Chapter 8 MAKSIM
MAKSIM
I'm going to survive this year even if it kills me.
The thought arrives with dark irony as I sit in my office, pen motionless in my hand, staring at a contract I've read three times without absorbing a single word. The room is silent. The kind of silence I've cultivated deliberately. Disciplined. Precise. Absolute.
Every sound amplified: the whisper of my pen when I finally force it to move, the faint mechanical hum of the HVAC system, the steady tick of the antique clock on my desk that I keep set five minutes ahead because punctuality is a weapon most people don't know how to use.
Three days.
Victoria has been living under my roof for exactly three days, and my carefully constructed order is disintegrating.
It's not just the chaos she brings, though there's plenty of that.
She's rearranged the living room furniture.
Twice. Claims the original layout "blocked the energy flow," whatever the hell that means.
She commandeered half the kitchen counter for an elaborate coffee setup that requires four different pieces of equipment and takes twenty minutes to produce a single cup.
She leaves books everywhere. Open, face-down, spines cracking, like she's marking territory with abandoned literature.
And the questions. Endless, surgical questions delivered with the bright curiosity of someone determined to shatter every moment of peace.
"Why don't you have any art on the walls?"
"Has anyone ever told you this place feels like a very expensive prison?"
"Do you always dress like you're attending a funeral, or is this just for me?"
It's deliberate. Has to be. No one is naturally this disruptive without intent.
But the chaos isn't the real problem.
The problem is me. The way I react when she's near. The way my control fractures at the edges, letting in sensations I've spent years learning to suppress, to redirect, to weaponize into something useful instead of something that makes me weak.
I set down my pen. Straighten it so it's parallel to the edge of my desk, exactly one inch from the contract. The small ritual usually centers me.
Today it does nothing.
My mind drifts back to the wedding. To the moment the officiant said those words.
"You may kiss your bride."
I'd planned a chaste kiss. Cheek, maybe forehead. Enough to satisfy the audience, sell the performance. Respectful. Sterile. A transaction calibrated to convince without engaging.
That's not what happened.
The kiss started controlled. My lips brushing hers, testing boundaries, maintaining discipline. Then she made this small sound, surprise caught in her throat, and my restraint shattered like glass under pressure.
I deepened the kiss. Claimed her mouth. Tasted her until the applause roaring around us faded into irrelevance and the only thing that existed was the softness of her lips, the way she yielded before pressing back, turning submission into challenge.
How she tasted like promises I don't deserve and danger I should avoid.
I haven't stopped thinking about it.
The memory surfaces at inopportune moments. During meetings. While reviewing contracts. In the shower with my hand on my cock and her name on my lips as I came harder than I have in years, imagining what she'd look like beneath me, what sounds she'd make, how she'd feel.
Once. Maybe ten times. Possibly more.
This is unacceptable.
I drag both hands over my face, feel the rough texture of scarred knuckles against my jaw. The sensation grounds me, reminds me who I am and what I've survived.
I'm always in control. Control is what separates the living from the dead, the powerful from the victims. Emotions are liabilities. They cloud judgment, weaken resolve, make you vulnerable to exploitation.
I learned that at fifteen.
The night my parents were murdered in front of me while I lay paralyzed with shattered hands, unable to help, unable to fight, unable to do anything but watch them bleed out on marble floors.
My hands curl into fists on the desk. The scars across my knuckles pull tight, white lines against skin. Reminders written in scar tissue of bones broken deliberately, methodically.
But they failed to kill me. And in failing, they created someone far more dangerous than the boy who dreamed of concert halls and Rachmaninoff.
A knock interrupts my thoughts.
Before I can respond, the door swings open.
Victoria walks in like she owns the room, all motion and energy, brightness invading my carefully constructed dark.
She's wearing black leggings and an oversized cream sweater that slips off one shoulder, revealing a collarbone I shouldn't notice and definitely shouldn't want to trace with my tongue.
My body registers her presence immediately. Pulse accelerating. Awareness sharpening.
But underneath the performance—the bright smile, the confident stride—I see the truth. The slight tension in her shoulders. The way her energy feels forced, manufactured. Like she's performing vitality she doesn't actually feel.
My face must reflect the darkness of my thoughts, the memory of blood and ash and the moment my childhood ended, because her steps falter when she sees my expression.
She stops. Studies me with those sharp eyes that see too much, analyze too quickly, miss nothing.
Then her mouth curves into what might be a smile if it weren't so deliberately cutting.
"Smile," she says, voice bright with manufactured cheer. "You'd look prettier. And it's free."
The audacity renders me momentarily speechless.
