ELENA
Iwake in his bed before he does, and for a few seconds, I stay flat on my back with the blanket pulled to my chest. The ceiling above me feels unfamiliar, the angle of the roof cutting the room in a way that makes it feel smaller, closer.
I’ve been in this house with him for days, close enough to track his steps on the stairs and hear his voice through the walls, close enough to sit across from him at the table and push back while he keeps control.
Last night broke that.
I turn to face him. Maksim is still asleep on his side, one arm bent under his head, the other stretched toward where I am.
His shirt hangs from the bedpost, my dress folded over the back of a chair.
I look at him again, his skin marked where I held on too hard last night, and there’s something about seeing him like this, unguarded, not watching every door, that makes me stop.
For a few seconds, I don’t move. Outside, the safehouse comes to life in pieces. Men shift positions. Downstairs, Irina moves a pan on the stove and mutters at someone, because men with weapons still put cups in the wrong place.
Maksim’s fingers flex against my stomach, soft and close, making sure I’m still there.
“You’re awake,” he says, his voice rough against my shoulder.
“So are you,” I say.
He doesn’t let me get away with that. His hand tightens at my waist, and he rolls me onto my back in one clean move. His leg settles over mine, holding me there, and his mouth finds my neck, hot and rough.
“You smell good,” he says against my skin.
I let out a small breath. My hand slides up his arm, fingers pressing into muscle, tracing the lines of old marks.
“You slept?” he says, brushing his mouth over mine.
“A little,” I mumble.
“Good.”
“That’s it?” I look at him. “That’s your morning speech?”
His mouth curls, almost a smile. “I was told not to start the day by giving orders.”
“Irina?” I ask, and my voice catches when his teeth catch my ear.
I push him away and roll out of bed, laughing. My feet hit the wooden floor, and I wince at the cold.
He exhales through his nose, then sits up and reaches for his shirt. “She has said worse,” he says and tosses the blanket toward me.
The bed creaks when he stands. He crosses to the table and picks up his phone, broad shoulders bare, scars running over his ribs and one shoulder, and I know where they sit under my hands now. I pull the blanket higher as the attic feels cooler without him beside me.
I walk to the chair, pull on my dress, and smooth it down. My hand settles low on my stomach for a second, steadying on my own breath before I drop it. I glance back once, catch him by the window, then tug my hem straight and head for the door.
Downstairs, Irina is already moving. She stands at the stove with a kettle in hand, her back straight, her movements sure. She glances at me once, then pours tea without asking.
“You sleep?” she asks.
“Enough.”
She nods and pushes a cup toward me.
I take it and step outside.
The yard is small and uneven, grass worn thin in patches, a narrow path leading toward the fence. Trees press in close enough to block most of the road, and one of Maksim’s men moves along the edge, turning his head just enough to cover every angle.
I walk the length of the yard once, then again, letting my body loosen where it can. My ribs pull, but less than before. I breathe deeper on the second pass and keep going.
“Don’t wander too far,” the guard says.
“I’m in the yard,” I answer without looking at him.
“You’d be surprised how far people go without noticing.”
I stop, turn, and look at him straight. “You’d be surprised how much I notice.”
He holds my gaze, then nods once and looks away first.
I turn back and he keeps walking.
Maksim joins me with a cup of tea still steaming in his hand. He takes one sip, and his eyes change.
“This is good,” he says.
I look at his face, at the faint crease near his eyes, the way his mouth eases for half a second over one hot cup of tea. Small things get through to him. He’d hate that I noticed.
Then his phone buzzes.
His face shuts down at once, and the Pakhan is back before he even looks at the screen.
I walk inside and find Irina in the kitchen. She tells me no when I reach for the dishes, so I ignore her and start drying bowls because my hands need work before my head starts eating itself.
After a minute, she glances toward the window. “There’s a small grocery nearby.”
Maksim is already at the kitchen door, one hand on the frame, one ankle crossed over the other. “Let’s go.”
Irina hands me a cloth bag.
I take it, and we walk.
