ELENA #2
“I never wanted any of this.” The words come out rough now. “I never wanted his money, his structures, his lessons, his goddamn paperwork. I wanted a law degree and my own apartment and a boring life where nobody discussed me like a route or a shipment or some asset in reserve.”
My eyes burn. I hate it.
He says nothing.
“I signed pages because I was tired,” I go on. “Because he lied and he was my father and I was nineteen and I thought the worst thing he could do was trap me socially or financially.” My breath catches hard. “I didn’t know he was building me into this.”
Maksim’s expression changes then, and he looks all the more beautiful for it. His eyes narrow and catch the light from the window. “I know,” he says.
“No, you don’t.” I step closer to the desk. “You keep acting like I have to adapt faster because your world is old and brutal and organized. I didn’t choose it.”
His gaze sharpens. “And if I let choice govern this situation, you would be dead or married off to a worse beast by the weekend.”
I flinch and he rises.
“I’m not doing this,” he says, each word flat, “out of the goodness of my heart. I’m doing it because control is the only thing standing between you and men who would use your body, your name, and your signatures for settlement.”
I hate him for being right, and more for saying it plainly. “Then give me something,” I say, lifting my palms helplessly. “I won’t sit here like furniture while you decide what happens to me.”
His face closes. “No.”
My eyes sting as I try to hold my own. “I’m not asking to run.”
“You are asking for movement. That means visibility, and that leads to risk.”
“I’m asking for air.” My hands shake, and I curl them into fists. “Shops. A church. A bookstore. Half an hour in a place that doesn’t smell like your walls.”
His eyes go dark. “You’re not walking free through town while half the region would like to know whether the listed girl is still alive.”
I’m seconds away from stomping my feet on the ground. “I’m not a ghost. All I’m asking is for access to the outside world for a little while.”
“No,” he agrees. “You’re the center of a dispute.”
The anger comes up fast and hot. “Then stop talking to me like I’m a filing.”
His brows crease into a frown. “I’m the only one in this house not doing that.”
I roll my eyes at that. “Congratulations.”
I mean it to cut, but he moves around the desk so fast I almost don’t register it before he’s right in front of me, close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him.
“You want freedom?” he asks. “Earn it in pieces. Learn the rules. Stop making me guess whether you understand the danger.”
“I understand it,” I shoot back. “I understand it every time a door locks behind me.”
His hand comes up to my jaw, and his hold is possessive in a way that makes fury and heat rise together in my body. “You understand the cage,” he says. “Not yet the wolves.”
Something inside me snaps, and I tilt my head upward to capture his mouth.
I kiss him because I’m angry and humiliated and shaking and because he’s standing there talking to me like my life belongs on a board between armed men. I kiss him to shut him up.
For one stunned second, he doesn’t move.
Then his hand slides to the back of my neck and he kisses me back hard enough to make my knees threaten me. It’s dark and delicious and full of the awful fact that I have wanted to do this since he first looked at me like he knew exactly how difficult I was going to be.
His mouth is hot. Mine hurts where the split lip hasn’t fully healed, but I can’t stop. His other hand catches my waist. I grab his shirt. He backs me one step, then another, until the desk edge hits my hip.
He breaks the kiss first, and we both breathe like we’ve been running. His forehead nearly touches mine. “That,” he says in a voice gone rough, “was a terrible idea.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Neither of us moves. Then I push at his chest and step back. “I still want terms.”
For a second, I think he’ll refuse out of sheer male pride.
But all he does is study me while his jaw works.
A moment later, he says, “Two outings a week. Daylight only. Car, driver, and two-man detail. Route cleared in advance. No improvisation. No disappearing into shops alone. If I cancel, you don’t argue in public. ”
I stare at him. “That’s it?”
“Don’t consider it a gift,” he says. “It’s nothing more than a concession, and if you break it once, it ends.”
I swallow. “Fine.”
His mouth curves without warmth. “You say that now.”
I straighten my coat with fingers that don’t feel entirely steady. “I always mean it when I say it.”
“That,” he says, looking at my mouth once before forcing his gaze away, “is the part I don’t believe.”
I leave before I do something else reckless.
That night, unable to sleep, I step into the corridor outside my room for water and stop when I hear voices drifting up from the service stairs below.
Two women. Staff. “…told you, he changed the whole dinner seating because of her.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means something. The listed girl’s already under his skin.”
A pause. Then, lower, “God help anyone who tries to take her now.”
I go still with one hand locked around the banister, and for a second I can hear nothing but the blood beating in my ears as the truth settles in hard and cold.
Maksim’s protection hasn’t ended anything. It’s only changed the shape of the fight, and somewhere beyond these walls there are still men willing to come for me, only now, they’ll come knowing exactly whose hands they’ll have to tear through first.