Chapter 36
Ayla
The cemetery is quieter than the city.
Somewhere beyond the iron gates, traffic still hums low and distant, tires hissing over wet streets, the muted pulse of Saint Petersburg carrying on without us. But here, the sound feels muffled under the gray sky and the bare branches and the rows of stone rising out of the ground like teeth.
My boots sink slightly into damp ground as I follow Maksim between the graves.
He hasn’t said much since we got out of the car.
That’s becoming normal here.
Like he’s devoid of color in this city.
He pointed things out once or twice on the drive here.
A bridge. A church dome in the distance.
A building his father used to use for meetings years ago.
Little scraps. Not enough to call conversation.
Just enough to make me feel like he was giving me pieces of something he usually keeps behind his teeth.
Then he turned into the cemetery without warning.
Now he walks a half step ahead of me, dark shirt stretched across his shoulders, hands in his pockets, moving with that same hard stillness he always gets when something matters more than he wants it to.
I look around.
The graves are older here. Some polished and expensive, some weathered, names worn soft by time. Angel statues with black streaks down their faces. Crosses. Granite. Marble. Rusted iron fencing around family plots. Dead flowers left drying in vases
It feels old in a way America doesn’t.
Older than the city outside.
Older than him.
Older than whatever is coiled up inside this family and poisoning all of them from the inside out.
He stops in front of a double headstone.
Not flashy. That surprises me.
Dark stone. Clean lines. Two names carved side by side in Russian. Fresh flowers sit at the base, carefully arranged. Someone comes here often.
Maksim stares at the graves for a long second before he speaks.
“My grandmother,” he says, nodding once toward the left. Then the right. “My grandfather.”
His voice is flat, but not careless. There’s a difference. I step up beside him and look down at the names.
“Your mom’s parents or your dad’s?”
“Both.”
I glance at him.
He’s still looking straight ahead.
“What?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. The corner of his mouth moves like he almost regrets bringing me here at all. Then he shifts his weight and finally looks down at the stone.
“My mother and aunt Vera were adopted by my grandmother.”
I blink.
“The woman from the house?”
He nods once.
“They were adopted separately,” he says. “They aren’t blood. Not really sisters. Just raised as them.”
That tracks, I guess. Kind of. The resemblance between the women was there in coloring more than face. Same gold hair, similar blue eyes, but not much else. Vera had a brushed softness in her. His mother didn’t. His mother looked like she’d been carved out of expensive ice.
I glance back at the graves. “Okay…”
“My grandfather already had Nikolai when he married her.”
The words settle between us.
My eyes flick to him, then back to the stone, then back to him again as the shape of it starts forming too slowly in my head.
Wait.
I frown. “So your parents—”
He looks at me then.
No expression. No softness. Just that cold, steady gaze of his taking in the exact second it clicks.
“Are step-siblings,” he says. “Yes.”
For a second I just stare at him.
Then I let out a quiet, disbelieving breath. “Oh.”
He says nothing.
Of course he doesn’t.
The wind moves through the trees overhead with a dry, restless sound. Somewhere farther off, a crow lands on a monument and hops once across the stone.
I look back at the graves again, trying to picture it.
A grandmother who adopted two girls.
A grandfather who already had a son.
A marriage that turned them into siblings.
A son and daughter who still went on to create Maksim anyway.
My stomach tightens.
“That’s…” I trail off.
His mouth curves, but there’s no humor in it. “Say it.”
I cut him a look. “Complicated.”
“Coward.”
I snort softly. “Weird.”
He finally gives me the ghost of a real smile at that. Small. Crooked. Gone almost as soon as I see it.
“There you are,” he murmurs.
I fold my arms tighter across myself and look back at the graves. “That’s a hell of a family secret.”
His face closes again.
“Bigger than you think.”
The words land wrong.
Not dramatic or thrown for effect.
Just dropped there between the graves like a bone I’m supposed to trip over later.
I turn to him slowly. “What does that mean?”
He watches me for a beat too long. Wind catches the longer hair on top of his head, faded blue dulled under the washed-out sky. The mark on his neck from my knife disappears under the collar of his shirt, but I know it’s there. I know exactly where.
Then he looks away first.
“It means,” he says, voice gone flat again, “you dig too much.”
I stare at him.
He stares at the grave.
Asshole.
But not enough of one to bring me here for no reason.
I look down at the flowers instead. White lilies drooping slightly, ribbon tied around the stems with careful hands.
