Chapter 6 Ivy
IVY
The pavement is ice against my feet.
Or maybe it just feels that way. I can’t tell anymore. Everything’s out of sync—my thoughts, my limbs, my heartbeat, even the rhythm of the world around me. I’ve been drugged enough to stay dazed, but not so much that I can’t walk. Not so much that I can’t put on the performance of a lifetime.
They wanted it to look real, the escape.
Mikhail wanted me to be as disorientated as possible, to show that I’m nothing more than a trembling girl in the street wearing nothing but a hospital gown and a cheap gray coat tossed over her shoulders like an afterthought because she’s escaped with only the clothes on her back and nothing else.
My bare feet slap the sidewalk with each dragging step. I stumble once, then again, and catch myself with a hand against a brick wall that scrapes the skin off my palm.
I barely feel any of it.
The city moves around me. People glance in my direction before quickly looking away. Some even speed past me, doing their best to avoid whatever problems they’ve already perceived me to have while others pretend not to even notice my existence.
It’s a cruel world, I’ve come to realize in these few short decades I’ve been on this planet. Back when I had still been a teenager, I’d had the false sense of hope that under certain given circumstances, people would band together to help those in need.
Now I realize how naive that line of thinking truly is.
I must look like a psych patient, or worse, a junkie coming down from their high and desperate for their next fix. No one wants to help someone clearly out of it and no one wants to get involved with a junkie who looks more than willing to do whatever it takes to get another fix.
Pushing away from the wall, I trudge forward.
Each step sends static through my brain.
There’s no telling where Mikhail’s men dropped me or what they even gave me before I had been let go in the first place.
After my negotiations had been settled, Mikhail had ordered one of the nurses to come in and give me some kind of drug to knock me out.
I had barely been coherent enough to lift my head by the time they shoved me out of the van and peeled off down a nearby alleyway.
Is this even the city I’m from? Hell, for all I know, they drove me hours away just to fuck with me.
Bastards.
But this is the plan that Mikhail and I ended up settling on. It has to look like an escape, even if I can’t see straight. Eventually, someone in Maksim’s network will catch wind of me. The hope is that they’ll get to me before someone else does.
The silver stud earrings I’m wearing are innocuous and plain enough to draw no attention, but each one contains a high-frequency receiver constantly transmitting back to Mikhail’s surveillance team. A steady stream of information directly to his own ear.
He isn’t speaking to me through them—thank God—but I can feel him there anyway. Listening to my every breath. Watching my every move. Waiting for me to slip up.
And the worst part—if I do, I’m not the one who’ll pay for it. My son will.
So I walk faster with my head down, trying to disappear into the sea of bodies moving through the street. I don’t make eye contact with anyone. My job now is to find Maksim, convince him I broke out and somehow, without letting him suspect the truth, convince him to hand over the Bratva to Mikhail.
A shadow cuts across my path.
I look up, blinking through the hazy blur clouding my vision. I brace instinctively, adrenaline flooding my limbs, expecting someone to grab me and drag me screaming into one of the nearby alleyways where the city won’t bother to look.
But then arms are wrapping around me, pulling me into a warm body that smells familiar. A woodsy scent that I forgot I knew by heart. It shatters me, breaks whatever final fight I had left in me.
Maksim.
I crumble.
My body sags against him as if every thread keeping me stitched together has just been unraveled.
A sob claws its way up my throat, ripped out of me before I can stop it.
My fingers clutch at the lapels of his coat like they’re the only thing tethering me to the earth.
My knees buckle, but he doesn’t let me fall.
He catches all of me, wraps me tight in the kind of embrace that feels both healing and hurtful.
One hand cups the back of my head, cradling me with a tenderness that burns.
The other anchors against the small of my back, fingers splayed wide, holding me as though if he lets go, I’ll vanish like smoke between his fingers.
“Ivy,” he breathes. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
He says it again and again, whispering it into my hair like a vow, like a prayer. I want to believe this is over. That I’m safe now, that I don’t have to fight anymore. But I can’t.
Soon, darkness pulls me under.
The next time I wake, I’m surrounded by warmth.
Not the biting chill of concrete floors.
