Elena
For three days after the meeting, I do everything I can to avoid being alone with Maksim anywhere with a door.
It goes about as well as you’d expect.
This house is built for people to run into each other.
Corridors pinch at the worst times. Stair landings put us face-to-face with nowhere to go.
A door opens and there he is, close enough that the memory of his mouth on mine hits first and the rest of me scrambles to catch up. We don’t talk. That makes it worse.
The house gets tighter after the meeting, which is fair, I guess.
A listed woman under Volkov protection is apparently the kind of household detail that earns fresh cameras, another guard post, and enough new locks to suggest everyone expects me to either get stolen or start a side business in escape attempts.
He gets more closed off in public. I get meaner.
Neither of us buys the act.
My days fill up anyway. The estate has decided I’m useful now, so nobody calls me a prisoner, but everyone starts treating me like I’ve been folded into the workflow.
Mrs. Wentworth sends food. Guards show up when I’m due outside and peel off when I’m not.
Twice that week, I’m driven into town under enough surveillance to start a small war.
I buy toiletries, stockings, a new notebook, two law books from a cramped little shop off the square, and a bottle of perfume I don’t need just because picking out toothpaste under guard makes me want to prove I still can.
When I get back from the second outing, there’s a tray waiting in my room.
Tea. Lemon. Toast with butter. A soft-boiled egg. Plain food, easy on the stomach. I stand over the tray for a second and just look at it.
Then I head downstairs, spot the first guard I know by name, and ask, “Did your boss send this?”
Exactly what I can handle when my head’s pounding and my mood’s gone to hell.
The guard keeps his face blank in that trained house way. “The kitchen was told, Miss.”
I take the tray back upstairs and drink the tea, anyway, annoyed by how fast it does its job.
That’s how he takes care of people. No speeches.
No soft looks. It comes dressed up as routine.
Eat. Sleep. Stay on cleared routes. Take the car.
Don’t disappear. And because apparently, control isn’t enough, he starts sending work too.
It happens this way. On the second day, I step into his ground-floor office and find him at the table with a handful of men already working. Leonid is there, papers spread out, glasses low on his nose. His face could sour milk.
I lean against the doorframe. “Am I interrupting something dull and expensive?”
One corner of Maksim’s mouth moves. “That depends. Have you come to fix it?”
The men at the table keep their faces straight. Leonid doesn’t even bother pretending he likes me here.
Maksim hooks two fingers around the back of the empty chair at his right and pulls it out. “Sit.”
Leonid clears his throat. “Pakhan, we’re in the middle of sequence review.”
“I know where we are,” Maksim says, not looking at him. Then his gaze comes back to me. “Sit down, Elena.”
I walk over and take the chair without giving him the satisfaction of hesitating.
The files are already open, three corporate names, one freight shell, one warehouse holding group, and one maintenance company that clearly exists to lie for the other two.
I can tell that much in ten seconds, which probably says bad things about my upbringing.
Leonid taps the first page with his pen. “The warehouse company stays insulated if the nominee layer holds. The registrar filings are already paid through, and the backdated continuation filing is old enough to blend.”
I look at the page, then the next one, then the signature sheet clipped behind it.
“No,” I say.
Nobody speaks.
Leonid’s jaw tightens. “No?”
I lift the last page. “Because this is wrong. The dates are trying too hard to look settled, and the signature chain doesn’t match the filing sequence. If anyone checks it properly, it won’t blend. It’ll stand out.”
Silence sits over the table for a beat.
After that, Maksim tells Leonid to send up another set of files for me to review. Keeping me busy, apparently, sounds better in Russian when it comes with folders.
It becomes a pattern.
On the fourth night, I can’t sleep.
My head is crowded with legal language, old anger, and the younger Italian on that screen saying unclaimed like he was talking about a package nobody had bothered to pick up.
I lie there for too long, staring at the ceiling, getting mad all over again.
Finally, I throw back the covers, pull a sweater over my nightdress, and go downstairs for water because apparently, rage now keeps the same hours as the rest of this house.
The kitchen lights are on.
I stop in the doorway.
Maksim is sitting alone at the long, scarred table under the hanging lamp, jacket gone, sleeves rolled once, collar open.
There’s food in front of him, black bread, cold roast meat, mustard, and a knife laid down any old way, which feels weirdly personal for a man who usually looks like he was born ironed.
A board leans beside him, marked up with names and arrows and a few notes pinned in place. Work, then.
He looks up when I step in.
For a second, neither of us says anything.
Then he says, “You need sleep.”
I head for the cupboard and take down a glass. “You need food that didn’t come out of a soldier’s backpack.”
His mouth shifts a little. “And yet.”
I fill the glass, drink half of it, then turn and sit across from him without asking. He doesn’t comment on that, either.
The silence between us isn’t easy, but it isn’t unbearable. It feels natural. That’s the part I don’t like. He tears bread. I spot a teapot left near the stove, pour myself some, and sit down. It’s after midnight. I’m in his kitchen. He’s across the table. I act like I belong here.
