ELENA
Maksim takes off his fur-lined coat and wraps it around my shoulders.
The coat is heavy and still warm from his body, and it drops over me almost to my knees.
He pulls the front closed across my chest with both hands, and for one second, he isn’t giving orders over blood and wreckage.
He’s just keeping me covered. I hate that I need it, and I hate more that I lean into the warmth anyway.
He steps closer, putting himself between me and the men around us.
My shoulder burns where someone slammed me into the car, and my stomach tightens in small waves that scare me more than the bruises.
I press one hand under the coat, over my lower belly, just a second.
Then I drop it and square my shoulders, pulling the coat tighter around me as I force myself to stand steady in front of his men.
Maksim notices anyway. His eyes dip once, then return to my face.
“Dima,” he says to one of his men.
Dima steps forward, broad chest, blood on his sleeve. “Pakhan?”
“Take two teams back to the estate,” Maksim says. “Check every room. Count every man. Pull Karpov’s people out and line them up.”
My stomach tightens so hard, I almost bend. Karpov. I hear his voice again in my head, calm, careful, talking about status and recognition and what other houses might do if Maksim didn’t act first. He didn’t sound reckless then. He sounded practical. That’s the ugly part.
“And find the security chief,” Maksim adds, his voice turning harder. “Alive, if he’s smart enough to surrender.”
Dima’s jaw sets. “Understood.”
Maksim turns to another man, his hand still holding mine. “Ilya.”
“Here.”
“Hold the outer roads. No one leaves this zone without my say.”
“Got it.”
The driver is already at the wheel, engine running, one hand on the gear shift. The headlights catch the wrecked cars, the bodies, and the blood on the gravel. Karpov’s man lies crumpled near the rear tire, the tablet he carried shattered beside him, its screen dark. I look away before I see more.
Maksim keeps his hand at my waist as he moves me toward the car, and I let him because arguing takes more strength than I have right now.
“Can you walk?” he asks.
“Yes.” I nod my head. The answer comes out too fast, and his mouth tightens because he hears the lie in it.
“I asked if you can walk,” he says, “not if your pride wants to.”
“I can walk.”
“Then walk with me.”
He takes my elbow and slows his steps to match mine. The coat slips off one shoulder. He fixes it without looking down. The simple care almost undoes me. I make it three steps before my knees dip. His grip tightens right away, firm enough to catch me and controlled enough not to hurt.
“Breathe,” he says.
“I’m breathing,” I say, but my voice comes out hoarse.
The back door is already open. I lower myself into the seat, biting the inside of my cheek when my ribs pull.
“Badly,” he says, then braces one hand at my waist and helps me settle.
He fixes his coat around my shoulders, then reaches across me and draws the seat belt over my body.
His eyes flick to mine. “You’re safe in this car,” he says.
I look at him. Blood on his knuckles. Dirt on his shirt. His jaw locked, his eyes hard, his control held in place because I’m within reach now and alive. I could be afraid of him, but right now I’m afraid of everything outside this car.
“I know,” I say, and my throat closes around it.
He nods once, then gets in beside me and shuts the door. Another man slides into the front seat, and the car pulls out.
I lift my head off the seat and turn toward him. “Where are we going?”
Maksim sits beside me with one arm set behind my shoulders, his other hand braced along the back of the seat, holding me steady as the car takes the turn. “We’re not going back.” That’s all I get.
The man in the front glances over his shoulder, waiting.
“Take the river road,” Maksim says. “Call ahead to the second house. I want Irina there and two outside, no one else.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
Morning starts to break across the sky, dull light spreading over shuttered gas stations and wet pavement where the frost has started to give. The road bends along the water and the buildings thin out into long stretches of trees as the city drops away.
My hands won’t stay still, so I lock them together in my lap.
He notices.
“Look at me,” he says.
I turn, and the movement pulls at my jaw. I wince before I can stop it.
“Where are you hurt?”
“My shoulder,” I say, swallowing. “My ribs. My jaw. They tried to push me into another car and I fought it.”
His face tightens and holds there, and I see it settle in his mouth and around his eyes, but his voice stays even. “Anything bleeding?”
“No.”
“Head?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I want, but I keep it steady.
He watches me another second, then turns forward. “You need a doctor.”
My chest closes. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“Yes.”
