ve seen that smile before. Not often. Only when something inside him has already decided blood is a reasonable outcome.
He tilts his head just slightly. “Your home?”
His father’s eyes go flat.
Behind him, the women get closer as if bracing for impact.
And suddenly I understand that whatever this is, whatever I just walked into—it didn’t start tonight.
The dark-haired man gives Maksim a look sharp enough to cut.
“Walk with me.”
Not a request.
The words settle into the room like a command everyone else has already learned to survive.
Maksim doesn’t answer.
His stare stays locked on his father a second longer, something violent and ancient moving beneath his skin. Then his hand finds the back of my neck, firm enough to steer, and he walks me toward the sofa where the two women stand waiting like they already know how this goes.
My pulse kicks harder with every step. I don’t like him leaving me here. I like even less that he seems to know he has to.
“Sit,” he says.
Low. Flat. Meant only for me.
I look up at him. “Maksim—”
“Sit,” he repeats.
That’s worse.
Because there’s no room in it at all.
I hold his stare for half a second, weighing whether now is the time to push back, and decide against it. Slowly, I lower myself onto the edge of the sofa, every nerve in my body still standing upright.
He doesn’t move away immediately.
He stays there for one breath, then two, towering over me like he’s trying to build a wall out of his own body before he leaves me behind it.
His mother steps closer.
“I’ll keep her safe, son.”
The room changes. It’s subtle. A shift in pressure more than sound. But I feel it all the same, the way something in Maksim goes colder instead of softer.
He turns his head and looks at her.
Not like a son looking at his mother. Like a man looking at something broken.
“You keep no one safe.”
Her face doesn’t crumble. That almost makes it worse.
She just goes still, the kind of stillness that looks practiced. Like she’s heard worse and maybe deserved it. Or maybe thinks she did.
Then Maksim’s eyes cut to the other woman.
“Vera,” he says.
Her shoulders pull tighter.
“I spared your life. Will you…”
The words are soft. They still sound like a threat.
Her throat moves once before she nods. “I’ll watch over her, Pakhan.”
Pakhan.
The title lands strange.
Maksim gives one curt nod.
Then Vera moves too quickly, as if she forgot herself for a second. Her hand closes around his wrist.
He freezes.
His gaze drops to her hand.
No one breathes.
Vera snatches her fingers back like she touched fire. “Sorry,” she murmurs, the apology immediate, instinctive. Then, more carefully, “Vasilisa?”
Maksim’s eyes flash with recognition. My mind searches the list in my head. I don’t know that name.
But whatever lives inside him tightens so hard I can almost hear it.
His eyes lift to hers.
“Good.”
That’s all he says.
But Vera nods like she’s been given something vital. Relief flashes over her face so quickly it’s almost gone before I can name it.
Vasilisa. Good.
The words move around me like puzzle pieces from a picture I haven’t seen yet.
I look between them, trying to make sense of any of it, but tension has swallowed the room whole now. Thick. Breathing. Ready to split open.
His father is already halfway to the doorway, not bothering to check whether Maksim follows. Men like that expect obedience the way they expect air.
Maksim doesn’t look at me when he finally steps back.
That bothers me more than if he had.
He just says, “Stay here.”
Then he turns and follows his father out of the room.
I watch him go, broad shoulders rigid under his dark shirt, every line of him carved from rage and old hatred, and I don’t realize I’ve half-risen from the sofa until Vera’s hand touches my sleeve. Gentle.
Careful.
“Please,” she says softly.
I look up at the doorway.
Then at Maksim’s mother standing like a marble statue near the fire.
And at Vera, who asked about someone named Vasilisa like the answer mattered more than breathing.
Then back toward the doorway where Maksim disappeared.
The estate is silent again.
But now it doesn’t feel watchful.
Now it feels like a house waiting to detonate.