Chapter 32
IVY
The moment I shut the door after dropping Leo off at school, I let out a shaky breath and lean against the frame.
What a mess.
Another day pretending everything’s fine. Another day trying not to let the ghosts of my past kill me—not just with threats of violence, but from my own damn heart pleading with me to give in and surrender to the only thing it desires more than breathing. Maksim.
I push myself away from the door and head into the kitchen, every step dragging behind me.
My hands are still trembling, the aftershocks of that alleyway confrontation yesterday still vibrating through my bones.
The way his body caged mine against brick, the way his voice demanded and commanded me.
Being that close to him after so long has left a nagging I can’t shake, a fever I can’t burn off.
The coffee mug I left on the counter is still lukewarm, a half-forgotten comfort, but the thought of drinking it makes my stomach twist.
Lettie is still at the dining table finishing her breakfast from before we left, her elbows braced on the shiny surface, watching me like a hawk. That raised brow of hers says it all—you’re a mess and I’m not letting you get away with pretending otherwise.
“What?” I mutter, trying to sound casual as I slide into the chair across from her.
“You tell me,” she replies. “You’ve been acting weird all morning. And don’t give me that ‘I’m just tired’ crap again. I know that one by heart.”
I groan, burying my face in my hands. God, I’m tired. So damn tired of dragging all the weight of my past around, carrying the lies and the grief. The anger, the constant ache of wanting something I can’t have… it’s all too damn much right now.
The words claw their way up my throat whether I want them to or not, tearing me open as they spill out. “Okay, fine. You want the truth? Maksim’s alive.”
I lower my hands, forcing myself to meet her eyes.
Her mouth hangs open. She blinks once, twice, her brain trying to reboot. Then she lets out a laugh. It’s breathy and short, entirely disbelieving, like she’s waiting for the punchline. “What?”
I swallow hard. My pulse is a drumbeat in my ears, hammering so loud I almost don’t hear my own words. “He’s alive. I saw him. He came to the house to tell me he finished wiping out the threats against his family. Said he wanted to take Leo and me back to Russia with him.”
I hold back on telling her about the Mikhail stuff.
One crisis at a time.
Lettie stares at me, her mouth still parted like she can’t get it to close. “Holy shit.”
I breathe out slowly, my shoulders sagging. “I know.”
“No,” she finally says, shaking her head in a sharp, violent motion, like she’s batting the entire idea away before it can take root.
“No, Ivy. You’re not going back with him.
What the fuck is he thinking? Showing up randomly after seven years while you thought he was dead.
He doesn’t get the right to demand things like that. ”
Despite the tension coiling my stomach, I manage a tiny smile.
She’s younger than me, but Lettie’s always been the protective one.
Always the first to stand up when someone needed defending.
Even me. “I told him the same thing. That Leo and I built a life here and he can’t just uproot us as he sees fit. ”
“Jesus Christ.” She slams her palms down on the table.
The sound is so sharp it rattles the mug I left near the edge. Her eyes blaze at me, not with disbelief anymore but something hotter—anger, defense. The kind of feral love I’ve only ever seen when she thinks someone’s trying to hurt me.
“I can’t believe this,” she mumbles.
“I know.” Even to my own ears, it sounds unbelievable.
In the back of my mind, a part of me wants to make excuses for him—to tell her Maksim is only doing this because he thinks he’s protecting me and our son.
His sense of morality has never pointed north on any compass, but what else do I expect from a man raised inside a Mafia syndicate?
That doesn’t exactly shape someone into a well-adjusted person, let alone a man capable of being a relaxed father.
But still, the truth coils in my stomach like a lead weight. He isn’t going to let this go. In fact, Maksim never lets anything go. It’s only a matter of time before he decides the choice is no longer mine and I’ll be on a plane to Russia whether I want to or not.
Before Lettie can spit another angry word out, the doorbell rings. The unexpected chime cuts through our conversation, forcing our words to die on our tongues.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
Then Lettie pushes back from the table with a scrape of wood against tile, muttering under her breath as she storms toward the front door. She yanks it open with a scowl already plastered across her face. “Oh. You have got to be kidding me.”
Maksim fills the doorway like he owns it. The quiet, cookie-cutter suburb around us suddenly looks like a cardboard backdrop compared to him. His leather jacket strains against his broad frame, the faint gleam of metal visible beneath as his arm shifts.
His face is the same as it was in the alley, unreadable and with barely contained frustration. But his eyes… those cold, steel-gray eyes lock on me the second I step into view. For just a flicker, relief breaks through. Like seeing me again has eased some unspoken torment that’s been haunting him.
He looks relieved. Like seeing me again has taken some weight off his shoulders.
Lettie, though, is bristling so hard she looks ready to claw his face off with her nails alone. “Oh, no. No, you don’t get to just show up here uninvited. You fake your death, traumatize my sister, and now what? You’re here to make things worse by trying to play nice-boyfriend?”
Maksims mouth tilts in the faintest ghost of a smile—amused, patronizing, like her rage entertains him immensely. “You take after Ivy.”
“Damn right, I do.” Lettie steps into the doorway like a guard dog, squaring her shoulders.
