Chapter Six
Lena noticed the subtle change in Maksim the moment he returned from meeting his brothers. He wasn’t louder or crueler. If anything, he became quieter, more controlled, like something violent had been locked behind his ribs and chained there by force.
The apartment felt tighter and charged because of it. Maksim barely spoke as he entered the safehouse, shrugging off his coat and setting his gun on the kitchen counter with deliberate precision. His jaw was tense, shoulders rigid beneath the dark fabric of his shirt.
Lena watched from the couch carefully.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
The lie was obvious, and she almost laughed at how bad it was.
He poured himself vodka without another word. The liquid caught the dim kitchen light as he leaned against the counter, drinking in silence. There was also fresh blood on his knuckles. Did he fight his brothers? Beat up some poor bastard who got in his way?
With nothing to do, Lena started noticing everything about him lately, which felt dangerous in ways she didn’t want to examine too closely.
By now, she knew the sound of his footsteps, even the way his voice lowered when he was angry. Hell, the apartment somehow felt less suffocating when he was inside it.
That last realization disturbed her most of all, because this place should have felt like a prison no matter what. Instead, she was beginning to measure safety by whether Maksim was near. That was deeply wrong.
He disappeared into the bathroom briefly. When he returned, he had changed into a black t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders and arms.
Lena looked away too slowly. Maksim twitched his mouth faintly, like he noticed. Annoyingly, that made heat creep into her face.
“You keep staring at me,” he said.
“What else can I do?” she shot back automatically. “It’s not like there’s plenty of entertainment here.”
That earned her the ghost of a smirk. The expression vanished almost immediately, but it lingered in the room afterward like smoke.
Maksim moved toward the small kitchen again, opening cupboards with distracted movements.
“You should eat,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You barely touched breakfast.”
“I’m still your prisoner,” Lena reminded him sharply. “You know that, right? This weird domestic act doesn’t cancel that out.”
He shifted his unreadable gaze to her.
“I know exactly what you are.”
The words should have chilled her. Instead, something hot curled low in her stomach. Lena hated herself a little for that.
The silence stretched again, heavy and strange. Maksim eventually settled into the chair across from her, nursing another vodka while shadows gathered outside the windows.
The apartment grew darker by degrees until the entire safehouse felt submerged in muted gold and black. Lena curled her legs beneath herself on the couch.
“You’re different tonight,” she said quietly.
Maksim didn’t answer immediately, but finally he said, “My brothers know about you.”
Her stomach dropped. Judging by his expression, that didn’t sound like good news. The room suddenly felt colder. “What?” Lena whispered.
“They want me to finish the job,” he said.
Fear flashed hot through her veins.
“So why am I still here?” Lena had to ask.
His gaze lifted slowly to hers.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
The honesty of it unsettled her more than if he’d lied. Before she could respond, something shifted. Maksim went completely still. Every muscle in his body tightened with frightening immediacy.
Lena frowned. “What...?” Lena began.
“Quiet.” The word came low and sharp.
Then she heard it too.
A noise outside, followed by footsteps. There was more than one, she realized. Maksim moved instantly. One second he was seated, the next he was grabbing his gun from the counter with terrifying efficiency.
The atmosphere in the room changed violently. The man who cooked pasta and let her patch his wounds vanished. This version of Maksim was colder, and deadlier. Pure predator.
“Get behind me,” he ordered.
Lena’s pulse exploded. “What’s happening?”
She heard another sound. They were closer now. The front lock beeped once. Maksim swore softly in Russian. Then the door burst inward, and chaos erupted.
Gunfire cracked through the apartment like thunder.
Lena screamed, dropping instinctively toward the floor as glass shattered somewhere behind her. Men flooded the apartment dressed in dark tactical gear, weapons raised.
Maksim fired with one shot, then another with terrifying precision. Bodies dropped hard against the narrow hallway walls. Blood sprayed across peeling wallpaper. The violence was fast, brutal and efficient.
Lena crawled backward, heart slamming wildly against her ribs as the apartment transformed into a nightmare around her.
One of the attackers grabbed her hard, and she gasped as rough hands yanked her upright.
“Maksim!” she cried before she could stop herself.
The reaction was immediate. Maksim turned at the sound of her voice. Lena saw something in his expression snap completely. Focused and murderous rage. The man holding her jerked her backward, gun pressing against her temple.
“Drop it!” the man warned.
Maksim didn’t bother dropping his weapon, instead he locked his dark and calculating gaze on her. Lena couldn’t help but shiver. Maksim finally moved, it happened too fast for Lena to process properly.
A gunshot exploded. The man behind her convulsed violently before collapsing. Maksim reached her in seconds. Another attacker lunged toward them. Maksim drove a knife into his throat with horrifying calm.
Blood splattered across the floor, across Maksim’s hands, and even on Lena’s shirt. She stumbled backward, shaking violently now. He grabbed her arm.
“Stay behind me.” The command came rougher this time.
“Okay,” Lena managed to whisper.
Another man appeared from the hallway. Maksim shot him twice in the chest.
The apartment fell silent. There was only the sound of heavy breathing, hers, she realized. The smell of blood filled her nose, the metallic smell of death choking the air.
Lena stared at him in horror, unable to believe that just happened. Maksim looked monstrous. There was blood running from a cut near his brow now, another staining his side beneath the black shirt. However, none of it seemed to matter to him.
