Chapter 19 The Serpent’s Visit #2
“Look at me,” Maksim gasped. “Think. You want them to say, ‘He lost control over pussy’?” His eyes glittered wildly. “They already think you weak. This proves it.”
Something in Konstantin’s expression shifted—not softening. Calculating.
“Don’t say that word,” he said, voice going dead.
He yanked Maksim off the fridge and hurled him sideways. Maksim crashed into the end of the island and slid to the floor, gasping.
Konstantin stalked after him, gun already in his hand, safety off.
“You step in my apartment again,” he said, voice flat as a firing range, “you look at her again, I don’t care what piece of paper my father signed. I don’t care what old men say. I will find way to make you disappear.”
Maksim’s laugh was a wet, ugly thing. “You think they did not let me in on purpose?” he wheezed. “Door did not just…listen to me.”
Konstantin’s eyes narrowed.
“How did you get past my lock?” he asked.
“Ask your council,” Maksim said, smiling through blood. “Some of them are more my family than yours.”
The private elevator chimed from the hall. That deeper, secure sound I’d only heard once.
An older male voice cut in, dry and annoyed. “You boys trying to redecorate my investment?” he said in Russian, then in English. “Konstantin. Put the gun down.”
I hadn’t even heard the man approach.
Baranov stood in the doorway, coat open, eyes cold. Another guard hovered behind him, gun already out but angled at the floor.
Konstantin didn’t lower the pistol.
“He came in,” he said, words clipped, “touched my wife, tried to rip clothes off. In my kitchen.”
“I see,” Baranov said. His gaze flicked over the scene—wine and blood, broken glass, my torn shirt, my half-covered chest, Maksim on the floor. His expression didn’t change. “Nasty.”
He didn’t look surprised.
“How did he get in?” Konstantin asked, not taking his eyes off cousin or Pakhan. “Door was locked.”
“I approved override,” Baranov said, as if he was talking about a lightbulb. “After photo, I wanted to know if you still kept her here. If she was calm. If rumor about elevator was true.”
“So you opened my door to him,” Konstantin said slowly, “and turned me into audience for your little test.”
“We didn’t plan for him to put his hands on her,” Baranov said. “We opened the door. What he did with it—” shrug “—you stopped it. That’s the data we needed.”
“You said she would be protected as my wife,” Konstantin said. The word wife came out like it had teeth. “No one orders her death without declaring war.”
“She is protected from cheap bullets in street,” Baranov said. “She is not protected from consequences of your choices.” His eyes flicked to me and back, already dismissing me. “You want us to stand between her and your enemies, we must know what she is. What you are.”
My stomach turned.
So this had never been about my safety.
It had been about seeing if Konstantin would break. How much.
“How far you will go for her,” Baranov added. “How stupid you are willing to be.”
Killing Maksim would have been the “too stupid” line, apparently.
Konstantin’s jaw flexed. The gun never dipped.
“Get him out of my sight,” he said finally, each word a crack in marble. “Before I decide I do not care about your opinion.”
Baranov nodded to the other guard. “Pick him up,” he said in Russian. “Clean this.”
The guard hauled Maksim to his feet. Maksim shot me a look through blood-rimmed lashes—hatred, arrogance, and something like satisfaction all tangled together.
Then they were gone. Elevator chime. Door. Silence.
Then he left too.
The apartment felt emptied out and overfull at the same time.
I realized my hands were still fisted in the shredded front of the shirt, knuckles white, skin flushed from where Maksim’s fingers had been. My wrist ached. My throat felt bruised from the grip that hadn’t quite closed all the way.
Konstantin holstered the gun with a sharp movement and turned to me.
His eyes went over me once: torn fabric, bare skin, bruises beginning to bloom. His face did something I’d never seen on him before, something that looked like rage and guilt and a kind of horror, all mixed.
He shrugged out of his coat and crossed the distance between us in three strides, wrapping it around my shoulders without asking. The wool was still cold from outside.
Then he pulled me into him.
His arms locked around me like he was afraid the building would walk off with me if he didn’t anchor me to something.
“This is what they are,” he said quietly into my hair. “The men downstairs. My so-called uncles. My cousin. They open your door. They turn off cameras. They say ‘protected’ while they throw you in water and see if I drown to pull you out.”
Care about.
Hate.
Own.
Whatever the word was, it lived under his skin, fizzing.
“They’re supposed to be on your side,” I said, voice muffled against his chest. “I’m supposed to be safe because I’m your wife.”
His laugh was short and without humor. “You are safer with me,” he said. “You are never safe with them.”
Outside our windows, the city glittered like nothing had changed.
Inside, under a torn shirt and someone else’s coat, I understood something I hadn’t let myself see before:
Being Mrs. Zverev didn’t make me untouchable.
It just made me the most valuable pressure point in a room full of men who liked to press on things until they broke.
And sooner or later, one of them was going to push too hard.