My stomach is in knots, adrenaline hot in my veins. This is going to explode if I don’t cut it off now, more than it already has. I force myself forward, stepping between them, feeling both of their gazes burning from opposite sides.
“Maksim.” My voice comes out tighter than I intend, but at least it doesn’t shake. “Come upstairs. Now.”
Lettie stiffens beside me, incredulous that I’m even letting him in, but Maksim’s eyes never leave mine. His lips twitch, the faintest acknowledgment, before he steps over the threshold like the house was already his.
“Ivy…” Lettie warns.
I reach out and grab her arm, squeezing it tight, reassuring her that I’m alright. There’s nothing Maksim would ever do to hurt me, that much I’m confident of. He has spent countless years trying to eradicate every threat that has whispered in my direction.
That kind of dedication couldn’t simply be erased overnight.
She sighs. “I have to go to work. But I’m warning you.” She jabs a finger into Maksim’s chest, hard enough that he actually grunts. “You do anything to her, and I will hunt you down and cut off your dick. Do you understand me?”
I can tell he’s fighting another smile when he says, “Crystal.”
Lettie throws me one last look before heading back into the kitchen.
I grab his arm and pull him up the stairs to the second floor before she can change her mind. The air shifts the second I shut my bedroom door behind us.
He doesn’t move far from the door.
His eyes drag over everything—the framed photos of Leo at different ages, the stack of books I’ve read to him until the spines wore soft, the folded laundry waiting for me on the chair in the corner. Every piece of proof that I built something without him. A life. A family. A world he wasn’t in.
“You shouldn’t be here, Maksim.” I let out a slow breath, bracing myself for the fight that’s coming.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
I bristle instantly, heat crawling up my neck. “I mean it. You can’t keep showing up in places like this. My family all thinks you’re dead. How am I going to explain any of this to them?”
His eyes cut back to me, sharp as a blade. “Explain what? That the man you loved was not buried in the ground after all?”
Love.
That word rocks me.
He tilts his head, his mouth curving, but not in amusement. “That the father of your son destroyed every person who dared to place a target on your back?”
“Stop it.” My voice quavers, and I hate that he’s doing this. “They don’t know you’re a Pakhan, Maksim. They don’t know the kind of life you live, or what that means for me and Leo if we were to go back to Russia with you.”
Well, aside from my sister, but he doesn’t need to know that.
His silence is heavy, assessing. Then his lips part, his accent rougher when he finally speaks. “You think lies protect them? You think ignorance keeps them safe? No, Milaya. What keeps them safe is me.”
I laugh bitterly. “Safe? You told me just yesterday there’s a new threat. What comes after you get rid of that one? It’s never ending, Maksim. In your world, there will always be another enemy.”
My back hits the edge of the bed before I even realize he’s crowded me over to it.
My throat works as I swallow, forcing myself to meet that gray, unrelenting gaze.
He’s breathing hard, sharp exhales dragging through his chest, each one like a warning that the fragile leash on his control is about to snap.
“You think I would ever let those threats touch you? You believe I wouldn’t lay down my own life in order to save you and our son? Ivy Bennett, I will do whatever it takes to never let my world touch you again.”
Something inside me gives, splintering under the weight of everything I’ve held back for far too long. Fury, grief, and the aching, treacherous longing I’ve buried for seven years all knot together until I can’t tell one from the other.
My hand fists in the front of his shirt, dragging him closer, needing to close the space I’ve sworn to keep between us.
“God, I hate you,” I whisper, though the words tremble, traitorous.
“You don’t.” His reply is absolute.
He catches my face in one broad hand, his grip firm enough that I can’t look away, can’t breathe without breathing him in. His thumb presses along the line of my jaw, anchoring me as if daring me to deny what he already knows.
His breath fans hot against my lips, and those storm-gray eyes burn with a truth that terrifies me. “You never could.”
The world tilts.
One heartbeat, we’re locked in a standoff and the next, his mouth is crashing down on mine.
It’s brutal, hungry, a collision of everything we’ve lost and everything we’ve been too afraid to want. The kiss rips the air from my lungs, steals the last of my resistance, and for the first time in years I let myself drown in him.
I yank him closer, fingers digging into his shoulders, and he groans against my mouth, folding me down onto the bed. Clothes become obstacles we tear at blindly, the sharp scrape of teeth against skin, the muffled sound of my name on his lips.
My hands roam greedily, relearning the map of him, every scar, every line of muscle carved harder than before.
I gasp against his mouth when his fingers stretch me open, even as my body arches into his. “This is—”
“Exactly where you belong, lyubimaya.” He growls, silencing me with another kiss, pouring every ounce of possession, of hunger, of raw need into it. “You drive me insane.”
“Good,” I bite back, breathless. “You deserve it.”
By the time he pushes into me, my protesting has all but evaporated, lost to a cry I can’t hold back.
Passion blurs into desperation, the rhythm of us reckless and consuming. Years of grief, of missing him, of aching for him, all spill over until nothing else exists but the way he moves inside me and the way I cling to him like letting go would mean drowning.
When it’s over, when our fire has burned us down to nothing but ragged breaths and trembling limbs, he doesn’t pull away. He stays, forehead pressed to mine.
The truth crashes down harder than ever.
I still love him.
And that might ruin me.