Chapter 12 Ivy #3
I’d steeled myself for punishment—for his voice to twist into fury. I’d prepared to bite back my fear while he lashed me with accusations, while he reminded me what failure costs and for the sound of my child crying in the background while begging to be let go.
But this is last thing I expected.
For a moment, my thoughts scatter, colliding uselessly in the corners of my mind.
Unless…
My gaze flicks to the curling steam rolling across the mirror, my own expression blurred and shapeless. Does this mean his relationship with Emily is a facade? A performance?
No. That doesn’t seem right… It doesn’t make sense.
If she were just another pawn in his endless game, he wouldn’t have trusted her with Leo. He wouldn’t have let her come and go as she pleased that day, slipping him out of my arms and taking him away from me. That freedom she’d had had been real.
I’d seen it.
Which makes this even worse. Because if Emily isn’t a pawn, then she’s something else.
Something that makes her just as dangerous as Mikhail himself.
There is no sugarcoating the kind of man he is or pretending he’s anything else aside from a monster.
And the thought of Leo being in her hands, under her watch and being shaped by her presence, makes my stomach twist until bile creeps up the back of my throat.
I clutch the phone tighter, knuckles aching white, unsure if I should push further or stay silent.
Either choice feels like a trap.
“How’s Leo?” I ask, the question tumbling out before I can think better of it.
“He is doing well. He has many drawings he’s eager to show you once you both reunite. Some of them are quite dark. He has talent,” Mikhail replies smoothly.
The image hits me like a punch to the gut and a balm all at once. As happy as I am to hear he’s being taken care of, as well as can be, at least, thinking about my son sitting somewhere in that facility trying to make sense of a world I let him get dragged into tears me apart.
I swallow hard, forcing my voice to steady. “Can I talk to him?”
Silence stretches across the line. I can almost see Mikhail leaning back in his chair, can almost hear the click of his tongue as he thinks my question over and over in his head.
Finally, when he speaks, I’m surprised to hear him say, “I suppose you’ve earned the right seeing as how you’ve been able to weave yourself back into Maksim’s good graces so easily. Hold one moment.”
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. Relief hits me so suddenly, it makes me dizzy. God, I hope this isn’t a trap.
I grip the edge of the counter until my knuckles blanch, trying to anchor myself. This could still be a game, an elaborate way to torture me, to dangle the thing I want most right in front of me, only to rip it away at the last second because he’s actually secretly angry with me.
There’s a soft shuffle on the line followed by the sounds of what I can only guess is a door opening. Then a small voice, faint and muffled, bleeds into the background.
“Mama?” Leo says into the receiver.
I sink onto the edge of the tub, one hand clapped over my mouth to hold in the sob clawing up my throat, the other clutching the phone so tight in my hand that it shakes. I want to so badly reach through the phone and grab him, pull him to me, and crush him against me while vowing to never let go.
God, I missed him. I missed hearing his little voice and the soft lisp of his words.
My voice cracks, breaking on his name. “Leo? Baby, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” His voice is small. It’s tired, but it’s him. It’s really him. The cadence, the little rasp at the end of his words, it’s all there.
I squeeze my eyes shut, clutching the phone like a lifeline.
“I miss you,” he says softly.
My voice shakes, but I don’t care. Let Mikhail hear it. “I miss you too, sweetheart. So much. You’re being so brave. I’m so proud of you.”
There’s a little sniffle on the other end. “When are you coming back?”
“Just hold on a little longer, okay?” I plead, leaning forward to brace my hand on my knee. “I’ll be there to get you soon.”
“Okay,” he mumbles.
There is a pause on the line long enough that the room grows loud around me. When Mikhail’s voice trails down the line again, my mouth tugs down into a frown.
“What a touching reunion,” he says. The words are thinly veiled mockery.
My fingers close around the phone until the plastic digs crescents into my palm.
All the noise in me wants to come out—a scream, a curse, a raw, animalistic plea to put my boy back on the line.
Instead, I force the breath out of me in a harsh burst, steadying the tremor in my chest by pulling in another deep one.
“I’m still working on the plan,” I tell him.
He hums softly to himself, sounding completely disinterested. “The plan… Actually, I’ve changed my mind about that.”
My heart plummets. “What?”
He chuckles at me. “Oh, relax, Ivy. You will still get your son back if you cooperate.”
I grip the side of the tub to keep from doubling over. I’m hyperventilating to the point of my vision growing spotty. It takes everything in me not to scream, to beg and plead with him not to change things on me.
But then his voice cuts through my thoughts again.
“Your next task is quite simple. You’re going to lure Maksim out to a specific location that I’ll send you the coordinates to.
Don’t worry, it will be a simple restaurant so you will be able to talk him into taking you quite easily.
Once you’re there, my men and I will take him out.
He won’t see it coming. Once that happens, all of this will be over and you and your son can leave and do whatever you want. I don’t care.”
The words make my blood run cold, nausea clawing at my throat. He wants me to set Maksim up. To deliver him into Mikhail’s hands in order to execute him.
I imagine Maksim at a table with me sitting across from him, the line of his jaw I've traced in sleep ticking up from a joke I’ve told, the way his laugh crinkles the corner of his eye.
I imagine that laugh cut short as a bullet rockets through his chest, blood spraying everywhere until we’re both coated in it.
Then I imagine him gasping for air, reaching for me with a trembling hand before it drops lifelessly to the ground, blood pooling beneath him.
