Chapter 7
Maksim
The estate feels like a museum of my former life.
Two days since the engagement party, and I still can't reconcile this place with the hell I survived. My old room is untouched. All the creature comforts I took for granted still grace the space. Soft bed. Expensive furniture. Views of Moscow that used to feel like looking at my future kingdom.
Now it just feels like a gilded cage.
Roman insisted I come home. Weird that he’s giving me permission to return to my home. Yes, my father is gone, but this is my home. If I hadn’t been ‘killed’ I would have inherited the place. I’m not entirely sure how Roman came to be in possession of Barinov property.
There was a lot I was still trying to understand.
The home once belonged to my grandfather and then my father inherited it as the new pakhan. I supposed Roman assumed that his role as the current head of the bratva entitled him to the property.
Maybe it did. The door opens without a knock.
I sense her without needing to see her. I smell her. Feel her.
I don't turn around. "Get out."
"Maksim—"
"I said get out." My voice comes out harsh, but I don't soften it. "I have nothing to say to you."
"Then listen." Kira closes the door behind her. I can hear the soft click. "Please. Just listen."
I turn to face her, and the sight hits me like it did in the garden.
She's beautiful—more beautiful than the memories that have plagued me every day for the last six years.
She's wearing simple clothes today, jeans and a sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She looks younger like this. Less like the Ice Queen.
More like the girl I used to love.
Used to. Past tense. Deliberate.
"Five minutes," I say. "Then you leave."
She nods, moving deeper into the room. I notice she keeps distance between us. Smart girl. Her eyes catalog everything. She has been in this room many times before. We were young and in love and couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
Looking around the room, I see what she sees. Every space we made love. The chair. The couch. The bed. The floor.
"What happened to you?" she asks quietly. "What did they do?"
The question opens something dark inside me. She wants to know? Fine. Let her know exactly what her betrayal cost.
"You want details?" I lean against the window frame, casual despite the rage building in my chest. "Sure. Why not? Let's start with the kidnapping itself. I need to understand why you think I had something to do with it."
I watch her face as I describe it—the ambush, the bag over my head, waking up in a concrete cell with no windows and one door that only opened when they wanted to hurt me.
"The first month was interrogation," I continue. "They wanted information about the Barinov operations. Thought I'd break quickly—rich boy, soft life, never experienced real pain. They were wrong."
She’s staring at me like she isn’t sure she believes me.
I decide to go even darker.
"When interrogation didn't work, they got creative. Waterboarding. Electricity. Breaking fingers one by one and then letting them heal wrong just to break them again." I hold up my left hand, showing the slightly crooked fingers. "This one took three tries before I stopped screaming."
"Maksim, please—"
"No." I cut her off. "You asked what happened. I'm telling you. Month two, they decided psychological torture was more effective. Isolation. Sensory deprivation. They'd leave me in darkness for weeks, then blast light and sound until I couldn't tell what was real anymore."
I push off the window and move closer. She holds her ground, but I see her throat working as she swallows.
"They showed me the evidence of your betrayal when I refused to believe it. Photos of you at family gatherings, smiling like I'd never existed. Documents showing your rise to power. Recordings of you making deals, building alliances. All while I rotted in that cell."
"Those could have been faked—"
“You looked happy in the photos. Radiant. Like you got exactly what you wanted."
Her face goes pale. "That's not…I didn't—"
"Didn't what? Didn’t have me killed because you were done with me?”
She shakes her head. This time, there is emotion. Tears slide down her cheeks.
“Oh now, let’s not pretend you haven’t gotten everything you wanted. You’re marrying the king.”
“I didn’t—”
“Didn't agree to marry him? Because you're wearing his ring." I grab her left hand, holding up the diamond that catches light.
She jerks her hand back. "You don't understand the circumstances—"
"I understand perfectly." I circle her slowly, predator assessing prey.
"Your family was in debt. Disgraced. My disappearance created an opportunity.
You took it. Built power. Made yourself valuable enough that Roman would marry you instead of destroying you.
Smart strategy. Ruthless. I'd almost admire it if I wasn't the one who paid the price. "
"That's not what happened!" Her voice rises. "I built power to survive! To protect Anya! Your family blamed us for your death. We were targets—"
"Because you were responsible." I stop in front of her. "Someone set me up, Kira. Someone sent me out there that night and made sure it was a clean grab. It was you. Your father.”
“No! I wouldn’t. I didn’t.”
"You did!" The shout explodes out of me. "You went from being my fiancée to being a power in your own right. The Ice Queen. Feared and respected. You wouldn't have had that if I would have survived. My father was young. Healthy. You would have been stuck with me in this house with no real power."
"I would have had you!" Her tears spill over. "I would have had the man I loved, the future we planned, a life that didn't require becoming someone I barely recognize! You think I wanted this? You think I chose to be cold and calculating and alone?"
