Chapter 15 Ivy
IVY
It takes me the whole next day to convince myself to actually agree to go through with it.
Every second feels like an argument with my own morality. I pace around the bedroom until my feet hurt, my thoughts looping, circling, spiraling, tangling together until I feel like a heart attack is on the horizon.
I never wanted this.
I never wanted to have to choose between Maksim or Leo. My lover or my child.
It isn’t even a fair equation. The answer is obvious and automatic.
Leo. My baby, my blood, the one I birthed and promised to protect, the little boy who has clung to my leg when he was scared more times than I can count, or curled up in my arms every night for seven years, who made me believe I could keep going.
He comes first. Always.
And yet…
And yet the thought of losing Maksim makes my heart shrivel up in my chest. I’ve mourned him once already. I thought I’d buried him years ago. I thought I’d moved on. But now that he’s here, alive and mine again… how can I bury him twice?
I tell myself the truth I don’t want to face—that I could manage and do it all over again. I could live through his death another time. It would kill another part of me, yes, but I could do it for the sake of my baby.
People survive grief all the time. Women have survived worse.
But if I chose him over Leo, if I condemned my son to death to save my lover, that’s not a wound that would ever close. That’s rot that would eat me from the inside out and damn my soul for eternity.
There’s no “you can have another one” in this regard. There are no replacements for a child you willingly killed. No balm for a mother’s betrayal at the highest order.
So I know what I have to do. And still, I die a little with the knowing.
That night, I take Maksim to bed like it’s the last time.
Because… well, it is.
I savor every second—the press of his mouth over every part of me, the strength of his hands as he lifts me and moves me around, the weight of him on top of me.
I memorize his eyes softening when I gasp his name, the way his jaw clenches when he fights to hold back his own release until he’s sure I’ve unraveled first. He gives me all of him, every raw ounce, and it’s the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.
I cry in his arms afterward, burying my face in his chest so he won’t see the truth behind the tears.
“I just miss Leo,” I whisper to keep up the facade, and it isn’t even a lie. I do miss my baby. But the sobs racking me aren’t just for my son. They’re for the man I’m about to give up in order to get my boy back.
Maksim strokes my hair, his touch slow and soothing. He murmurs against the crown of my head. “We’ll get him back… I swear it to you. No matter what it takes.”
The words pierce me, cruel in their tenderness.
He has no idea what’s coming.
No idea that his lover is the knife at his throat.
The date arrives faster than I want it to.
I wake with dread thick in my stomach, but I force myself through the motions. Breakfast, shower, fresh clothes, makeup that I steal from Katya’s beauty bag in the bathroom. I smile when I’m greeted, I swallow back the bile when I want to scream.
When Maksim asks what I want to do today, I seize the chance because losing my nerve will get us all killed. “Take me out to eat. I have a place in mind. I just… want to forget about all of this mess for a few hours.”
He studies me for a long moment, then nods without another sign of hesitation. “Of course. Tell me where and I’ll book the table.”
It unsettles me how easily he agrees.
A small, ugly part of me wonders if he’s relieved for the excuse to get out of the motel too. How ironic that it will be his last time doing anything on this Earth ever again.
I suggest the address that Mikhail had told me about, and the time. It’s an expensive upscale restaurant further into the city. The kind with valet parking and a team of hostesses that greet you at the door.
Maksim doesn’t even blink, just pulls out his phone and makes a reservation. A private table for just us.
Getting ready feels surreal.
I slip into a dress Maksim bought me a while ago, silk brushing over my skin in a way that feels both luxurious and wrong.
He adjusts his cufflinks in the mirror as I’m finishing my hair, immaculate even in simplicity.
He looks like the man I used to imagine when I closed my eyes at night back when I still thought he was dead—untouchable and powerful and all mine.
The car ride is torture.
I clutch my hands together in my lap to keep them from trembling.
My mind screams at me to find an excuse, any excuse, to call it off. To tell him I’m sick, that I’ve changed my mind. To tell him anything to get me out of this horrible nightmare. But Leo’s face floats up in the back of my eyelids, and my excuses die in my throat instantly.
By the time we pull up outside the restaurant, my body feels numb.
Inside, the place is warm, buzzing with quiet conversation. The hostess leads us back, past couples sipping wine and businessmen hunched over steaks while discussing capital ventures, until we reach a small alcove sectioned off with a partition.
Private.
Perfect for an ambush.
The waiter arrives with menus shortly after we’re seated with a long list of wines that nearly make my head spin. When I look up from the menu to tell him I’m sticking with water, my blood runs cold.
I know him.
Not his name, but his face.
He’s one of Mikhail’s men.
I nearly lose it right there, my stomach lurching so badly that I almost throw up. My hands grip the edge of the table so hard my knuckles ache as I try to hold it together. The walls are closing in, my lungs collapsing.
Maksim doesn’t notice my internal meltdown at all. He thanks the waiter, orders an appetizer for us to start and an expensive bottle of wine to share. He’s completely calm and unbothered by my silent panic attack, not at all mentioning the strained look I know I have on my face.
As soon as the man walks away, I feel tears burning behind my eyes.
I don’t want to do this.
I don’t want to say goodbye.
I don’t want to betray him.
But Leo’s face is carved into my heart, and I can’t let him die.
I can’t. It will destroy me as much as it’s destroying me right now to do this to the man I love.
To his father. How am I going to explain this to him when he’s older?
How will my child be able to look me in the eye when he finds out I’m the one who sentenced his father to death?
He’ll hate me. He’ll never want to speak to me again.
“Ivy?” Maksim asks softly, his eyes on me.
The dam breaks instantly. My throat burns, the words clawing out before I can stop them. “I set you up.”
My heart pounds so loudly, I can hear it in my ears.
And then, to my shock, he smiles. Slow, almost gentle. “Yes. I know.”
The world folds in on itself, my breath catching in my chest.
What?
He knows.
He’s known.
I don’t know whether that terrifies me more than the betrayal itself.