Alexei
Maggie stays quiet after my answer.
The hum of the refrigerator reaches the living room from the kitchen while rain taps against the windows. Maggie sits curled in the corner of the sofa beside me with one leg tucked beneath her body, her fingers loosely wrapped around the bottle she stopped drinking from minutes ago.
Every few seconds, her attention returns to my hands, lingering over the bruises and split skin like she can see the violence beneath the expensive suits and control. Most people hear enough truth to immediately start creating distance. Fear comes first. Judgment usually follows close behind.
Maggie studies me like she’s trying to understand how much pain a person can carry before it starts living beneath their skin.
Her voice is quiet when she finally speaks again. “What happened to Clara?”
The question surprises me. I look toward the rain streaking down the windows instead of at her because Clara still exists in fragments I rarely allow myself to touch.
A photograph. A perfume bottle tucked inside a drawer.
The memory of her laugh moving through the kitchen of the house we lived in before the shooting.
Even after four years, grief remains like an old scar that never healed correctly.
Maggie lowers the beer onto the coffee table. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I know.”
The room falls quiet again. I should leave it there. I should stand up, walk out of this apartment, and put distance between her and the life circling me before the danger tears through another person I can’t afford to lose.
Instead, I stay seated beside her while the storm rolls over Savannah and tell her the truth.
“We were driving home from dinner.”
Maggie's eyes fill with sympathy immediately.
“She said if I spent one more dinner answering my phone, she was filing for emotional abandonment.”
The memory twists painfully through my chest because I can still hear her laughing when she said it.
Maggie watches me quietly now, listening with her entire body.
“We had just left the restaurant,” I continue. “My driver was pulling the car around front when another vehicle came down the street too fast.”
My hand tightens around the beer bottle. “I knew what it was before the windows rolled down.”
Maggie’s fingers curl together in her lap.
“They opened fire before I could react.”
The memory slams into me so fast I can smell the gunpowder all over again. I can see the shattered glass across the sidewalk and hear the people who were screaming around us. I can still feel Clara grabbing my arm before blood covered everything in seconds.
I force the images down before they consume me completely.
“Before I could push her down behind the car, she took a bullet to the chest.” I clear my throat. “Before my men could return fire.”
The last sentence nearly tears itself apart as it comes out of me.
Maggie moves closer without thinking, her knee brushing mine lightly. That tiny contact affects me more than sympathy ever could. Pain crosses her face instantly.
“Oh my God,” she whispers.
“She died before we reached the hospital.”
The apartment grows very quiet after that. Maggie’s eyes glisten in the lamplight, and what moves across her face isn’t pity but grief so genuine that I feel it straight through my heart.
“I’m so sorry, Alexei.”
I nod once because speaking becomes difficult. For years, I turned Clara’s death into structure and routines. Those felt easier to survive than grief. Security systems. Protocols. Walls strong enough to convince me that nothing like that could happen again.
I built Black Tide into an empire large enough to shield Ivy from every corner of the world I came from because guilt became easier to survive when attached to purpose.
“I built Black Tide Logistics after she died,” I tell her. “Before Clara, I handled more direct operations for my brother.”
Maggie studies me carefully. “Operations.”
“Yes.”
The word hangs there with all its ugliness exposed.
“I wanted distance after Clara.” My eyes move toward the storm outside again while old memories claw their way back up harder than I want them to.
“After the shooting. After the hospital. After learning what it feels like waking up every day wondering whether your daughter will grow up without you.” I drag a hand across my jaw slowly.
“Once I healed enough to stand on my own again, I knew I needed legitimate infrastructure strong enough that Ivy would never depend on bratva ties to survive.”
“How long were you in the hospital?” she whispers.
“One month.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
I stare at my lap. “Four bullet wounds.” I exhale quietly through my nose. “Two through the shoulder. One through my side. One missed my spine by less than an inch.” My stomach turns at the memory. “Roman thought he was planning my funeral for three days.”
I feel Maggie’s attention move over my face before her fingers slide gently across my hand resting on the sofa cushion between us.
“You built an entire empire for your daughter.”
“I built it so the world I came from could never own her.”
Maggie swallows hard, her eyes never leaving mine. I wait for fear, questions, and doubt that usually follow when people understand what my family truly is.