Not the sterile, metallic smell of antiseptic or the distant hum of fluorescent lights overhead and always on to torture me.
Not the chokehold of fear tightening around my ribs with every passing footstep on the other side of the door like it has for weeks on end.
No, this is something else entirely.
I’m wrapped in cotton sheets. They’re thin and a little scratchy, probably motel-grade, but it’s such a far cry from what I’m used to that I melt into them anyway.
A mattress cradles my back, lumpy but heaven compared to the slab I’ve been curled up on.
There’s a blanket tugged up around my waist. My arms are unbound.
The ache in my joints is a dull background noise.
It’s quiet. Not eerily so, just… still. When I turn my head, I see him.
Maksim sits beside me, perched on the edge of the mattress like he hasn’t moved in hours. One arm is braced against the bed, elbow bent while his hand strokes gently through my hair in a slow, steady rhythm. He’s not even looking at what he’s doing, his body moving on instinct alone.
I blink slowly, my lashes fluttering while his face swims into focus.
His eyes are bloodshot, red-rimmed and tired. The dark circles beneath them look etched there permanently. His jaw is shadowed with stubble, his mouth set in a tight line that trembles at the edges. He looks like hell. Like he hasn’t slept in days.
Maybe not since I disappeared.
“Maksim…” My voice is barely audible, a breath more than a whisper.
He leans in immediately, reacting like the sound of my voice is something holy.
His forehead hovers close, nearly touching mine.
His scent, warm and familiar and home, wraps around me like a second blanket.
His hand pauses in my hair for only a brief moment before resuming, gentler this time, if that’s even possible.
“You’re safe,” he murmurs. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
My throat closes up again, a knot of emotion swelling too fast, too fierce to swallow down. I reach for him blindly, curling my fingers into the collar of his shirt like it’s the only thing tethering me to this new, fragile reality.
My grip trembles but I pull anyway, urgently pleading for him to get closer. I don’t want distance. Not after what I’ve been through. Not after what I’ve been forced to leave behind. I need to feel something real, something solid.
I need him.
He doesn’t hesitate, not even for a heartbeat.
Maksim comes to me fully, rising from the edge of the mattress and slipping beneath the blanket and into the small, warm space beside me.
The bed shifts with his weight. He wraps his arms around my waist without a word, one strong arm sliding beneath my shoulders, the other curling around my hips as he presses in, molding his body to mine like he’s afraid I’ll disappear again if he doesn’t hold on tight enough.
I bury my face against his throat, inhaling sharply, my hands fisting in the front of his shirt as I press closer. He feels it, my desperation, and he moves gently. There’s no mistaking the way his breath catches when I tilt my head up, searching for his mouth.
Then he kisses me.
Slow and starving.
Like he’s forgotten the taste of me and is relearning it with every careful sweep of his lips against mine.
Like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch me again, but can’t stop himself now that he has.
His mouth slants over mine, warm and sure, deepening the kiss with every breath, every sigh, every stolen second between us.
I kiss him back with everything I have left.
I pour it all into him—my fear, my guilt, my aching relief that we’re both alive. The fragile pieces of my hope, every moment I’ve spent wondering if I’ll ever see him again, the promise I made to our son, every tear I shed in the dark when I thought I wouldn’t make it out.
I give it all to him now.
Maksim groans softly against my lips, the sound low and aching. His hand comes up to cradle my jaw, thumb brushing beneath my eye as if he knows the tears are coming. As if he wants to catch them before they fall.
The moment I start to strip him bare, the fire ignites between us, hot and all-consuming, It licks through every nerve ending in my body, turning every breath into a gasp as he touches me.
Maksim doesn’t waste time. His hands are sure and practiced. The simple set he dressed me in after pulling me out of that cold hospital gown is gone within seconds, peeled from my body like paper beneath flame. I don’t remember when I started shaking, I just know that I am.
I reach for him, pulling at his shirt, greedy fingers tugging fabric up and over his head. My hands don’t pause. They roam down the hard muscle of his chest, splaying across his ribcage, tracing the curve of every scar etched into his skin like war medals only I’ve ever been allowed to see.