Chapter 21 Maksim
MAKSIM
The safe house is a nondescript apartment above a rundown print shop—one of those places you’d never look twice at from the street while passing by.
Perfectly forgettable, which is exactly the point.
Inside, the air is stale with dust, the cracked blinds letting in thin strips of jaundiced light that cut strange shadows over everyone.
Lev, Roman, and Katya are already there, Matvey’s voice cutting in from the battered speakerphone balanced on the table as he rattles off information to them about his findings.
But I barely register any of it. My mind is too focused on something else. Not just the pain in my freshly wrapped shoulder, but the one in my heart too.
Ivy.
I can’t shake the image of her face, wide-eyed and terrified, as rough hands clamped around her and dragged her into that van.
My hands curl into fists so tight my knuckles ache, sending a shooting pain up to my wound.
The phantom memory of her screams slipping away from me replays in my mind again and again.
Roman’s agitated voice breaks through my thoughts. “Those fuckers… It took them fifteen seconds to pull up and grab her. You’re sure the facial recognition came back as some of Anton’s men?”
Matvey’s voice crackles from the speaker. “I’m positive.”
He swore under his breath. “His men were on you two within three minutes of that ambush, Maksim. He had this shit planned.”
Of course he did. He isn’t stupid. Nor is he the type of man to do things half-assed.
My jaw tics, rage building inside my chest like a live wire sparking to life all over again.
It’s hard to think straight while I’m this angry, my energy focused on the one thing I can’t do right now—go out, find him, and kill him.
Katya leans forward, cigarette forgotten in the ashtray, her expression drawn tight with grim certainty. “It’s coordinated. He was waiting for an opportunity. Maksim, this is his move. This is what he’s been waiting for. He struck when your guard was down.”
Her words hang heavily between us. My pulse drowns everything else out, loud and savage in my ears.
She’s right. I know she’s right.
Anton has been circling for months, his loyalties splintering beneath the surface, his meetings with the old guard cloaked as “honoring their traditional values”.
I wanted to believe it was nothing more than that—nostalgia, old men clinging to rituals that no longer had a place in the world I’m building.
I wanted to believe I could watch him, keep him close, outplay him before he had the chance to step out of line.
But I underestimated him.
He waited until I was vulnerable. Until my focus was split. Until Ivy was at my side.
Lev rubs a hand over his jaw. “It’s a power play. He took what matters most to you, and he’s going to be using her as the wedge to pry the Pakhan’s seat out from under you. This is the start of a coup.”
A coup.
My knuckles ache from how hard I’m gripping the edge of the table.
In the back of my mind, I’ve been expecting one, haven’t I?
The rumbling beneath the surface has been there for months.
I’ve know that, and so has my Krug. The sidelong glances, the backroom whispers, the subtle refusals to follow my directives without question.
I’ve been tamping down the cracks in the ice, thinking I could control the spread before it got too big.
Clearly, I was wrong about how much time I thought we still had. Just as I was wrong about Anton’s ambitions.
“Matvey,” I say, my voice harsh. “Who’s gone over so far?”
He hesitates, which is always a bad sign.
“It’s a fucking mess over here. Aside from us, Andrey told me half the hierarchy hasn’t responded to your calls to reconvene.
The other half… they’re answering, but not as enthusiastically as they should be.
They’re watching to see what happens before they choose a side. ”
Cowards.
Every last one of them.
These men sat at my table, ate from my hand.
Took my money, kissed my ring, called me Pakhan.
And now they slink into Anton’s shadow like rats abandoning a ship they think might sink.
They believe his way, my father’s way, is safer.
That the brutal, predictable stagnation of our Bratva is the true future.
“Put me through to him,” I growl.
Roman’s jaw tics, his hand hovering over the phone on the table. He wants to tell me to wait, I know he does, to plan. Wisely, he doesn’t. He knows me well enough to understand that waiting isn’t in my nature. Not in a situation like this when Ivy’s life hangs in the balance.
“I’ll call you later,” Matvey says before dropping his end of the line.
Roman glances across the table to his sister. It’s a brief look, one they share that I don’t bother decoding. I know exactly what they’re thinking. That I’m acting irrationally. I’m putting the ball back in Anton’s court with no plan to make things equal, let alone tilt them in my favor.