Instead, she asks gently, “Did Clara know?”
“She knew enough.”
“Enough?”
I lean back against the sofa and stare at the ceiling for before answering.
“She knew my family had dangerous connections. She understood power. Influence. Violence.” A bitter smile touches my mouth briefly. “What she didn’t understand was how difficult it becomes to leave that world entirely once you are born inside it.”
Maggie watches me carefully. “You love her.”
She says it in the present tense instead of the past, and the distinction punches straight through me.
“Yes,” I say honestly.
I always will. Love doesn’t disappear because a person dies. It just changes shape until it becomes grief you learn to carry.
A strand of warm brown hair slips loose near her cheek. Without thinking, I reach toward her. My fingers brush across her skin as I tuck the strand behind her ear.
“What about Clara’s family?” she asks, fidgeting with the hem of her T-shirt.
“Ivy doesn’t know them.”
“By choice?”
“Yes.”
Maggie studies my expression. “You don’t trust them.”
“Clara cut ties with her family long before we met,” I tell Maggie quietly. “I respected that boundary because I understood what it meant to walk away from blood.”
My attention drops to the beer in my hand.
“After she died, there were details that stopped making sense to me.”
Maggie watches me but doesn’t interrupt.
I don’t tell her everything. Not about the money that surfaced too easily after Clara’s funeral, or the names Roman connected to old New York networks.
Not about the conversations Clara avoided whenever her past came too close to the surface, or the growing suspicion that parts of her life remained hidden from me until the day she died.
“Clara was a social worker,” I continue. “She spent most of her time trying to help people who had nothing and no one. She loved that work.”
A faint ache moves through my chest at the memory of her coming home with frustration in her eyes because she cared too much about people the world ignored.
“She told me her family was wealthy and rigid. Image-driven. The type that cared more about appearances than happiness.” I drag a hand through my hair.
“She said there were expectations she never wanted any part of, but she never spoke about it in detail. Only that she wanted distance from all of it.”
Maggie listens while rain continues tapping against the windows.
“Clara ran from her family and her past when she came to Savannah,” I say. “And I thought respecting her silence was a way of protecting her. I thought if I didn’t push for answers, she could keep being who she wanted to be instead of who they tried to make her.”
The guilt is still heavy enough to hollow me out from the inside.
“In the end,” I admit, “I couldn’t save her anyway.”
Maggie lets out a slow breath. “Did they hurt her?”
My jaw tightens. “I don’t know.”
That uncertainty burns worse than certainty ever could. Because Clara died before I learned the full truth about the life she left behind.
Maggie lowers her eyes toward her hands. “I think part of me understands Clara.”
I study her face. “How?”
“My father left before I was born.”
The admission arrives without bitterness or self-pity, just simple honesty, spoken as if she had made peace with the pain long ago.
“My mom raised me alone. I don’t know anything about his side of the family.” She chews lightly on her bottom lip.
“Do you ever want to know them?” I ask.
“Sometimes.” She shrugs lightly. “Mostly when I was younger. You start wonderin’ what pieces of yourself came from people you’ve never met.”
Maggie’s fingers brush lightly across the back of my hand. The contact fractures the walls I’ve spent years constructing.
“Do you blame yourself?” she whispers.
I meet her eyes. “Yes.”
“Alexei.”
“I should have seen it coming,” I say quickly. “I was raised to anticipate threats before they arrived. I knew there were tensions building. I knew rivals were growing aggressive after several ports changed hands. I still took Clara out that night.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I should have.”
The words come harder now, more honest. “I looked away for one night because she asked me to.”
Maggie reaches for me then. Her palm slides against my jaw while her thumb brushes near the corner of my mouth, and the tenderness inside that touch nearly destroys me.
“You loved your wife,” she says. “That doesn’t make her death your fault.”
I stare at the woman sitting in an oversized shelter T-shirt and fuzzy socks, looking at me like I’m more than violence and damage.
My chest tightens painfully. “No one speaks to me the way you do.”
A faint smile appears. “Maybe nobody else tells you when you’re bein’ stubborn.”
Despite everything between us, a rough laugh leaves me. It surprises both of us. Maggie smiles wider.
Blyat.