After a while, I nod at the board. “Which one’s ruining your night?”
He glances at it. “A hotel company that exists to lie.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
His eyes come back to me. “It is.”
I get up, walk over, and study the pages pinned there. It takes me a minute to see the problem. One of the approval chains breaks its own pattern halfway through. Somebody patched a missing step later and hoped nobody would look long enough to notice.
I tap the spot with one finger. “This is wrong.”
Behind me, his chair shifts. “Why?”
“Because whoever fixed it copied the format and forgot the timing. The first three approvals move cleanly. Then this one stalls, then jumps. Somebody filled a hole after the fact.”
He’s right behind me now. I feel it before he speaks.
“Can you prove it?”
“I can show you where to dig.”
That’s enough for him. He doesn’t need more once he sees where something fails and how to turn it.
When I turn back to the table, he’s already making something with the bread and meat. He adds mustard, folds it once, and holds it out to me.
I look at him. “What is this?”
“You’ve had water and tea.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Refusing on principle would be wiser, but I take it and eat standing there because my stomach picks this exact moment to betray me. The bread is fresh enough to give under my teeth, the meat is salted properly, and the mustard clears my head in one clean hit.
He goes back to his own plate like feeding me was nothing. I keep chewing, but my fingers press into the edge of the counter.
The next day, the weather lets up enough for me to take my tea outside in the side garden off the east terrace, stone path, clipped hedges, and two guards posted far enough back to pretend I’m getting fresh scenery instead of supervised yard time.
Mrs. Wentworth calls it a garden. I call it a prettier section of confinement.
I’m halfway down the path when a young delivery driver steps through the service gate with two stacked produce crates in his arms. He can’t be more than nineteen. Freckles, a cheap jacket, and trying too hard to look older than he is. He glances up, sees me, and slows.
That alone is enough to make one of the guards scowl.
The boy gives me a quick, crooked smile. “You’re the new one, right?”
I stop walking. “That’s one way to put it.”
He huffs a laugh and jerks his chin toward the house. “The whole place has been locked down for days. Thought maybe they brought in a politician.”
“Worse,” I say. “A law student.”
That gets a real grin out of him.
He opens his mouth again, probably to say something harmless and stupid, and then one of the guards is on him. Fast. Brutal. A hand to the throat, crates hitting stone, apples rolling, the boy slammed against the wall so hard his head cracks back.
“Don’t speak to her.”
I freeze for one second, then fury takes over.
“Stop it!”
The guard doesn’t. He cocks his arm back like the kid just pulled a weapon instead of making conversation. I step in, grab the guard’s sleeve, and he actually jerks away from me harder than he did from the boy.
The kid is red-faced and choking when the second guard drags him through the gate and out of sight. When I demand an explanation, the guard’s face goes stiff. “Karpov said no unnecessary familiarity,” he mutters.
That does it. I turn and head inside, furious enough to break something with a name on it.
Maksim is in the legal room with a folder open and his reading glasses in one hand. He looks up once, sees my face, and sets them down.
“What happened?”
I slam the door behind me. “Your dog put hands on a boy for talking to me.”
His jaw tightens. “Who?”
“Oh, good, we’re narrowing it down by breed now?” I snap.
“Elena.”
“No, don’t Elena me.” I walk straight to the shelves, then turn to him. “You don’t get to stand there and act like this is some minor staff issue. This is you. This house. This whole rotten setup where every man around me acts like I’m a bomb in a dress.”
His face closes off. “He forgot his place.”
I laugh right in his face. “Thank you for proving my point.”
He comes around the desk. “You’re angry.”
“I’m insulted.” My voice climbs anyway. “You keep wrapping this in protection, but what you want is control. You want me handled, watched, moved around, fed on schedule, spoken for, spoken about, and kept in a glass box until you decide I can breathe.”
“That’s not what this is.” He keeps his voice level.
“It’s exactly what this is,” I blurt. “You look at me and see a listed asset wrapped in skin.”
That lands. I see it hit him.
Then he moves.
One second, I’m standing there shaking with rage. The next, he’s got me backed into the shelf, one hand braced beside my head, the other locked around my waist hard enough to keep me in place.
“You want the truth?” he says, eyes locked on mine. “I am the only reason you haven’t already been claimed by worse men than me.”
For a second I just stare at him, breath coming fast, anger sitting right on top of the need to push him away.
He’s too close. I catch the clean, male heat of him, and I don’t want to give him an inch.
I could push him, even slap him, but my body moves first. My hand fists in the front of his shirt and I drag him down to my mouth hard enough to hurt.
He lets out a rough breath against my lips, and then he takes the kiss back from me.
He isn’t gentle, and he isn’t asking. His hand comes up, firm at my jaw, holding me where he wants me as his mouth presses harder, deeper, until I stop thinking and hold on.
It turns fast, heat, anger, something tight snapping loose.
He doesn’t slow down, doesn’t give me space to think, just keeps me there, held and answered in the same breath.