37. Thea
THEA
Maxim’s people roll over Sokolov’s place like the tide coming in. If tides hid evidence.
Different men handle the bodies, the basement, and the gruesome task of erasing a morning like this.
Maxim issues three quiet commands, then, surprisingly, releases control, letting others handle it while he stays by my side.
We leave in one of the gray SUVs, and I refuse to look back at the house where so much bullshit went down.
He has a butterfly bandage on his cheekbone, marking the line where Anya’s bullet struck. It makes him look precisely like what he is—a man who entered a grave and walked away.
“How are you here, Thea? What happened?”
I tell him everything. The waiting room, the hesitating twins, the party I planned in the back of a speeding car, the seating chart of killers. He listens without interrupting, and despite his exhaustion, his mouth almost forms a smile but stops short.
“There’s a part you’re not going to love.”
“I can hear it coming by your tone. Continue.”
“The kumicho, your sensei, was very polite when I called. He clearly had no intention of taking orders from an American woman he’d never met, especially in the middle of his afternoon. I could hear him preparing to hang up.” I pick at the dried blood on my sleeve. Stalling. Pathetic.
If I can lie to a scary Yakuza boss, I can tell Maxim the truth.
“I told him I was your wife—the mother of the Vernigora heir asking personally—and that it would be a great favor if you considered it. I also promised him we would help him later when he needed it. Afterwards, he sent everyone he had.”
Maxim is quiet for a moment. “You told Sensei you were my wife.”
“He wouldn’t have moved otherwise. It was the only thing I had that he’d accept.” I glance at him sideways. “I’ll clear it up. I’ll tell him I overstated my job title. I’ll fix it.”
Maxim Vernigora smiles, slow and real. His teasing smile. “Is that your way of proposing to me, Dorothea?”
My heart skips a beat. Not for the first time today. “Maybe.”
His smile dips at the corner into a smirk. “Interesting.”
“Would that be so bad? You’d enjoy top-tier event planning forever.”
He huffs something that is almost a laugh, and for one second the entire car is warm. Or maybe it’s just me. He notes, “If that’s your event planning, bratty girl, I’ll let you plan all my wars.”
I snort a laugh at that. “Not the promotion I’m looking for.”
The humor drains out of him, and his hand tightens on mine. “Never help me like that again.”
This is the man who spent tonight watching everyone he loves get shot, or shot at, closing the door on one more person he can’t survive losing. “Max, I don’t—”
“I’ve buried enough tonight. I cannot bury you, too. So never again. Please. Promise me.”
“I will truly try, Max. But I’m not going to swear something I might have to break.”
“Thea,” he begins, frustrated.
But I cut him off, because we promised honesty, and I intend to keep that promise. “As it turns out there’s nothing I won’t do for my family. No matter how fucking terrifying it is. So, I’ll try, and if you stay out of trouble, it’ll make my trying more effective.”
He looks at me for a long moment and presses his mouth to my knuckles. “If you’ll try, then I can try, too.”
We do not discuss Lev directly. But somewhere along the highway, Maxim quietly says to the window, “He was loyal. To the end. Anya confirmed it, and I believe her. She had no reason to lie about it. I let his name be sullied by doubt for an hour tonight, and I will not forgive myself for that.” His voice takes on a tone I’ve never heard before.
“There will be a funeral he would have despised. Pomp and crowds and noise. A lot of noise.”
I’m unsure how all of this works, the loss of a man like that, and asking is a way for me to let Maxim say the name aloud one more time in a safe space. “Who comes to funerals for sovetniks?”
“He has no one. No wife, no children, only us. But everyone else will come. The other families. We pay our respects.” Maxim watches the guardrails strobe past. So, we lay him to rest in the same plot where the old ones are, and I speak the words.
I’ll spend a lot of money on the reception after—he would have called it wasteful.
But I will make sure the world remembers a man who spent forty years quietly dedicated to never seeking attention.
It’s the least I can do, and the most I can do, and honestly, it won’t be enough. ”
I lace my fingers in his. “It is a good start.”
He’s silent a moment, but smiles a little. “He would tell me to stop being sentimental and go home to you. So, I’ll do that too.”
There’s no fixing this. I know that. But I’d do anything to take the sadness off his face.
Galina immediately stands up as soon as we walk through the hospital doors.
When she spots us, the tough woman softens completely.
Tears stream down her stitched and swollen face, and she gently takes my face in her hands, then Maxim’s, speaking Russian that I don’t understand and don’t need translated.
“Pasha is awake,” she manages. “Talking and even complaining a bit. Klaus is doing well. The doctors are happy with his progress. He’s sleeping now, but he’s doing better. Both of them, Maxim—your boys will make it.”
Maxim closes his eyes for a moment just to breathe.
We go to Pasha first, since he’s awake. He’s propped up, pale but grinning at me, hooked up to fewer machines than he was. His smile falls when he clocks Maxim. “Pakhan—”
“So,” Maxim says, dragging a chair to the bed. “You like men.”