The guard walks behind us, casual enough to pass for a man on an errand. Inside, he stays near the door, where he can watch the street through the window and the cashier behind the counter.
The shop is narrow and warm, with canned fish by the entrance, pickles along the wall, bread in paper sleeves, potatoes in crates, tea packets on a wire rack, and a freezer case humming too hard. Maksim takes a basket before I can.
“I can carry groceries,” I say.
“You can choose them.”
“How generous.” I scowl at him.
“I’m improving,” he says and drops the eggs into the basket.
The cashier keeps her eyes on the register, wisely unavailable for couple warfare.
I choose buckwheat, lemons, apples, eggs, sour cream, black bread, ginger biscuits, and a small jar of honey for Irina, even though she’ll pretend she didn’t ask. Maksim adds butter, smoked fish, broth bones, and a box of tea after he sees me touch it.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“You touched it.”
“I touch many things,” I say, setting apples into the basket.
His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second. “I noticed.”
He pays in cash while the guard shifts at the door. For ten minutes, we buy food in a small grocery, and I hate how close it feels to normal.
In the afternoon, we sit at the kitchen table with tea, bread, and broth Maksim keeps pushing toward me. He sits across from me with his sleeves rolled up, and I keep both hands around the cup.
“You think Sergei wanted to trade me?” I ask.
“He wanted to display you first,” Maksim says. “Alive, scared, and visible. That would prove he could still move the structure he built around your name.”
“And Karpov?”
“Karpov wanted my men to know he could reach me through you.”
I look toward the window, where the guard passes the fence with his phone at his ear. “He was right.”
Maksim’s cup stops halfway to his mouth. “No.”
“He got me out.”
“He lost men and exposed himself.”
“He still got me out.”
Maksim sets the cup down. “He opened a wound. That isn’t winning.”
I press my thumb into the cup handle. “You really believe this house buys us time?”
“It changes the pattern. The estate was expected. This place makes men work harder for less certainty.”
“I don’t trust certainty.”
“Good,” he says, then stands and checks the window lock.
Two days later, Maksim says we are going back to the estate.
I am halfway down the safehouse stairs when he tells me, and my hand locks around the rail hard enough to hurt.
The estate comes back at once. The corridor.
The alarm. A hand over my mouth. Men dragging me through a service passage while the house broke behind me.
I remember the smell of the cloth, the shove into the vehicle, and the words they used because dead women are worth less than movable ones.
Maksim steps down until he is beside me. “Elena.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re standing here trying to turn panic into manners.”
Something in me snaps. “Don’t manage me.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you what I see,” he says, his eyes shifting from my fingers to my face. He then offers his hand, a choice I can refuse.
I take it.
His grip closes around mine, warm and firm. “You walk in with me. No one moves behind you without my order. If you stop, we stop.”
I nod.
“What about Mrs. Wentworth?” I ask after we reach the bottom.
“She got out through the service corridor when the alarm tripped. Lidiya pulled her into the laundry room and locked both of them inside the supply cage until my men cleared the wing.” He gives a short laugh. “Lidiya told me which way you went.”
“She did that?”
“She also hit one of Karpov’s men with a fire extinguisher.”
I almost laugh, and it scrapes my ribs. “I underestimated her.”
“So did he.”
The estate looks the same from the drive, iron gates, dark trees, floodlights, stone steps, and men posted in clean lines. Inside, powerful men stare at us from the portraits on the stair landing, and the rugs drink our footsteps, but the old rhythm is gone.
Mrs. Wentworth waits near the table with her silver hair pinned tight and her hands folded. A faint bruise yellows near her wrist. Lidiya stands behind her with one sleeve pulled down over what looks like a bandage, and the older house staff line the hall with careful faces and tired eyes.
“Elena,” Mrs. Wentworth says. “I’m pleased to see you standing.”
“Thank you,” I murmur as she pulls a chair for me.
The house works again, but it doesn’t breathe right. Guards check names twice, staff slow at corners, and every door closes hard. Karpov got inside once, and everyone remembers which hall opened for him.