No one speaks to me like that. Not my brothers. Not business associates. Not the politicians I've bought or the enemies I've buried. Certainly not the woman I married three days ago in a transaction we both understood was strategic necessity.
She doesn't wait for a response. Just carries on as if she didn't just throw a verbal knife designed to wound.
"I've been thinking about curtains," she continues, moving deeper into my office without invitation. "Heavy velvet, probably. Dark red or maybe navy. Something to make this mausoleum feel less like you're cosplaying as a Victorian orphan. I'd like your opinion."
Each word is a needle under my skin. Precise. Intentional. Calculated to provoke.
I stand, smooth my jacket with deliberate care. "I have a meeting to attend."
"With a tailor, I hope." She tilts her head, gaze traveling over my suit with mock assessment. "Those shoulders could use some proper structure. Unless the 'haunted undertaker' look is intentional."
Now I know for certain.
She's doing this on purpose. Every provocation calculated to breach the walls I've spent decades building, to make me lose composure, to create leverage she can exploit.
All my suits are custom. Tailored in Milan by the same atelier my father used when we were still one of Russia's most powerful families, before the betrayal, before the blood.
Each one costs more than most people make in a month, and they fit like they were designed by someone who understands that clothing is protection and presentation in equal measure.
"Actually," she continues, examining a book on my shelf with feigned interest, "it's a shame you have a meeting.
I was going to invite you to lunch at Maison Lyra.
We need to synchronize schedules for the public events you're required to attend as my devoted husband.
" She pauses, traces one finger along the book's spine.
"You know, to accomplish your goal of infiltrating Chicago's elite. Your words, not mine."
Maison Lyra.
The place where I spent an hour and a half slowly starving while Victoria performed socialite with disturbing ease.
I'd rather attend a rival Bratva meeting unarmed.
"We can handle that later," I say, moving toward the door with measured steps.
But she's not finished. She steps into my path, deliberate, and confrontational, forcing me to acknowledge her presence, her proximity, the scent of sandalwood and vanilla that's invaded my office like an occupying army.
I stop. We're close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her dark eyes, can feel the heat radiating off her skin despite the space between us.
"Besides," I continue, keeping my voice level, clinical, "you can't leave the house without security. Zakhar hasn't assigned you a bodyguard yet."
Her expression shifts instantly. The playful provocation drains away, replaced by genuine fury that makes her eyes flash.
"Excuse me?"
"It's not safe for you to move around the city alone anymore.You're a Severyn now. That makes you a target for anyone who wants leverage against us."
"I didn't agree to this." Her voice drops into rage barely leashed, cold and sharp as a blade. "You're taking away my freedom. That wasn't part of the deal we negotiated."
"Your freedom isn't negotiable when it comes to your safety.
" I meet her glare with practiced calm, the kind that's ended arguments with men twice her size and three times as violent.
"This isn't punishment. Your father made deals with dangerous people.
We promised to keep you alive. Even if that means protecting you from your own recklessness. "
"Recklessness—"
"You need security." Each word deliberate, final, absolute. "We're reviewing our personnel now. Selecting someone who can keep up with you without interfering more than necessary. Someone discreet."
She steps closer, invading my space now, refusing to be intimidated. Close enough that I can see the rapid pulse beating in her throat, can feel the fury radiating off her in waves.
"See that you do," she says, voice dripping with aristocratic disdain perfected over generations of old money and older grudges. "Fast."
Then she turns on her heel and walks out, leaving the door open behind her like a final insult.
I stand in the space she just vacated, and the silence rushes back in. Different now, charged with her absence instead of peaceful.
Then I laugh.
It starts as a quiet exhale of breath and builds into genuine amusement that feels foreign in my chest, unused muscles remembering how to work.
She just stormed into my office uninvited, insulted my wardrobe, demanded renovations to my private space, and left with a parting shot that would've gotten anyone else thrown through a window or worse.
And instead of fury, I feel fascination. Sharp, dangerous, unwelcome.
Victoria Ainsley is executing a strategy to make herself intolerable, to force renegotiation, to reclaim the independence I've constrained.
She's intelligent. Strategic. Ruthless in her approach.
All qualities I recognize because I employ them myself.
The problem is that her strategy assumes I want her gone, that her presence is burden rather than temptation, that chaos repels me instead of drawing me in like gravity I can't escape.
She's wrong.
And that miscalculation might be the most dangerous thing about her.
I return to my desk. Pick up my pen. Force my attention back to the contract that still needs reviewing, the decisions that still need making, the empire that still needs managing.
But my mind keeps circling back to one inescapable truth: Victoria Ainsley is going to be the end of my carefully constructed control.
And for the first time in twenty-five years, I'm not entirely sure I mind.