But I don’t care.
Every nerve in me is being set on fire the longer Ivy remains his captive.
Seconds later, Anton’s voice crackles through the speaker, smooth and incredibly self-satisfied. “Maksim… I was wondering when you’d call to have a chat.”
“You have something of mine,” I say. My tone is calm, but I can feel Lev’s eyes on me. He knows the calm is just a veneer over the violence boiling underneath.
Anton chuckles. “Ah, yes. The English tutor. Pretty little thing. She has spirit, I’ll give her that. More than I expected. Though I imagine you already know that intimately.”
“Where is she?” I grind out through gritted teeth.
He ignores my question, plowing ahead as if I haven’t said anything at all. “It seems you’ve developed quite a fondness for her. Your father did warn you what happens when you develop an underbelly, Maksim. Though, it seems those lessons died with him. What a shame.”
I don’t rise to the bait. “What do you want?”
There’s another chuckle, darker this time.
“You still don’t understand, Maksim. Your time is finished.
My time begins. And she… well, she’s my proof.
The Pakhan’s woman, in my custody. Do you know how the old brigadiers are reacting?
They are already hailing me as the man who finally cut out the Bratva’s weakness. ”
His words hang heavy, aimed to wound. To suggest that Ivy is not only my vulnerability, but my undoing. For a moment, silence reigns on our side of the room, save for the harsh rhythm of my breathing.
My sovet watch me closely, waiting for me to unleash what they know is coming.
My shoulders roll. I drag a long inhale into my lungs, clearing the fog that’s been clouding my mind since the alley. When I let it out, a cool, focused calm settles over me. My mask is being fit back into place. Control is coming back to me.
“Anton. I’ll give you one chance. Release her, or I will dismantle everything you’ve built, brick by brick, until there is nothing left of whatever empire you think you’ve created. I will have you begging at my feet for death.”
“I look forward to seeing you try.”
The call clicks dead, leaving only the hiss of static and the weight of silence pressing against the walls.
A muscle jumps in my jaw.
I know Anton well enough to understand he isn’t about to back down from this. He isn’t bluffing. He doesn’t flinch at threats. He feeds off them. He will never back down because he believes he’s already won by showing me the ace he has in his hands.
I see it, as clear as blood on fresh snow. Ivy will be his weapon against me.
She will not simply be kept locked in some room with no way out.
She will be used. Broken. Fed back to me in pieces—finger by finger, bone by bone—until all I have left of her is what Anton deems enough to remind me of my failure.
Until I kneel. Until I surrender everything my father built, everything I clawed back from the grave after I buried him.
My chest aches with the weight of it, a raw, dangerous kind of ache that makes it hard to breathe through.
Ivy is an innocent.
She had no hand in this world. I brought her close enough to taste it, and now she’s been dragged into the center, trapped in the crossfire I told her I’d never allow to touch her.
My knuckles tighten around the side of the table until my knuckles ache. There’s no other path.
No other way around this.
“I’ll have to do it,” I say.
The air in the safe house goes still, every head snapping toward me.
The silence is so sudden, so absolute, it’s as though the city outside has gone mute with them. Even the radiator’s low groan seems to fall quiet, as if the walls themselves know better than to speak against what I’ve just said.
Katya actually chokes when she speaks, eyes wide. “You’ll what?”
I don’t look at her. My gaze stays fixed on the grain of the table, the faint scars carved into its wood from knives and guns dragged over its surface hundreds of times.
“Step down. Give him what he wants. Meet him at a neutral location to make the exchange. As long as he brings her, he’ll have what he wants. ”
They stare at me in disbelief. When I finally raise my eyes, Roman is frozen, jaw slack, like he’s staring at a stranger. Katya’s hand is pressed to her mouth, holding back whatever bile is threatening to rise from her throat.
But it’s Lev who moves first.
It’s Lev who always does.
His chair screeches back against the floor as he surges up onto his feet, shoulders squared, eyes burning holes through me. His voice tears through the silence with a snarl. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
The force of his anger reverberates through the small room, rattling off the plaster walls.
His fists are clenched so tightly the veins stand out like cords, his jaw locked so hard I can almost hear his teeth grind. He looks at me like I’ve just betrayed not only him, but every oath we swore together in blood.
In a way, I have. “No. I haven’t.”