We return to the legal room because trauma doesn’t clear the schedule. Binders cover the table, registry copies sit beside route charts, and old approval packets sit open under the green lamps. Maksim stands at one end with his sleeves rolled up while I trace Sergei’s gaps with a pencil.
“This connects to the fallback company,” I say, tapping the page.
Leonid bends over the paper. “She’s right.”
Maksim’s hand rests on the back of my chair. “Keep going.”
For a while, things get easier between us, or as easy as they can get in a house with armed men at the doors. He tells me more before I have to pull it out of him, and I stop treating every cup of tea like a trap.
Once a week, I get an outing with guards, so I wear the lavender dress I bought earlier and make the trip count.
I buy warm rolls and cookies from the bakery, then I make a pretext of stopping at the pharmacy and take out the printout inside my bag to check what I need.
Folic acid. The other medicine. I fold the paper back carefully, put it away, and let the pharmacist pack everything without looking at the guards behind me.
On the way back to the estate, I see the cologne Maksim wears in a glass case and buy it before I can talk myself out of it. It feels stupid and personal enough to make me happy, so I tuck it into my handbag instead of the cloth bag with the bread and medicine.
By the time I return, evening has settled over the estate, and I’m late enough that I expect Maksim to be waiting with questions.
He isn’t in the legal room. I find him in the estate kitchen with his sleeves pushed up, an apron tied around his middle and a knife in his hand.
Only this time, the knife is for vegetables.
He looks up from the mushrooms and stills for a second. “That color suits you,” he says. “It pulls the hazel out of your eyes.”
On the counter are onions, mushrooms, thin strips of beef, sour cream, dill, butter, and buckwheat measured into a bowl. A pot rolls on the stove, and a skillet waits beside it.
“You’re cooking?” I ask from the doorway.
“I’m managing heat, timing, and knives,” he says without looking up.
“That’s cooking.”
“That’s command with vegetables.”
He browns the beef in butter, fast enough to keep it tender, then lifts it out and adds onions and mushrooms to the same pan.
The smell fills the kitchen, rich and familiar.
He stirs in broth, mustard, black pepper, and sour cream, then folds the beef back through the sauce with dill.
The buckwheat steams in another pot, and he fluffs it with a fork before covering it again.
My chest tightens when I understand what he is making. Beef stroganoff, the real kind, the kind I watched on a cooking show one evening.
“How did you know?” I ask.
He sets plates on the table, then adds warm bread wrapped in a towel, pickles in a shallow dish, sliced apples, and two glasses. “You watched it on television. Your face changed when the cook added dill.”
“You noticed that?”
“I notice you.”
He pours vodka for himself, the good kind from a heavy bottle with a label I recognize because Sergei once served it to men he wanted to impress. Then he reaches for my glass, pauses when I cover it with my hand, and looks at me.
“No vodka?” he asks.
“I don’t want it tonight.”
His eyes stay on my face for one beat too long. “Water, then.”
He pours without comment, but I feel his attention as he sets the glass near my plate. I pick up my fork before he can ask anything else.
The food settles warmly in my stomach. The sauce is rich, the buckwheat is buttery, and the dill cuts through the beef in a way that makes me take another bite. For the first time in days, eating doesn’t feel like a task.
Maksim eats slowly, watching me finish half the plate before he reaches for his vodka.
After dinner, I open my purse and take out the small bottle of musk perfume I bought for Maksim.
He looks at it, then at me. His thumb brushes sauce from my lower lip.
“Thank you,” he mouths, then leans in and kisses me.
Later, in my room, I don’t clear anything. I leave the bag on the small table beside the rolls and medicine, climb into bed with warmth still in my stomach and his scent still on my skin, and sleep comes fast.
The next morning, after a shower, I sit on the edge of the bed and start sorting through the things I left on the table last night.
Cookies. Warm rolls gone cold. Tea. Apples.
The small box of folic acid I kept tucked under folded napkins.
I line everything up with careful hands, then open my bag and reach for the inner pocket where I keep the clinic printout.
My fingers touch lining. Nothing else. I check again, slower this time.
The printout is gone.
My hands start shaking before I let myself understand it.