"You chose to survive," I say coldly. "At my expense."
"I chose to survive because I thought you were dead!" She's crying openly now, and part of me—the part that remembers loving her—wants to comfort her. "There was a body, Maksim. Roman identified it himself. Your father died from grief. We had a funeral. What was I supposed to think?"
"You were supposed to question it. Investigate. Not just accept—"
"I was a teenage girl!" The words come out raw. "A young girl grief-stricken and being blamed for your murder by the most powerful family in Moscow. I didn't have the luxury of investigation. I had to survive."
The logic is sound. Semyon said the same thing. But I can't afford to believe it.
"Let me tell you what happened after month three," I continue, ignoring her tears. "They realized their basic torture methods weren’t enough to break me.”
I pull off my shirt, watching her eyes widen at the scars covering my torso. Burns. Knife wounds. The raised tissue of poorly healed injuries forming a roadmap of suffering across my skin.
"Every single one of these, I got while planning my revenge," I say. "While promising myself that when I got free, I would make everyone who betrayed me pay. And you were at the top of that list."
"I never betrayed you." Her voice is barely a whisper. "I swear on everything I love—"
"Your sister?" I pull my shirt back on. "The one you're supposedly protecting by marrying Roman? Here's what I think: I think you're using her as an excuse. A justification for choices you wanted to make anyway."
Her hand connects with my face in a slap that rocks my head sideways. The second time she's hit me. I'm almost impressed.
"Don't you dare," she hisses. "Don't you dare question what I would do for Anya. She's the only thing in this world that matters to me."
"Not revenge? Not power?" I rub my jaw. "Because from where I'm standing, you've done pretty well for yourself on both counts."
"I never wanted power!" She's shouting now, past caring about volume. "I wanted you! I wanted the life we planned! And when that was taken from me, I did what I had to do to survive and protect my family! That's it! That's the whole story!"
"Convenient that survival made you rich and powerful."
"Convenient that you survived to come back and destroy me." She wipes her tears angrily. “Even knowing you're planning my destruction, I'm glad you're alive."
The confession surprises me, but I refuse to show how happy that makes me.
"Your joy over me being alive means nothing." I force the words out cold. "Your tears mean nothing. You want to know what I've been doing the past two days? Since the party?"
She just stares at me, tears still streaming.
"I've been dismantling your empire." I let the words sink in. "Pavel switched sides yesterday. Took three of your best runners with him. Mikhail will be next—I'm meeting with him tomorrow. By the end of the week, half your organization will be working for Roman instead of you."
Her face goes white. "You're lying."
"Am I?" I pull out my phone and show her messages. Confirmations from her people—her former people—agreeing to new arrangements. "I've spent six years planning this, Kira. Learning patience. Strategy. How to destroy someone piece by piece. And I'm using everything I learned on you."
"Why?" The question comes out broken. "Maksim, I loved you.”
"Because I need this." The truth slips out raw. "I spent six years surviving on the promise of revenge. It's all I have. All I am now. Take that away and I'm just... broken."
Understanding flashes in her eyes, and with it, pity.
I can't stomach her pity.
"Here's how this plays out," I say, stepping closer until she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes.
"I'm going to systematically destroy everything you've built.
Your organization. Your reputation. Your power.
I'm going to leave you with nothing but Roman's 'generosity' and your sister's safety.
And then I'm going to watch you realize that becoming the Ice Queen was pointless because you couldn't protect what mattered. "
"Maksim—" She reaches for me. I catch her wrist, squeezing enough to leave marks.
"I'm going to break you," I whisper. "The way I was broken. And when you're at your lowest, when you have nothing left, I want you to remember that you did this. Your choices. Your betrayal. All of it."
"I didn't betray you," she says again. She's crying so hard she can barely speak. "But you're never going to believe that, are you? No matter what I say, what evidence I provide, you need me to be guilty."
She's right. The truth of it sits heavy in my chest.
"Get out," I say, releasing her wrist. "Before I do something we'll both regret."
"Like what? Admit you still love me?" Her laugh is bitter. "That fucking me in the garden felt right? That destroying me is destroying yourself?"
"Get. Out."
She stares at me, her eyes shining with her tears. I see her making a decision. Then she nods once, sharp and final.
"Fine. Destroy me if you need to. Take everything I built. But know this, Maksim Barinov: when you finally figure out the truth, when you realize you were wrong about me, it's going to destroy you worse than any torture you endured."
She walks to the door, pauses with her hand on the knob.
"I loved you," she says without turning around. "I still love you. And nothing you do to me will change that. Not because I'm guilty and trying to manipulate you. But because some things survive even the worst betrayals. Even the ones that never actually happened."
Then she's gone.