I look away, pressing my shoulder back into the seat. There’s no arguing with Maksim, but I can't see a doctor. Not now.
The lane narrows between high fences and old brick walls, and the houses sit set back behind gates with curtains pulled. A small shop stands closed with its shutter down, and the pavement in front of it stays empty as we pass.
The SUV slows past a row of squat houses and turns in behind a green metal gate.
I stay in the back seat with Maksim’s coat wrapped around me, watching through the window as the man from the front passenger seat gets out first. He walks the fence line with his phone in one hand, checks the side yard, the rear gate, and the next stretch of road.
A curtain moves in the house across the lane, then settles.
A dog barks once, and somewhere farther down, a woman drags a trash bin to the curb without looking our way.
The man finishes his sweep at the far corner where the trees thicken behind the property, takes one final look through the branches, then signals all clear and circles back toward the SUV. The driver comes out and opens Maksim’s door. He gets out and walks toward the house.
An older Russian woman steps onto the porch with thick wool socks in one hand and a pair of worn felt boots in the other.
She wears a dark wool dress, a gray cardigan buttoned wrong at the top, and her white hair is pinned back in a loose knot.
Her face breaks into a toothless smile the second she sees Maksim.
“Maksim,” she says, and the name comes out rough with affection.
“Nanny,” he says, and his voice changes enough to make me look at him. For one second, he looks less ready to break someone’s neck.
She comes down the porch steps faster than I expect and shoves the socks against his chest. “Put these on her before you let her stand on that gravel.”
Maksim takes them without arguing. “Irina.”
“Don’t use that voice with me,” she says, then points at me. “She’s hurt, and she’s cold. Move.”
Maksim crouches at the open door before I can decide whether to fight the help.
His fingers close around my ankle with care, and he slides the thick socks over my feet first, then works the felt boots on one at a time.
They’re old, warm, and a little big, and something about wearing another woman’s emergency footwear makes my throat tighten.
Maksim stands and offers his hand again. “Now you can get down.”
I take his hand because falling face-first in borrowed boots would hand him the argument forever.
“I’ve got you,” he says, his voice controlled as his fingers settle over the coat.
“I didn’t ask you to,” I mutter.
“No,” he says, guiding me away from the SUV. “You made that very clear.”
We cross the yard slowly. I keep one hand at my ribs and the other fisted in his coat while the boots drag over the gravel.
The house looks used in small ways by people who don’t waste things.
A bare apple tree stands near the fence, its branches cut back hard for winter.
Behind it, black currant canes line a narrow garden bed, and a rowan tree near the lane holds a few red berries the birds haven’t stripped yet.
A stack of split wood sits under a tarp by the porch, and an old broom leans against the wall as if forgotten after use.
Irina looks me over from my face to the coat to the boots, and her expression changes when she sees the way Maksim holds me.
“Come inside, child,” she says. “You need heat and tea before these men start barking orders around my kitchen.”
Maksim gives her a look as he helps me up the porch step. “Irina.”
She waves him off. “I raised you. I know the sound.”
That gets my attention more than the men with guns.
Maksim’s hand stays at my waist as I cross the threshold. The entry is narrow, with hooks crowded by old coats, a bench under them, and a mat lined with cracked boots. Warmth reaches my face, and the smells of soup, wood polish, and old wool settle around me before I can brace for them.
Irina shuts the door behind us and taps the bench with her foot. “Sit if you need to take those off.”
“She’s keeping them on,” Maksim says, eyes on the front window.
Irina reaches for his sleeve and smacks it with two fingers. “She can answer.”
I sit because standing isn’t worth the fight. I look straight at Maksim, and he meets my eyes like he already knows what I need before I say it. “I’m keeping them on for now,” I say.
“Good girl,” Irina says, then turns toward the kitchen. “Tea first, then soup if your stomach behaves.”
Irina gives the orders. For once, Maksim has the look of a man being managed.
His cuff rides back when he adjusts the coat around my shoulders, and I catch the edge of black ink at his wrist, old letters worked into the skin near a scar.
The marks shift when his fingers tighten on the wool, bending the same way they had when his hand held my jaw and his thumb pressed under my chin. I look away.
Irina calls from the kitchen, “Bring her here, Maksim. She can sit by the window, and you can stop blocking my doorway.”
“I am not blocking it,” he says, but he moves.