Chapter 5
MAKSIM
Amusement curls through me.
Sergei had mentioned in passing that he hired an American to tutor Yulia in English, but I hadn’t given it much thought. I assumed it would be some older woman—middle-aged, practical, no-nonsense.
Not at all the little bombshell that had been standing in front of us moments ago, practically wringing her fingers together while she stumbled over her words.
She was not what I expected at all.
And when her eyes slowly shifted back to me, and I’d watched them widen as if she were scared and entranced, it made my lips twitch.
Not out of arrogance but from deep amusement.
I’m not a stranger to female attention. Clubs, bars, restaurants. Hell, sometimes even business meetings. Women have stared, flirted, propositioned. It’s something I’ve learned to tune out a long time ago. When you carry power, and when you look the part, people want a piece of you.
It’s almost predictable.
But that one? That little American with her deep brown eyes and plush looking lips had stirred something in me for some strange, inexplicable reason.
Light footsteps echo from down the hall. Yulia appears around the corner like a burst of sunlight, her hair bouncing with each step and her eyes lighting up the moment she spots me.
“Uncle Maksim!” she squeals, launching herself at me full-force.
I squat and lift her off her feet easily. Beside me, Lev and Andrey shift out of the way to make room. Her arms wind tightly around my neck and her giggle bursts out of her chest when I spin her once for good measure before cradling her against my hip.
She’s grown now, but she still clings to me like she’s three years old and nothing’s changed.
“Look at you, malyshka. Almost as tall as me now. What am I going to do when you are too big for me to carry, hmm?”
Her grin is sunshine, gap-toothed, and utterly unbothered by the heaviness that always seems to cling to these halls. It’s impossible not to soften with her in my arms. It always has been.
“You’ll still carry me,” she says simply, like it’s a fact of life.
I chuckle, the sound rumbling in my chest. “Ah, will I now? Even when you're taller than your papa?”
She giggles again and lifts one hand to point back down the hallway, toward the kitchen where Ivy had disappeared just moments before. “My English teacher, Miss Ivy, have you two met yet?”
There’s a sly note in her voice that I don’t miss.
“No, not formally.” My eyes flick down the hall before coming back to her. “But I saw her earlier. Has she been teaching you well?”
Yulia beams. “Yes! She lets me read to her in English. I get some words wrong, but she helps me fix them and then we read again. And she draws silly little pictures to help me remember what the words mean.”
I raise a brow. “Silly pictures?”
“She drew a cat with a crown yesterday to help me remember the word regal. She’s really nice. I like her.”
“Yulia,” Sergei cuts in sharply. “Go follow Miss Bennett to the dining room,” he says. “I’ll have someone bring you both lunch.”
She pauses mid-giggle, her arms still loosely wrapped around my neck, her expression faltering at the tone. Even at her age, she knows better than to ignore that voice. There’s a pout, soft and reluctant, that tugs at her lips, but she doesn’t argue.
She never does, not with him.
She slides down from my arms slowly, her little boots hitting the floor with a soft tap. I pat her head, giving her a small smile when she turns that frown up toward me. A soft sigh escapes her as she turns around and runs back down the hallway, disappearing around the corner to the kitchen.
Sergei exhales sharply and turns, resuming our slow path through the estate. The heavy silence returns the same as before, a presence of its own at this point. The weight of our earlier conversation settles over us again.
When we reach the foyer, Sergei finally stops, turning to face me with that same tight expression he wore when I first showed up on this doorstep hours ago. “The Petrovs. It concerns me how easily they were wiped out.”
Sergei had been the first one I’d informed after hearing the news of the Petrovs.
Out of everyone in my circle, he is my second closest contact.
Loyal enough that I trust him, ambitious enough that I keep him close.
If tragedy could strike so swiftly at one ally, I wasn’t about to leave space for another to fall before I had the chance to unravel what the hell happened with the first.
“I have my data thief looking into it. He’s the best at digging into matters like this. I’ll have answers to you as soon as I hear from him.”
That doesn’t seem to ease him, I can see it in the way his mouth thins. “Do you believe it was an internal matter? Someone who knew them?”
“Perhaps. It’s too early to assume. For now, you need to lie low. Do not draw attention to yourself. Let me deal with this.”
He bristles at the command, but only slightly. Sergei is not a man who likes being told what to do, but he knows better than to bite the hand that steadies his house when the ground shakes.
Finally, with a stiff nod, he relents. “Let me know once you find something.”
“I always do.”
We stand there for a heartbeat longer, measuring one another. Then I incline my head once, and Sergei returns the gesture.
The heavy front doors creak open as Lev and Andrey move ahead of me, stepping out into the afternoon sun. The waiting black car gleams in the driveway where Lev parked it when we arrived.
He tosses me the keys without a word. I catch them midair and round the driver’s side, slipping in behind the wheel. Lev takes the passenger seat beside me while Andrey folds his large frame into the backseat.
Through the rearview mirror, I catch Sergei still standing at the threshold of his estate, a worried frown etched into his usually impassive face.
The low purr of the engine fills the silence as I shift into gear. The tires crunch softly against gravel as I pull us away from the estate, leaving Sergei behind in the carved grandeur of his world.
But as the house recedes in the rearview mirror, my thoughts don’t stay with Sergei. They drift back to the wide-eyed American who had glanced over her shoulder with that sharp, unintentional curiosity.
Ivy Bennett. A strange little addition to this world of ours.
What game had fate decided to play, bringing someone like her into this era of uncertainty?