Chapter 41
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
Maxim
“It was you, wasn’t it? Professor Handler… It was you,” Sia said, her small body curling up against me.
I was happy to have her in my arms in that moment because at the sound of that fucker’s name I know I would have annihilated shit. I know I would have killed something or someone.
In fact, I already had.
I held Sia closer, saying nothing. I drew fingers down her warm skin and focused my attention on that instead.
“Maxim?”
She didn’t want me to respond to her. She wouldn’t want to know the truth. Sia turned on my chest, her arm rested firmly against my heart. I didn’t want her there…in my heart, but she was woven so intricately inside me. My soul couldn’t differentiate hers from my own.
“It was you. Everything that happened to him,” she said.
She didn’t sound frightened by what she clearly uncovered, but she had seen me take a man’s life before. She’d seen me do it more than once.
I squeezed her arm, choosing my next words carefully. I feared going mad talking about this topic. Someone hurting her… My eyes narrowed. “Why did you let me take you so rough, malyshka ? Do those things to you…”
Why did she let me have her? Touch her. I shouldn’t have, and she should have told me about her past. Had I known I never would have?—
Her hand touched my face. The warmth reached the darkest parts of my soul. Her head shook. “You’re not him.”
Him…
I growled. “You should have never let me take you in such a way. All the things we’ve done sexually. The vineyard…” My jaw moved. “If I had known, things would have been completely different.”
I never would have touched her. I never would have put a claim on her after knowing what she’d been through.
The fucker who hurt her had sung like a canary.
He had after he pissed himself, and the vomit came after I cut off each one of his fingers. I took a digit for every one he’d placed on her.
And it still wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
“Maxim.” She made me face her in that moment, her touch guiding me. Her mouth turned down. “You’re not him. You’re not that monster.”
I was a monster. Just a different kind. My hand ran down her wrist. “He touched you.”
He did, nightly , and she’d been a child. He said the abuse went on for a whole year until she stopped it. She set the fucker’s house on fire, and he only let her go because his wife wanted Sia out of their home. She was a ‘problem child’, his wife said.
I wanted to kill her too. I wanted to slaughter anyone who’d ever hurt her or wronged her. Sia had been thrust back into the system like a problem when some fucker had abused her. She put her trust in someone only to have the trust violated…
Then, when she should have had allies after the abuse, she got trapped in a flawed system. I knew her records. Juvie had been Sia’s punishment after the fire when all she had done was try to defend herself. The drugs had obviously come later, and who could blame her?
It was a miracle she was alive.
I cradled her closer and would fuse her to me if I could. “He touched you and got away with it.” And yes, I ended him. The fucker more than deserved it, but death wasn’t enough for him. My heart charged harder. “He’s the reason for the drugs.”
He was the reason she had a drug problem.
It all made sense.
That asswipe was the reason for everything wrong in her life, and she didn’t even have to tell me. I knew darkness in my world, and there was always a reason for an action. Something happened, and there was always an equal and opposite reaction.
This was my own life: my own darkness the reason for my entire being. My family was taken from me too young, and I did what I had to do to avenge them. I continued on my father’s legacy, but only after I took care of who wronged him.
My mother had been first.
A money-hungry opportunist, she used and abused my father before leaving him and going onto the next. My father wasn’t a wealthy man, but she took everything he had before abandoning him and our family.
She paid for that, my first kill, but the most important one came years later. It came after Natan found me and offered me a better life. He discovered a screwed up kid and helped him overcome the corrupt system that landed him there. My father was murdered after all he’d done was give his life to a family. The Novikovs. My dad was their family doctor and was killed himself after Nikolai Novikov was done with him.
Nikolai Novikov was rotting in the earth now thanks to my blade. That was where he belonged, and Natan, the rightful pakhan, was now head of the Bratva in Chicago. I loathed any and all kinds of corruption. I loathed when people took advantage of others for their own selfish gain.
Sia’s abuser was lucky all I did was carve him to pieces.
“I tried school once before,” she said, gratefully taking me out of my thoughts. They were headed to the darkest of places and not so easy to come back from. She placed her head on my chest. “I tried community college before. It didn’t work out.”
“Because you saw him.” Once more, she didn’t have to tell me. “ Malyshka… ”
“I,” she paused, sniffing a little before rubbing her noise. Her eyes were red, and she closed them. “I didn’t know he taught there. I actually thought he was still practicing. When I’d been a kid, he was a vet. He taught me so many things. He…” She shook her head. “I saw him, and I couldn’t handle it. I went on a bender and dropped out of school after the first week. I’d never even tried drugs before, but I couldn’t deal.”
And why was she expected to? She wasn’t.
My mind spun with thoughts, the urge to kill in my fingers. I incinerated that fucker’s body in the end. This was one of the usual ways we got rid of bodies at Peters & Burg, but usually the body was dead before that.
He hadn’t been, and the sounds of his screams were a symphony to my ears. The flames claimed the last remains of his life, but now, I was wishing for an even slower death. One that involved animals and feeding.
She trusted this man, and now, I knew why she was so good with animals. Why she loved Polly and tried so hard with her. For me.
There was no reason kindness should be in Sia’s heart. Not when it’d been so betrayed.
I let her go, and her eyes narrowed in response. I sat up. “Why did you let me touch you?”
I hadn’t been gentle with her, or even kind, the majority of the time we’d been intimate. It wasn’t my usual way .
“Maxim?”
My head was in my hands, but I faced her. She addressed me and deserved respect, but it was so hard to look into her brown eyes. There was so much innocence there even though someone attempted to steal it.
She shook her head, a wash of curls skating across her shoulders. “Anything you did I wanted.”
“Sia—”
“No.” Her voice radiated in my bedroom, the flames from the fireplace flicking off the flushed tones of her skin. She was beautiful, so goddamn beautiful. Her fingers wrapped in my hair. “You have always been clear with me. You’ve respected me, and you’ve always asked for consent. You never took anything from me.”
But didn’t I? My chest felt caved in, and once more, she made me face her. She pressed her forehead to my temple. “I feel… I feel powerful with you. Like I have control. I have control, and you’ve given that back to me. You always have. You always make me feel safe, Maxim.”
She was wrong. I didn’t give her anything. It was her who took it back. I closed my eyes. “I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you.”
“You didn’t. You never did. You are safety to me. You make me feel so safe, Maxim. I’ve always felt safe with you.”
“You know nothing about me, malyshka ,” I finally faced her, no longer taking the coward’s way out. “You know nothing about the man I am, or the things I’ve done.”
She’d only seen a fraction of my darkness and had no idea what I was capable of. My soul was coal black and hers was pure white like fallen snow from my home country. Snow was so beautiful in Russia, just like her.
“I do know you.” Her lips were warm against mine, soft, and, weak again, I didn’t fight them. She pressed harder. “You showed me who you are. You’ve shown me so much love.”
It was her who showed me love. She’d done the impossible.
She managed to love a monster.
There was no place in my life for so much goodness. Good things died in my wake, but here she was. She was giving herself to me when she got on my lap, and I spread her legs that night once more. I wanted to be someone she could love.
I wanted to be someone she deserved.