“No.” The single syllable claws out of me, barely above a whisper “You can’t… We had a plan. He was going to—”
“I’m no longer interested in that plan,” he says, cutting me off.
He sounds almost bored saying it, like it’s old news he’s having to relay for the seventh time today.
“I’m not interested in running the risk of Maksim changing his mind later down the road years from now and coming back to claim his territory. Killing him will eliminate that.”
The logic in it is clinical, surgical. Begrudging logic seems obscene in the face of the thing he proposes, but some animal part of me unfortunately understands. In a world of men who rule with bloodlust and dominance, obtaining what you want can only be met through violence.
He says it as if the answer is obvious. And to him, maybe it is. It’s a simple truth that can be seen by stepping back and observing the playing field with a level head. Someone like me, entangled with emotions and personal investment, would never be able to think that way.
Perhaps that’s what makes Mikhail not only a monster, but a practical one.
I choke on that truth.
“You will do as I say,” Mikhail continues, “or you will watch your son suffer the consequences for your choices. It’s very simple.”
An ultimatum that reduces everything I am—a mother, a lover, a woman who once believed in a plan to build a better future together free from the confines of the Bratva—down to a single equation. One life for another.
There is no wail or theatrics, just the slow, relentless falling of saline that seems to come from somewhere bone-deep.
Sorrow is too soft a word for this hollow feeling that rips me wide open.
It’s worse. It’s the feeling of being asked to pry out a piece of my soul and hand it over in exchange for another piece.
I had thought, foolishly, that there was another path.
That I could steer Maksim away from the Bratva, make him want life away from the violence and the bloodlust and the slow rot that comes with power.
I had believed, in that stupid, stubborn way lovers do, that love could map a different kind of life.
The only destination I had not seen was the one already written—Maksim at Mikhail’s mercy, the last beat of his heart fading as he lay dying at his feet.
“Fine.” Saying it feels like cutting my own tongue out to stop the screams I can’t let myself make. The surrender doesn’t feel liberating. It feels like death.
On the other end of the line, a pleased sound leaks out of him, almost amused. “Good.”
When the call ends, my arm drops and I sit there for a long moment with the phone clutched loosely in my hand. My whole body shakes in small, uncontrollable tremors. I want to throw up. I want to scream until my voice is nothing but hoarse rasps.
Instead, I force myself to move.
The coordinates for the restaurant come within seconds. I pull them up on the map just long enough to memorize the name of the restaurant before closing out of the applications altogether.
Delete the call log. Wipe every trace. Pretend it never happened. That’s the mantra I tell myself as my body moves on autopilot.
I hit delete, watching the last twenty minutes vanish into the digital void as if they had never existed.
The ease of it makes me sick. My hands are slick with sweat from the call.
The phone is slippery in my grip when I shove it into my bra.
The cold glass of the screen is uncomfortable against my skin, but it’s easy to ignore.
I twist the shower knobs off.
The water sputters and then dies with a final hiss, leaving only the faint, intermittent drip of it dribbling from the showerhead. Silence rushes in around me, making my ears ring. The steam clings to me, hot and suffocating.
When I unlock the door, I inhale deep enough to steady myself, only to freeze in my tracks completely.
Matvey is standing there.
The bathroom light frames him in a terrifying way, casting half his face in shadow, turning his eyes into dark coins behind his glasses. His arms are crossed loosely over his chest, but there’s nothing casual about the way he stands. He’s a wall in human shape.
For a heartbeat, we just stare at each other.
Finally, I force words past my dry throat. “What are you doing standing outside the door while I’m showering?”
His eyes narrow slightly, not enough to be called suspicion, but enough make me want to squirm under the scrutiny. They sweep over me from head to toe in one slow pass. He tilts his head, both corners of his mouth tightening at the same time.
“Your hair isn’t wet,” he says.
Inside me, everything lurches.
Oh, fuck.
The phone against my skin feels like a bomb waiting to detonate. My mind scrambles for an answer that won’t sound too suspiciously like a lie, but my tongue is already getting tangled up, already at a loss for words. For a moment, all I can do is stare at him, watching him study me.
I force myself to swallow.
“I, um… didn’t wash my hair. I just… needed the noise. To think.” The lie feels like barbed wire in my mouth.
His brows pinch slightly. “About what?”
“Everything.”
He stares for another long beat. My fingers twitch at my sides as I desperately try not to flinch.
“Matvey,” I say, softer now. “Can you move? Please?”
For a long moment, he doesn’t. The weight of his suspicion presses against me, suffocating. Then, finally, he steps aside. I slip past him quickly and don’t look back.
The bedroom feels like a sanctuary when I close the door behind me, though I know it isn’t. My hands shake as I retrieve the phone from my bra and slide it back onto the nightstand exactly where I found it. Maksim is still asleep, his body warm beneath the blankets when I slip under them.
My body curls on my side, eyes wide in the dark as I stare at nothing. Every nerve in my body screams that Matvey knows. That he’ll go to Maksim in the morning and spill all of my secrets, and then I’ll be more than screwed.
If he figures out I’m plotting to kill his leader, they’ll take me out first.
I press my face into the pillow and pray… pray that he says nothing, pray that Leo survives long enough for me to follow through with this horrible deed, pray that Maksim never sees the betrayal I’ve committed etched across my face when the trigger is finally pulled.