Chapter 26 Maksim
MAKSIM
Seven years.
I can measure them in scars carved across my body, in the sleepless nights and the blood-soaked days when all I had was the war.
Seven years of hunting Anton’s shadow, of ripping his loyalists from the earth like weeds that refused to die.
Every stronghold burned, every whisper of his name silenced until all that remained were ash and fear.
I told myself it was for vengeance. For justice.
For the men who followed me, for the Bratva that Anton tried to hollow out from the inside.
And when it was over, when Anton’s loyalists were finally rotting in the ground, I told myself I’d rest. That satisfaction would come.
That peace waited for me at the end of the long road I had walked alone.
But there was no peace.
There was only her.
Ivy.
Now—after seven years and a thousand lifetimes—here she is.
The first time I see her again, I almost don’t recognize her.
Not because time has stolen her beauty. No, time has been merciful, even generous, to her beautiful features. If anything, she is more radiant than she ever was in Moscow. It’s the way she moves that stops me dead in my tracks.
There is a softness to her I don’t remember, a lightness in her step, a calm in her expression I never could give her when my world had been suffocating hers.
The years haven’t dimmed her. They’ve sharpened her in my memory, carved every detail into me like a brand I can’t scrape off. Seeing her now is like reopening a wound I told myself had scarred over long ago.
And then I see him, too.
The boy.
He bursts across the grass with uncontainable energy, clambering up the jungle gym like he means to conquer it, sliding down the bar only to run back up again. His laugh rings clear, pure, slicing through the air and sinking into me like an arrow hitting home.
He can’t be more than six. Perhaps seven.
Hair the color of pale gold struck by sunlight, with a darker undertone at the roots. Eyes that move restlessly, always watching. His grin is crooked, defiant, like the world is his for the taking.
He looks like a smaller, freer version of myself.
The moment I found her trail again, I suspected, but I had no way of confirming until recently. I’m not a man who deals in hope or guesswork. A few bribes in the right hands, a few networks breached courtesy of Matvey, and her medical records were in my possession.
Blood type. Birth date. Every line inked proof of what my gut already knew.
He’s mine.
My son.
And now, standing at the edge of this park, watching him laugh beneath the careless safety of a bright spring sky, reality crashes through me harder than any bullet ever could.
For the first time in years, I do not feel like a Pakhan. Or a man who has spent half his life striking down enemies. For the first time in years, I feel like Maksim. A father.
I thought the pride would come with a rush of anger. Anger for the years I missed, for the first steps I never saw, the words I never heard. But there’s no room for that here. Not while I’m watching him sprint into her waiting arms, laughing as she lifts him up and spins him around.
They’re safe.
They’re alive.
That’s all that matters.
Anton’s followers didn’t die easily. Men like them never do.
They cling to power like a disease, infecting everything they touch.
He had allies in places I couldn’t reach without cutting off limbs I still needed.
So I spent the years dismantling his organization piece by piece.
A loyalist here, a business front there.
Some went quietly. Most didn’t.
It was ugly work, even by Bratva standards, but it was necessary.
When it was finally over, his network burned to the ground, his name erased from our table, I didn’t stay to bask in the quiet and the aftermath of peace. I started looking for her.
Ivy disappeared like she’d been born to vanish. No credit trail, no public work history after she’d come back to the States.
For weeks, I hunted her ghost the same way I’d hunted Anton’s men, with relentless patience.
If not for a few lucky breaks, I might still be searching. A half-sister’s carelessness—a social media account left unlocked, a tagged photo where Ivy’s half face lingered just out of frame. From there, it was a thread. Fragile and delicate. I pulled it until it led me here.
To her. To him.
That boy has no idea who I am. That I’ve bled for him without ever holding him. That every time I should’ve given up in those long, brutal years of war, I told myself I needed to stay alive for something. For someone.
Now I know where my heart had been tugging toward.
They play for a while, Ivy chasing him between the playground and the open grass. Her laughter sounds the same as it used to in the quiet moments I’ve replayed a thousand times in my head.
Her sister lingers nearby.
She’s watchful, protective. The kind of woman who notices details no one else does. Who would sniff out an intruder by skill alone. If she saw me right now, she’d know I didn’t belong here. She would drag Ivy and the boy away and never let me close again.
Thankfully, she doesn’t see me. No one does.
I lean against a tree at the edge of the park, my coat collar turned up to block the lower half of my face, my figure blending in with the shadows from my dark clothing.
When the sun begins to dip, families start to scatter.
Ivy gathers their things, the little boy chattering at her side, her sister rising from the bench with her hands stretched over her head.
Ivy tugs his jacket zipper up to his chin with a careful hand, smoothing his hair back from his face with a gentle sweep.
He talks the entire time they leave, words spilling too fast for me to catch from this distance, his hands waving, his expression animated. Ivy laughs at something he says, tilting her head toward him in that familiar way I remember so well.
It cuts me, how much I’ve missed out on these past few years.
I follow them at a distance when they leave the park.
My steps are soundless, my pace measured.
Always just far enough not to be seen, close enough to intervene if the world so much as threatens them.
I know the risk of letting myself do this, of trailing them like some phantom tethered to their shadows.
But after seven years of hell, I’m not ready to leave them just yet.
Their route takes them down quieter streets, away from the main road where traffic hums steadily and people cluster in tight groups. Down this way, it’s more residential. Streetlamps start to flicker on, throwing cones of yellow light down onto the sidewalk.
The boy runs up the walkway to a pale-blue house with white trim. The front window curtains are drawn but warm light warms from within, hinting at life inside. It’s the kind of house people pass without noticing, that no one marks as remarkable.
He barrels through the gate and up the steps, tugging on the handle before Ivy arrives with the key. She unlocks the door, holding it open wide as he rushes inside like a storm. Her laugh follows him, softer, weary but fond.
Lettie lingers, though. She pauses on the threshold, scanning the street. She’s sharper than most would give her credit for. Her eyes sweep the sidewalks, the shadows, the parked cars out front.
Her gaze slides over me where I’m tucked between a neighbor's overgrown bushes. For a moment, my breath stills, but her attention keeps moving, skimming past me.
Finally, she steps inside, swinging the door shut behind her.
I stand there in the deepening dusk, staring at the house that holds everything I thought I’d lost. A wall of ordinary wood and paint separates me from them. From her. From him.
It would be too reckless of me to walk up those steps and knock on the door without a plan. Presenting myself after seven long years would get the door slammed in my face faster than she could even process what she was seeing.
If I’m going to do this, it has to be calculated. The same way I dismantled Anton’s loyalists, one by one.
I didn’t survive a coup by being reckless.
The question is timing.
She thinks I’m dead, that much I know. She’s already buried me in her mind, raised our son on the ashes of what we had back then, and built this quiet life to protect him, removed from the horror of what my Bratva brought into her life.
But things are not the same as they were back then.
The Bratva is stable again. My enemies are bones rotting in the dirt. The empire is rebuilt on foundations I bled to lay.
I could give her safety now. I could give him safety now.
I could give our son a name that means something. A legacy. Protection no ordinary man could promise.
But would she believe that? Would she even let me close enough to try?
I picture her face when she opens the door and sees me standing there.
Shock, and disbelief. Maybe even fear that I’m some ghost coming back to haunt her from beyond the grave.
I wonder if there would be anger in her eyes too—that I survived without telling her, leaving her to carry the weight of raising our son alone.
My jaw tightens, the thought burning like acid in my throat.
Timing.
It will decide everything.