20. Maxim
MAXIM
A do-over.
Every wrong turn I took with Niklaus sits in me with its own weight on my chest. The boarding school. Birthdays handled by courier. The silence I called protection until the protection became the wound. It’s a weight I shove to the back of my mind most days.
But not today.
Today, it’s lighter than ever. A man does not get the past back. But now there is a heartbeat the size of a grain of rice that argues that fact.
I have a second chance to get fatherhood right. And I mean to.
I didn’t sleep last night. I lay in the dark making promises I’ll do my damnedest to keep. This child will know my face before they know my absence. This child will be watched at recitals by their parents, not by nannies.
There’ll be family suppers. Not arranged dinners in restaurants with gifts chosen by an assistant, but real meals designed around their preferences and proper nutrition. Just because I get a do-over doesn’t mean I intend to spoil them. Vegetables and fruit, not sweets.
Klaus has a sweet tooth that’s his entire modus operandi. I will not allow that to happen again.
Whatever the business requires of me, I will change it. I built an empire in the years I should have built a son, and I will not repeat that mistake.
Smart men learn from the mistakes of others, and I failed that test. I’ll pass the next one by learning from my own mistakes.
These thoughts haunt my every step from the elevator to my office. I’ve to make changes here, so the business does not suffer in my future absence. It will be yet another change for the business, but so be it. We have weathered worse.
I swing my office door open, and movement at my desk chair catches my eye. My hand is inside my jacket before the door finishes opening. Then the details argue me down.
Her heels are off, her feet tucked under her, as though my desk chair is her usual perch. Blonde, dark blue eyes. A little red dress. The same knowing smirk as her father.
“Maxim.” Anya Sokolov. Geneva-polished English, spectacularly beautiful, twenty-four. “Your building is lovely. Your security is lovelier. Not one of them touched me.”
“Miss Sokolov, you’re in my chair.”
“Yes, I am. I wanted to see the view from it. Delightful.” She takes her time rising, smoothing the dress into place.
She steps into her heels one at a time while holding my gaze.
“Everyone discusses this office. My father discusses it more than he discusses me. I understand the fascination now. You can see three of your own buildings and one of ours.”
“Two of yours,” I say. “The Fulton property closed in March, or don’t you remember?”
Something flickers through her expression, quick and delighted, and there’s the difference between her and her father in one instant. Alexei would have scowled at the correction. She enjoys it, adjusts, all inside a second.
The reports undersold her. The daughter is smarter than the father.
“Oh, that’s right.” Her smirk grows into a teasing smile. “Seems like we’re encroaching on your territory, doesn’t it?” She wanders the office’s perimeter, trailing a fingertip along the credenza, swinging her hips to garner my attention. “You know why I came.”
“You came to make a show of the fact that you got in here. I’m sure your father will be delighted by my lack of security. Off you go.”
“How dull, when you say it plainly like that.” She stops at the window with the morning behind her, and she has chosen the spot for the light, I’m sure of it.
“There’s a version of the future, Maxim, where our families stop this expensive circling.
We could keep buying up buildings in your territory.
We could leave your cute little ports alone. You are a man with options.”
“Get to the point, Anya.” I can’t hide the irritation in my voice.
“We’ll go somewhere good. Somewhere with tablecloths. You can correct my property records all night long, or we can find something else more entertaining to occupy our time.”
A seduction play from his own daughter? Has Alexei grown desperate? I’ll make her spell it out. See how she worms out of the humiliation of it. “And why would I do that, exactly?”
No flicker of annoyance. Her smile broadens again. “Because I like to have a good time, and I think you do, too. Why else would you play games with my father?”
She’s toying with me, and if I were a lesser man, I might let her.
After all, I’m fifty-six, not dead. But I feel nothing.
No stirring of lust, no interest whatsoever.
All my interest is in my mansion, probably digging in files I’d rather she didn’t, and learning more about me than I want her to know.
I adore that about Thea. She challenged me to share my secrets, share my world, and I’ve never accepted a more frightening assignment. I did so gladly. If honesty is the cost of building a new family, I’ll happily pay it.
I open my office door and hold it. “You are your father’s daughter, Anya, which means you already know how this visit ends. I’m not interested in whatever this is, so you are free to go. Give Alexei my regards.”
She studies me from the window for a moment, and the flirtation drains out of her face. “They said you were blunt, but they undersold it. Was that coldness honed in Japan? Some sort of Zen meditation thing?”
“Call it blunt, call it cold. Whatever you call it, do so from your own office. I do not have time for your games, nor the desire to play them.”
When she breezes past me, unhurried and unbothered, she smiles. “You’ll find my games are the only ones worth playing, Maxim.”
“You’ll find my security will not be as gentle next time, Anya.”
“Promises, promises.”
I resist the urge to slam my door and close it quietly. If I slam it, she’d think she won some imaginary victory. Doesn’t matter in the grand scheme, but when it comes to Anya Sokolov, there’s one question left to me at the moment.
Did Lev arrange this?
He arrives within the hour. I do not sit, and neither does he. He knows I’m displeased, and he tends to avoid comfort when moving quickly could be protective.
“Anya Sokolov was in my chair this morning. Unscheduled, unescorted, unannounced. Did you arrange it?”
“No.” No pause, no flinch, and I believe him. But something moves behind his jaw, and he’s too honest to leave it there. “I did not arrange it. But I gave security standing instructions a month ago. If the Sokolov daughter ever presented herself, she was to be admitted without incident.”
“Tell me why.”
“A door left open costs nothing and might one day stop a war. Merging the families ends this, Maxim. It’s still true even though you hate it. I left the door open. She walked through it sooner than I expected, that’s all.”
“Rescind the standing instructions. Now.”
