Chapter 08
Maksim
The Circle left five minutes ago, and the vodka glasses sit where Vladimir left them. Untouched.
Anya is at the window, her back turned, watching the snow begin to fall. I take a step, and the floorboards give me away, groaning under the weight of a man over six feet tall. I know she hears me, but she doesn’t turn around.
“Svetlana.”
The name leaves my lips before I even decide to call her.
“I shouldn’t have my back turned, should I?” she asks, turning slowly. “In a room full of killers. Not very smart of me.”
“We’re not all killers.”
“Really?”
I ignore her sarcasm. She’s right to be cautious around people like us. We’re lethal, yes, but no one will ever hurt her. Not under my command. No one touches what’s mine, and as of today, Svetlana has become my wife.
“You knew it was me.”
“I did.” She shrugs, still half-turned toward me. “Heavy step, left leg slightly firmer than the right. You always enter the same way. I’ve memorized it.”
“Isn’t it curious that in just two days you already know the sound of my footsteps?”
“No. That’s muscle memory for me,” she counters. “You, on the other hand, don’t know anything about me beyond what was on some dossier Vladimir put together. Don’t you think you’re outsourcing what you should know firsthand?”
She wants to provoke me by saying I’m not doing what I should.
That I leave information about my own wife to others.
Maybe it’s a test too, though she said she never does that covertly.
Anya wants to know how interested I am in her.
I don’t give her the satisfaction of an answer—I’m still figuring that out myself.
“You’re my wife now.”
“Pretty sure that’s what this ring means, isn’t it?” She raises her right hand, the matte gold gleaming in the pale light from the window. “You were there too. Or were you sleeping under that mask?”
I ignore her sarcasm and sharp response. This isn’t the moment to counter every comment she makes.
“I’m going to show you something.”
She crosses her arms, leans against the window frame, and waits. She’s not afraid of what might come from me.
“Show me.”
“I expect a sincere reaction. I don’t like theater.”
“I did plenty of theater at the Bolshoi. I’m tired of it.”
She responds dryly, and I know this says a lot about her. About the bitterness of losing her career. About the company that dismissed her after the accident. Anya reveals a lot about herself with few words—you just have to be observant enough to catch it.
I reach behind my head. Slowly, I undo the straps that hold the mask in place. I’ve done this for years, with practiced ease. But today, I take a ridiculously long time. I’m angry at my own apprehension, but I don’t stop.
“You’re going to take off the mask,” her tone is slightly surprised, lower. “I asked you to warn me beforehand.”
“I’m warning you now.”
“This isn’t beforehand, Maksim. This is during.”
I almost stop. It’s the first time she’s caught me in a mistake. The ease with which she does it unsettles me.
“It’s the beforehand I have,” I respond dryly. “Do you want me to stop?”
“I want,” she begins, pausing in a way that leaves me hanging, “you to stop speaking in codes. Beforehand that isn’t beforehand. Marriage that’s a contract but not a facade. You’re impossible to understand.”
“You’re smart and learn quickly. I’ve noticed.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she sighs, her large green eyes still fixed on me. “Or maybe you’re a man who spent so much time alone inside his own head that he forgot other people need more than three words to understand the context.”
I’m left speechless. Anya is right—she read me perfectly. But what strikes me even more is that she did it without any malice. She told the truth with all the words I needed to understand, not to wound.
“Do you want me to stop or not?”
I sidestep, bringing her back to the real subject: my face. Anya pretends to think. Pretends disinterest. And I know it’s pretense because of the gleam of curiosity that lit her eyes when I started untying the mask.
“Continue. But it’s the last thing you hide from me today, Maksim. One per day. I have my limit.”
I choose to ignore her commanding tone. Once again, I choose to ignore something about her.
Then I finally remove the plastic, letting the cold air hit my face. I hold the mask in my hand and stand there, letting her see what few have seen in the last thirteen years.
I wait for her to recoil, flinch, or show some kind of revulsion.
But nothing comes. She just looks at me.
Really looks—not glancing away to something easier, not fixing on a neutral point to pretend she's looking without actually seeing.
My wife takes her time scrutinizing every detail of my face, leaving me feeling exposed.
I'm not a man who's bothered by nudity, but this moment is different from anything I've experienced.
“Hmm,” she murmurs to herself.
“Hmm what?” The question comes out anxious, revealing more than I intended.
“I'm deciding if you're more or less handsome than I imagined.”