Pasha’s monitor jumps. “Sir, I—”
Maxim leans back, cutting him off. “I have questions, primarily regarding why I was unaware. I’ve pondered your personal life for years, Pasha.
Upon your initial arrival, I speculated that you might be a eunuch.
It’s the sole reason I did not concern myself about you and Thea in that garden.
Though I did wonder when it came to your obvious affection for her. ”
Pasha’s mouth opens. He must not know what to say—he says nothing.
“Upon that affection, I revised my theory, and I was wrong in a new direction.”
The man in the bed laughs, then winces and clutches his side. “Ow. Ow, sir, do not mistake me, oh, it hurts to laugh—”
“Good. It should hurt. You took forty years off my life tonight. Consider this payback.” But Maxim’s voice has gone gentle under the gruffness. “Pasha, why did you not tell me? Do you think me some neanderthal?”
Pasha’s grin softens into something young and shy.
“Because you’re the pakhan. And the stories about the old ways, about what happens to men like me—I thought you were traditional.
You always complained that Alexei was untraditional, a rogue.
You hated him for it. So, I believed that if you found out, I would lose everything.
The house. The work. Your respect. All of it. ”
“I’m traditional about many things,” Maxim says with a sigh.
“Loyalty. Hospitality. I’m not traditional about this, and it bothers me that you did not know that.
I didn’t make it clearer, and I should’ve.
” He puts a hand on Pasha’s blanketed arm.
“No more secrets about the important, personal things. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Pasha says, and his eyes are wet. So are mine.
That’s when the nurse puts her head in to tell us Klaus is awake. We say our goodbyes, then scurry there.
His room’s dimmer, quieter somehow, despite more machines. They’ve taken the tube out of his throat. He’s propped at a slight angle, and he’s the color of the sheets. Not gray anymore. I suppose sheet white is progress.
His eyes track to us, slow and heavy. Must still be drugged to high heaven. He looks a hundred years old, and he looks nine. This is Klaus. Not the showman. Not the fool. The real person beneath the bullshit.
The man who saved my child’s life.
“Dad.” His voice is a wrecked scratch. “I’m sorry. For all of it. The company. Sokolov. The map, I gave them the—you know what I did. There’s no—I’m not asking you to—“
“Breathe,” Maxim says, standing on the other side of the bed where I join him.
Only then, Klaus realizes he’s run out of air. They warned us that he’d get winded easily. I didn’t expect it would be this bad.
His eyes close and open again with effort. “I’m just sorry. That’s all. I needed to say it.”
Maxim gently holds his son’s pale hand with both of his, being careful around the taped line.
“I’m sorry, too. For every time I wasn’t the father you needed.
You were a boy in an empty house, and I should have been your father and your mother, and I was neither.
So, we are both sorry. The question is how we handle the remorse of two men. ”
Klaus whispers, “I don’t know. I don’t know how to be your son. I never learned.”
“We learn together. Badly, probably. With a great deal of arguing.” Maxim’s mouth twitches, and Klaus’s does the same. “I’m willing to try if you are, on one condition.” He looks back at me.
I don’t understand. “What’re you saying?”
This family now has a third vote, and she has her reasons to want you gone. If she can’t have you in our lives after everything that transpired at the mansion, or your history, or both, that’s the end, and I won’t blame her. Neither will you.”
Klaus blinks in understanding. “That’s fair.”
They both look at me—father and son, a broken pair—and it should be a difficult decision, but it isn’t. Not even a little bit.
I meet Klaus’s warped gaze. “You stepped in front of that gun for my baby. That’s all I know.
That’s all that matters to me. You might have been the worst boyfriend that the East Coast ever produced, but that’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned.
As long as I get to tease you about it sometimes. ”
Klaus smiles at me as best he can. It’s not a good smile—it’s twisted from too many drugs and pain. But it’s the first real thing he’s ever given me, and I adore it.
“Then,” Maxim says, voice raw, “we’ll be a family. One day at a time. A family that fucks up. A family that keeps trying for each other. With honesty and with integrity.”
Klaus bobs his head. “As long as you’ll have me… I’m in.” He coughs, then sips ice water to simmer down again.
I sigh and smile at them both. “You know, they say you shouldn’t make big decisions when you’re under duress, and we’ve all been under a lot of duress for the past twenty-four hours, so this could be the worst choice we’ve ever made.”
Maxim’s eyes go wide, slightly aghast.
“But,” I drag out the word, as if I’m contemplating how this sentence will end, “I think this is a good first step for our family anyway.”
He presses his forehead to mine. “Bratty girl.”
I kiss him, then we hear a gag from Klaus. I twist to see if he’s okay.
“Ew, not my dad.”
I snort-laugh, and even Max chuckles at his son. The begin to speak quietly about simpler things, and my mind wanders.
I hate that we lost Lev. That will never go away. I just hope that we can make the loss of him mean something.
Pasha and Klaus will live. Galina might not even scar. Not physically, anyway. My baby is safe. Maxim is safe. Our enemies are dead.
I’d like today to feel like a win, but it never will with Lev gone. Maxim said he didn’t have a family. But he had us, and I’ll do everything in my power to take care of this family.