He takes out his phone, calls the head of security, and cancels the order. “Done.”
“I know you thought you were helping, but—”
“I overstepped. I see that now. My apologies, Maxim. I merely seek to avoid imminent bloodshed. I assume you have a better plan?”
Not especially. “I have a few things in the works.”
He nods. “Of course. I shouldn’t have doubted you. I’m due at the pier—”
“Tell Mickey I said hello.”
He leaves, and I can finally breathe in my own office.
Sometime after lunch, Fedya shows up. He is one of mine, a gray, forgettable man of sixty. When he comes to my office, it is because a thing cannot be trusted to a phone. He tells it flat, the way I pay him to. “Your son dined with Alexei Sokolov two nights ago.”
“The man himself?”
He nods once. “Private room at the Mulberry Street place, four hours, cognac after. Your son picked up the check, or was allowed to believe he did.”
Not great news, but not a surprise, either. “What else?”
“Old Timur asked a question about Niklaus at his granddaughter’s christening. The Reds asked at poker. The talk is the same everywhere. The Vernigora boy eats at the enemy’s table, and the pakhan does nothing.”
“And the conclusion they draw?”
“You’ve gone soft, Maxim.”
Soft is a death sentence. We both know it, which explains why he winced when he said it.
“Thank you, Fedya. Anything else?”
“That’s everything for now.”
I pass him a well-padded envelope and send him off while my gut locks up. They think I’ve gone soft. My enemies, my dearest rivals, my terrible friends have begun to doubt me, and that means one thing.
I’m vulnerable.
Lev returns at six and finds me ruminating at the window. I update him with Fedya’s threat, and he takes a stiff breath before he speaks. “You know what I’m going to say.”
“Surprise me.”
“The other families can overlook a lot of sins, Maxim. But they won’t ignore a son who uses his father’s name as leverage with his father’s enemies.
Every one of the people watching you has sons.
Every one of those sons is watching. Waiting.
They want to see what a pakhan will do to his treacherous son. ”
“He’s having dinners, Lev. Dinners and cognac.”
“You’re not that na?ve, and we both know it.” Lev’s voice stays level, but I see the pain in his eyes.
He taught Niklaus how to fish, how to woo a woman. How to pray, even when I mocked such things. He has been an uncle to my son whenever he could be. But he also knows what Niklaus will cost us if he keeps this up.
“Fine. I’m not na?ve. Now what?”
“Treat him as what he is. A traitor.”
Lev’s advice nearly takes the wind out of me. Ever since I fired Niklaus, I’ve replayed those last few minutes again and again, and I wouldn’t do anything differently, save for having my hand on my piece. My anger… I controlled it. Managed to keep myself in check.
But for a brief moment, I was my old self again. A beast I didn’t trust with my son.
Had he been anyone else, Niklaus would have eaten a bullet that day. One does not simply suffer a betrayal. They answer it. Yes, I fired him, but that was nothing.
Still, I’m not that beast. I refuse to be him again. “Traitors get bullets. What do sons get?”
“Their ass handed to them?”
It’s the right action to take. I know it. And yet, even that I cannot stomach. “Not yet. Let him circle Alexei. Let him think himself safe for now.”
“And then?”
Lev is right to push me on this. I know he is. But I hate it all the same. “And then, I will decide the next move when the right time comes.”
“I see.” He stands, ready to leave.
“I’m not sure you do. I’m not sure I do, either.”
“How do you mean?”
“I know what is required of me to do the work I do. But… Thea is pregnant, and—”
“Congratulations…?”
A smile tugs at my mouth. “Yes, we are happy about it.”
“Well, good then.” But I see the logistical nightmare in his head all too easily.
“My point is, I will not treat my youngest the way I treated my eldest. I will be present for them. Which means I will need to back off here some.”
He considers this. “Are you looking to bring Niklaus back into the fold?”
“Bring a traitor back into my house? No. I might be sentimental, but I’m not suicidal.
I may lean on you more, regarding the business end of things, or install a figurehead CEO in my place to make life easier for both of us.
All of that aside, I’m doing things differently for this child, and that includes how I intend to move forward with Niklaus. ”
“Meaning?”
“That is the part I’m unsure of at present.”
“Very well. When you sort it out, let me know how I can help.”
“Thank you, Lev.”
He leaves, and the office trickles out. The city goes on glittering down below, and I’m at the window, considering my future. At my age, I had thought I had far more of a past than a future, yet I’m going to be a father again.
It’s a strange life I lead.
I raised Niklaus into a gun pointed at his own house and nearly pointed my own at him. I ruined him. Ruined his outlook. Left him feeling like betrayal is the right option. And when I tally it all up, who is to blame?
He’s a grown man who makes his own choices, but it’s impossible not to see my hand in all of this.
I won’t do that again. I cannot. Perhaps grief was never the cause, and the flaw was always in the father. Maybe I was never cut out to be a father.
The thought shreds at me from the inside.
What if… what if I never should have become a parent?
When you think of becoming a father, you picture doing it with your wife at your side.
Her, taking care of the home, as we had always planned it.
Me, handling the money end of our world.
Together, a unit perfect for bringing up a child.
But that isn’t what Niklaus had. If Irina had lived, would I have abandoned our son to nannies and boarding schools the way I did?
No. She would never have allowed it. She was warm and kind and loving, all the things a parent should be. And she was smarter than me—she would’ve seen our son falling apart, and she would’ve been there for him.
But reality has not been my friend in a very long time, and cancer takes whatever it wants.
It left me with a hole in my heart, so I left my son with two. One in the shape of his mother and one in the shape of me. He’s had to grieve the loss of two parents when only one is in the grave.
I did that to him. Who’s to say I will not ruin this one too?