For the second time today, I'm left with nothing to say. I've never heard those words directed at this face. At least, not with such sincerity.
“Your verdict?” I ask, trying not to sound too eager.
Anya tilts her head a bit more. Her eyes trace the scar from temple to chin, unhurried, with the same thoroughness she used examining the band of the ring I gave her, searching for any flaw that might reveal it was cheap.
“It's a serious scar,” she comments. “Whoever did this wanted to kill you and missed by inches.”
“That's about right,” is all I say.
“Good thing they missed.”
Four words, and I'm completely disarmed.
She doesn't say it with pity or falseness. She's not putting on a show for me, trying to seduce me or anything like that. Anya is simply a woman who says what she thinks, no pretense, and she's saying she'd rather I be alive. Here. With her.
That statement is more devastating than any revulsion would be.
“You should be afraid.” I don't even know why I say this, but I say it anyway. “Of this face, and everything it means.”
“Of a face?” She almost laughs. “Maksim, I've been afraid of a ceiling too low, a door locked from the outside, a man who reeked of vodka at nine in the morning, and a woman who despised me simply for existing. I know what real fear is. A face doesn't make the list.”
“This face made a lot of people's lists.”
“I'm not most people.”
And then she does something I don't anticipate. I'm the man who anticipates everything. The success of my empire is built on calm, predictability, and coldness. But this woman standing before me is anything but predictable.
Anya takes a step closer. Not a large one, just enough to close the distance between us. She moves so slowly, eyes fixed on my face, on the scar cutting across it, that it's hard not to think she's hypnotized.
None of this makes sense.
I could step back. I've been in command for years—not just of the Bratva, but of myself and everyone around me. No one gets close unless I allow it. No one touches me unless I give permission. I force the command through my nervous system: Step back.
I can't.
Her thin, delicate fingers are so close I ache to feel them. At the same time, standing here waiting for her touch is one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. I thought removing the mask for her would be difficult, but realizing she wants—no, she longs—to touch me is so much harder.
My wife, with those expressive green eyes, lets her surprise slip through. Anya, who like me survived through control, is caught off guard by her own hand acting of its own accord, reaching so close to me.
“It's so deep,” she comments, so quietly I can barely hear.
But I hear.
I hear because I'm completely alert. Totally attuned to her and her warm fingers sliding over the rough skin of the scar. Starting at the temple, where my father's knife entered, skimming past the eye—which thank God remained untouched—until reaching the end, near the corner of my mouth.
It's been more than fifteen years since anyone touched me like this, and since I became Pakhan, no one has dared even consider it—they knew they'd end up dead or missing fingers. I've had my share of lovers, and none of them dared cross the line this woman just has.
My wife.
My fearless ballerina.
“Sorry,” she says, pulling her hand back quickly. For the first time since I met her, she seems off-balance. “I don't... I don't know why I did that.”
“Don't.”
The word comes out before I think. It's all I have to say—it expresses everything I can't.
Don't apologize. Don't take back what you did.
Anya pulls her hand back and grips her own wrist, as if she doesn't trust herself not to touch me again.
“You read my full name today,” I say, trying to escape the uncomfortable silence.
“Maksim Borisovich Nikiforov.”
“Borisovich, son of Boris. The man I killed to be here.” I touch the scar with two fingers. “Five people alive know how to connect this name to this face. Now you're the sixth.”
She understands the weight of this before I finish.
I see it in her gaze, but she says nothing.
And her silence speaks louder than any words could.
I've just handed her the only weapon that kills a man like me.
Information. The calm way she stands before me, watching me—the same calm she had when she touched me—should terrify me, but it doesn't.
That's what terrifies me, then. The fact that I don't fear what Svetlana could do with what she knows about me.
I grab two glasses, more to give my hands something to do than out of thirst, and hand one to her. Our fingers touch for half a second, like at the registry office, but neither of us reacts.
“To a strange marriage,” I say, raising the glass, now properly filled with vodka.
She mirrors my movement and brings the glass to her lips. Before taking a sip, she looks at me over the rim, seeing far more than the mask ever concealed.
“To a strange marriage,” she repeats, then adds, “And may you learn the difference between before and during.”
She's witty, I have to admit. Even if she doesn't hand out smiles freely, Svetlana has a sharp sense of humor. We drink, sealing the toast to our unusual marriage. But I also drink to push away the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
This marriage has barely begun, and it's already become anything but easy—or disposable.