“You come here every time you visit?” I ask.
“No.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Liar.”
That gets another brief glance from him.
Then, after a pause, “Yes.”
Which is as close to honesty as I’m probably getting.
I let the silence settle again. It doesn’t feel bad this time. Just strange. Heavy in a different way.
I study the stone, then glance sideways at him. “Were you close to them?”
His jaw shifts.
“Yes.”
I nod once.
That, somehow, I understand immediately.
“Why?”
“They saw… me.”
I rub my thumb over the seam of my pocket. “Did they know?”
The question leaves my mouth before I can decide not to ask it.
Maksim goes still beside me. Really still. When he speaks, his voice is lower.
“Everything.”
I look up at him sharply. His face gives me nothing. But there’s something under it. Something bitter enough to stain the air.
Everything.
Not suspected.
Not guessed.
Not learned too late.
Everything.
I exhale slowly and look away again, out across the graves, the bare trees, the city hidden beyond the walls. There’s something about getting family history in pieces that makes it worse. Every answer opens up three more ugly questions.
“So,” I say after a second, trying for lighter and only half making it there, “your family tree is—.”
“Liars.” He huffs once through his nose.
Closest thing to a laugh I’ve heard from him all day.
My stomach churns.
Liars.
I glance at him again.
His profile is hard against the washed-out sky, beautiful in a brutal way. Mouth set. Eyes pale and unreadable. The kind of face that looks like it was made to intimidate rather than be looked at too long.
And yet he brought me here.
Not to some polished place designed to impress me.
Here.
To the dead.
To the roots of it.
It feels less like trust and more like a warning. Maybe with him there isn’t a difference. I step closer to the stone, reading nothing, understanding too much.
“Liars are the worst,” I say quietly.
His silence stretches long enough that I think he won’t speak.
“They are.”
Only two words, but they change the shape of him for a second. Not enough to soften him. Just enough to remind me there’s a person under all that damage, buried somewhere deep enough that most people probably never find him.
I hate that I might be starting to. Especially with lies on my tongue.
I straighten and shove my hands deeper into my pockets. “Okay.”
He glances down at me. “Okay?”
I shrug. “I’ve met the dead. I’ve learned your parents were step-siblings. I’ve been ominously warned that it’s worse than I think.” I turn toward the path again. “I assume the next stop involves vodka.”
That almost gets a smile out of him.
Almost.
Instead he puts one hand at the back of my neck and steers me away from the grave.
Possessive. Thoughtless. Familiar enough now that my body registers it before my mind decides whether to be annoyed.
“Come on,” he says.
I let him guide me down the path between the stones.
But as we leave, I glance back once over my shoulder at the double grave, the flowers, the dark polished stone under the gray sky.
Bigger than you think.
Whatever he didn’t say stays with me all the way to the car.
***
By the time the plates are shoved aside and the third drink is gone, I’m stretched across the hotel bed in his shirt and nothing else, hair still damp at the ends from our shared shower, body loose with sex and vodka and the strange heavy exhaustion this city keeps pressing into my bones.
Maksim stands at the edge of the mattress in nothing but his boxer briefs, for a second, just looking at me.
Then he climbs onto the bed.
Slowly. Like he has all the time in the world.
His hand drifts over my ankle first, then my calf, then higher, fingertips tracing idle patterns over my skin like he’s mapping out places only he gets to know.
“You should be marked,” he murmurs.
My mouth curves against the pillow. “I already am.”
That makes something shift in his face. A dark little flicker of amusement. He leans down, nose brushing my knee, then my thigh.
“Not like that,” he says. “I mean properly.”
I tip my head. “Properly?”
His thumb drags over my hip. “Ink.”
I huff a laugh. “You giving me tattoo suggestions now?”
His gaze lifts to mine. “I have several.”
I pull my leg away. “That’s not fucking happening.”
His hand catches my ankle before I get far.
Firm.
His thumb strokes once over the bone there, slow, absent, like he’s calming an animal that doesn’t know whether to bite yet.
“Why not?”
I snort and prop myself up on one elbow, his shirt riding higher on my thighs. “Because I like my skin the way it is.”
His gaze drops when the shirt shifts.
“Liar.”
I narrow my eyes. “Excuse me?”
“You’d look good with ink.”
“That doesn’t mean I want it.”
His hand slides up my calf again, slower this time. Thoughtful. Dangerous in the way quiet men get when they’re no longer playing.
“I know where I’d put it.”