His attention fixed entirely on her.
“You hurt?” he demanded.
She shook her head numbly. He slid his hand briefly to the back of her neck, checking her, grounding her. The gesture was so unexpectedly gentle it nearly undid her. For a moment, she forgot that she should be afraid of him.
“They came for you,” she whispered.
“For us,” he corrected coldly. “They probably decided you’re my weakness, a way to get to me.”
Her pulse stuttered. Us. The word lodged somewhere deep inside her chest. Maksim grabbed another weapon and moved toward the bodies, checking them quickly.
Lena watched him with shaking hands.
Minutes ago she had thought she understood what he was—now she realized she hadn’t even come close. He terrified her completely.
The violence in him was not human in the way ordinary anger was human. It was colder than that. He had moved through those men with horrifying precision, without panic or hesitation, like brutality was simply another language his body spoke fluently.
However, when they grabbed her, he had turned toward her instantly, not toward the guns and the threat to himself. It was as if the sight of someone touching her had eclipsed everything else in the room.
The realization settled heavily into her chest.
Maksim had protected her without thinking, as if it had been instinct, and she was something precious. Her throat tightened unexpectedly.
Nobody had ever looked at her that way before. Lena had spent most of her life being convenient. She was easy to overlook and leave behind. Even with her father gone, she had quietly accepted the idea that if something terrible happened to her, the world would continue moving without much pause.
But Maksim had walked through blood and bullets to get back to her. The terrifying part was that he had not even seemed to question it. He had simply defended her. Her pulse fluttered unevenly.
It also occurred to her that when one of those men dragged her away, she had screamed his name, not because he was safe, but because he was the most dangerous person she had ever met.
Still, compared to everyone else in this world, he was somehow becoming hers, and the realization horrified her. Because some reckless, aching part of her had known with absolute certainty that Maksim would never let them take her.
And he hadn’t. Maksim was injured, she realized, and yet his attention kept returning to her like he was checking she was still there, his responsibility, or something more than that.
Maksim turned back toward her.
“We need to move,” he said gruffly.
****
The second safehouse was smaller, cleaner but no less claustrophobic. For one, it had no windows facing the street. Lena sat on the edge of another unfamiliar bed while adrenaline slowly drained from her body.
Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Maksim locked the door behind them before finally swaying slightly, and only then did she realize how badly he was hurt. Blood soaked the side of his shirt.
“Maksim,” she began.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding everywhere,” she pointed out.
He looked down briefly, almost annoyed by the inconvenience. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s absolutely not nothing,” Lena insisted. “Besides, if you bled out to death, what would happen to me? Where’s the first aid kit?”
He mumbled an answer and said nothing more as she retrieved the first aid kit.
The familiarity of this situation felt absurd now, as if tending wounds had somehow become part of whatever twisted thing existed between them.
Maksim sat heavily in the chair this time while Lena stood between his knees, carefully lifting the ruined shirt over his head.
Her breath caught at the sight of the bruises that darkened his ribs and the fresh cuts that crossed his skin. A deeper wound bled steadily near his shoulder.
“You need stitches,” she murmured.
“I know,” he muttered.
Her fingers shook slightly as she cleaned the blood away. Maksim watched her silently the entire time. The room felt too small again, and alarmingly intimate as well.
“You risked your life for mine ,” Lena said quietly. The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Maksim’s gaze darkened. “Of course I did.”
“Why?” Lena demanded.
Maksim didn’t answer her right away, as if he wasn’t sure of the answer himself. He then closed his hand around her wrist, his hold firm and possessive. Lena let him, although she could’ve pushed him away. His thumb brushed her pulse once.
“Because you’re mine,” he said.
Heat flooded through her so violently it frightened her.
Lena stared at him, at the blood on his skin, and the exhaustion in his eyes. She didn’t miss the terrifying sincerity beneath the words.
She should’ve argued with him, told him off, and yet something inside her gave way instead. Maybe it was shock or relief, or perhaps the unbearable intensity that had been building between them for days finally snapping under pressure.
She touched his face slowly and tentatively. Maksim went completely still. She brushed her fingers against the cut near his brow, and he dropped his gaze to her mouth instantly.
The air seemed to shift and neither of them moved for one endless second.
Then Maksim slid his hand into her hair, and without warning he kissed her. The kiss was hard and hungry, like restraint had finally broken. Lena gasped softly against his mouth. She gripped his shoulders instinctively as he pulled her closer between his knees.
The kiss tasted like vodka and danger and something devastatingly addictive. Heat surged through her body. She should stop this. Lena could still pull away.
She should remind herself exactly what he was. An unrepentant killer, but instead she kissed him back passionately. This heat between them ... she realized it felt even more dangerous than the guns had, but at that moment, she didn’t care.
Maksim made a rough sound low in his throat before pressing his forehead briefly against hers, breathing hard.
“You should be afraid of me,” he murmured.
“I am.”
The truth hung between them, and somehow it only made the tension worse.
Maksim tightened his hand slightly in her hair, only to kiss her again. It was slower this time, as if he was savoring the taste of her, but it was certainly no less intense.
Outside, the city remained violent and hungry. Inside the small safehouse room, Lena forgot everything except the feel of his mouth on hers and the terrifying realization that she no longer wanted to run nearly as much as she should have.