ELENA
The doctor arrives near evening with a black bag and tired eyes.
She checks my ribs, my face, my pupils, my wrists. I answer what I have to and keep the rest behind my teeth while Maksim stands by the door the whole time.
Her fingers press along my side, and I suck in a breath before I can stop it.
“Bruised ribs,” she says. “Possibly muscle strain between the ribs. I don’t feel anything displaced, but she needs rest, ice, and no sudden movement for a few days.”
Maksim’s eyes move to me. I look at the floor.
The doctor cleans the scrape at my wrist, wraps it, then checks the bruising at my shoulder. “Ointment twice a day. Light bandage where the skin is broken. I’ll leave something for pain.”
My face tightens before my brain can stop it.
Her eyes flick to mine. She sees it.
“I need to speak with her alone,” she says.
Maksim doesn’t move. “Why?”
“Because she’s my patient.”
He stares at the doctor, then at me.
“Give me a minute,” I say.
He steps outside and shuts the door.
The doctor waits until his footsteps move away. I look at the pills in her hand.
“I’m pregnant,” I say. “Seven weeks.”
Her face stays calm, but she puts the stronger pills back in the bag. “Then paracetamol only. No sedatives unless I clear them.”
“He can’t know.”
“Then don’t make me guess again,” she says. “That’s how secrets get dangerous.”
When Maksim comes back in, she closes her bag. “Rest, food, fluids, and paracetamol if the pain gets too much. Nothing stronger tonight.”
Maksim looks at the bag, then at me, and for one second I wonder if the secret has already started showing.
When she leaves, the house gets still again.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“My men clean the estate. Leonid locks the paper trail.”
“And me?”
“You stay here.”
“With you?”
“With me, yes.”
Maksim cooks dinner himself. Buckwheat, mushrooms, onions, and chicken thighs browned in a cast-iron pan, with sour cream and dill on the side. He works without asking me to praise it.
We eat by the fireplace, plates balanced on our knees.
“You cook?” I ask.
He cuts into his chicken. “You’re eating it.”
“It’s delicious,” I say between mouthfuls.
The first day holds. On the second, I start counting sounds. By the third, I know the house too well.
The faces change routinely. One man carries groceries in and leaves through the side gate. Another walks the fence with a phone to his ear. A different car sits two houses down, engine off, windows reflecting the street.
No one stands at the door. No one looks like a guard. When I test one with a question near the kitchen entrance, he gives me a polite nod and keeps moving.
Maksim moves through it with a schedule he never writes down. He checks the doors in the morning, the windows after lunch, and the locks before dark.
Irina comes in the mornings, and the house shifts for a while because she fills the kitchen with movement and talk, and I find myself standing there just to listen.
She wipes the counters, sets water to boil, and tells me things, and I listen to her anyway because it breaks the stretch of hours that sit too still.
She tells me about winters that froze pipes solid and men who broke ice with hammers before breakfast, and then she moves on to women she knows now, women with businesses, office keys, and no patience for permission.
But her stories run out and circle back on themselves, and the kitchen goes back to being just a room with a table and a stove.
Irina finishes her work and leaves before noon, and the door closes behind her without a sound.
Every evening, Maksim changes the dressing on my wrist, checks the bruising at my ribs, and asks if I’ve taken the meds. I start resenting the pills less than the fact that he remembers.
He moves through the house with his phone in one hand and a gun close enough to reach.
He speaks to the men outside through half-open doors, and his voice never changes.
Orders come clean and clipped, whether he’s telling Dima over the phone to lock down a road, sending a guard to check the shed, or telling me to sit before my ribs make the choice for me.
“Abramov takes internal security until I say otherwise,” he tells Dima on the phone. “Anyone who has a problem with that can bring it to me.”
Then, through the kitchen door, he tells one of the men, “Front lane twice before dark. No headlights after the turn.”
He turns to me and points at the chair. “Sit.”
I look at him over the rim of my cup. “Same voice for everyone?”
“You’re the only one who argues with it.”
He cooks every meal because he doesn’t trust anyone else near my food. Eggs and black bread in the morning. Soup at lunch. Meat, potatoes, buckwheat, mushrooms at night. He sets the plate in front of me, stays near the table, and waits until I pick up the fork.
By the weekend, I’m worn down in places I can’t cover. The house has five doors, eight windows, two guards outside, and no way out that doesn’t pass through Maksim. My phone is gone. His side room stays locked. His laptop shuts whenever I get close.
At dinner, it finally catches.
He sets down chicken cutlets, fried potatoes, and cucumbers with dill, then waits beside my chair.
I don’t touch the fork.
“Elena,” he says.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You said that at lunch.”
“And it stayed true.”
His hand settles on the back of the chair across from me. “Eat.”
I look up at him. “Give orders to the men outside.”
“I do.”
“Then go enjoy that.”
His jaw works once, and he pulls the chair out. “You’re pale, you’re sore, and you’re running on tea and spite.”
“At least one of those is working.”
“Not enough.”
I push my chair back, and the sound cuts across the room.
“Elena.”
I keep walking, and I don’t turn when he says my name again, because if I stop, I might go back and sit down and do what he says, and I’m not ready to give him that.
I shut the door in my room and sit on the edge of the bed, and my hands don’t stay still, so I press them into the mattress and focus on something solid.
The house moves in pieces I can track, a step here, a door there, his voice once, then nothing. I lie back, close my eyes, and get nowhere with it.
Every time I drift, I see him on the road, his face hard, his hands moving, his body cutting through men before they could get set. Then it changes, and I feel him close again, one hand at my waist, holding me up because it mattered that I stayed on my feet.
I turn onto my side and pull the blanket up, then push it away again because it doesn’t help, and I sit up with my heart beating hard against my ribs.
Upstairs, a board gives once, and I know where it is without checking.
His room. I stand, step into the hall, and move slowly, one hand on the wall, because the floor gives in places and I don’t want to draw the guard’s attention. I climb the stairs. His door is closed.
I stop in front of it and stay there, listening to nothing I can use. Then I lift my hand and touch the handle. He’s inside, head down, reading something. He looks up when he sees me enter and his brows knit in a question. “Elena?”