18. Alexei #2
“Well,” Maggie says brightly as she dries her hands on a dish towel, “I accept this tremendous honor.”
“You have to do the voices too,” Ivy informs her.
“Oh honey, I commit fully to bedtime storytellin’.”
Irina glances over her shoulder. “Last night she made me perform every single character from Charlotte’s Web.”
Maggie presses one hand against her chest. “I’ll have you know I do an excellent Wilbur.”
Ivy bursts into laughter again before grabbing Maggie’s hand. “Come on.”
She clings to Maggie’s hand the entire walk upstairs while Winston and Daisy trot behind them across the hallway runner.
I follow several steps behind listening to Ivy chatter endlessly about tomorrow’s adoption event at the shelter while Maggie answers her gently despite the tension still burning beneath her skin.
I can feel it from across the hallway. She’s still angry, confused, and emotionally raw from everything I’m not telling her, but she’s here anyway. That matters more than she knows.
Ivy’s bedroom glows beneath warm lamps and strings of tiny fairy lights stretched across the ceiling. Pink curtains frame the windows beside white shelves filled with books and stuffed animals, while framed photographs sit scattered across every surface.
She climbs beneath the blankets while Maggie settles beside her with a storybook resting across her lap. Winston circles twice across the rug before collapsing near the bed, while Daisy curls against the opposite side of the mattress. I remain near the doorway watching them.
Maggie reads quietly while Ivy leans against her side, listening intently. Every few pages, Ivy interrupts with questions or opinions about the characters, and Maggie answers every single one with enough animation in her voice to keep Ivy completely engaged.
Halfway through the story, Ivy yawns so hard her entire body curls with it. Maggie smiles before brushing hair away from Ivy’s forehead and continues to read. Ivy fights sleep stubbornly for another few minutes before finally losing the battle.
Maggie closes the book quietly and sits there for a moment, simply looking at her.
The tenderness in her face almost undoes me before she glances toward me near the doorway, and every emotion from downstairs returns instantly.
The warmth fades from her expression, replaced again by tension and expectation.
I motion toward the hallway. She follows me without speaking.
The bedroom door clicks shut behind us before Maggie turns fully toward me beneath the hallway lights. Loose strands of brown hair frame her face while exhaustion shadows beneath her eyes.
She looks painfully human standing here in the middle of my world. Soft where this life has made everyone else hard. Entirely out of place beside men carrying guns beneath tailored jackets.
“Talk,” she says, her voice low but direct, and the look in her eyes leaves no room for avoidance, hesitation, or anything except confrontation.
“Come downstairs,” I answer quietly.
Her eyebrows lift. “No more avoidin’ this.”
“I’m not avoiding it.”
“From where I’m standin’, that’s exactly what you’re doin’.”
The southern edge in her voice thickens whenever emotion rises, and despite the situation, the sound works its way under my skin.
I lead her toward my office while two guards near the staircase straighten as we approach. One of them opens the office doors before I reach them, and Maggie notices every detail of it. The silence. The instant obedience. The caution everyone carries around me.
Inside the office, I pour two glasses of bourbon before realizing Maggie looks close to throwing one directly at my head. I hand her the glass anyway.
“You promised me answers,” she says.
“I know.”
“Then start talkin’.”
I lean against the desk while deciding how much truth I can give her without terrifying her completely.
“Several weeks ago,” I begin, “I shut down shipping routes connected to my company.”
“Because of illegal activity?”
I nod once.
Her throat moves visibly. “Bratva activity.”
It’s not a question. I hold her eyes. “Yes.”
Maggie lowers herself into one of the chairs across from the desk. I can almost see her rearranging every assumption she made about me since the day we met.
“And now people are targetin’ me because of it?”
“I believe they’re using you as leverage against me.”
“Lord have mercy.” She rubs both hands over her face before looking back at me again, frustration and fear fighting in her eyes.
“The drawing Ivy made,” she murmurs.
Every muscle stiffens. “What about it?”
“That didn’t feel like business.” Emotion rises into her voice again.
I nod once because there’s no point lying now. “I agree.”
Fear flashes in her eyes before anger crushes it flat. “You agree? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Maggie—”
“No. You don’t get to keep doin’ that calm billionaire robot thing while my entire life falls apart around me.”
If only she understood the amount of restraint currently required not to lock every door in this house and refuse to let her leave again. I move closer instead.
“The drawing changes things,” I admit. “The routes could explain intimidation. Surveillance. Pressure. But that drawing was personal.”
“Meanin’?”
“Meaning whoever is behind this does not want you near me. Or Ivy.”
Maggie’s face pales. “Who?”
“I don’t know yet. Roman and I are trying to get information from people connected to Italy.”
Her eyes focus immediately on my bruised hand. The real version of me finally stands completely in front of her.
“That’s where you were tonight,” she whispers.
I don’t answer because I don’t need to.
Maggie pushes abruptly to her feet and starts pacing across the office, bourbon forgotten in her hand while emotion shakes through her voice beneath the anger.
“This is insane. I run an animal shelter, Alexei. I organize adoption events and argue with volunteers about cat food donations. I’m not built for this world.”
“I know.”
“Then why am I in it?” She glares at me like she’s furious I still don’t have an answer good enough to make any of this okay.
The answer is because I couldn’t stay away from her after that first meeting at the shelter. Because Ivy laughs differently whenever Maggie is around. Because the second Maggie accidentally handed me a dog treat, my entire life started moving in a direction I no longer fully control.
None of those answers makes it past my teeth because saying them aloud would make this far too real.
Maggie stops pacing suddenly. “Maybe I should leave.”
The words hit me square in the chest. My answer leaves before thought can touch it. “No.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what needs to happen. Maybe whoever this is stops once I’m gone and leaves Ivy alone too.”
I move before thinking. One second, she’s standing near the windows, the next, my body blocks her path completely.
“You’re not leaving me,” and the finality in my voice makes her breathing hitch.
“You don’t get to decide that,” she replies through clenched teeth.
“Actually, in this situation, I do.”
“There it is.” Hurt flashes across her face. “Control.”
The accusation slices deeper than she realizes. “This isn’t about control.”
“Really? Because it sure feels like it.”
I step closer until I feel the heat coming off her skin.
“You think I enjoy this?” My voice drops lower. “You think I wanted violence following you home? Men watching your apartment? Threats left in your mailbox?”
“Then let me go.”
“No.” I growl.
Maggie’s eyes glisten with frustrated emotion while she stares up at me like she’s fighting panic as much as anger now.
“Alexei, I care about Ivy. God help me, I care about you too, but this whole situation is terrifyin’.
Every day it gets worse, and maybe if I walk away, all of this stops followin’ me.
Maybe whoever’s doin’ this finally leaves your family alone. ”
I stare at her then. Really stare at every beautiful, stubborn inch of the woman currently standing in my office, trying to argue herself away from me while panic and anger war across her face.
“No,” I say flatly.
Her eyebrows pull together immediately. “No?”
“You walking away doesn’t fix this.”
“How do you know that?” She throws one hand toward the windows. “How do you know they wouldn’t leave everybody alone if I disappeared?”
“Because they already know who you are.”
“That doesn’t explain why they’d keep comin’ after me if I leave.”
My jaw tightens so hard it aches. She keeps looking at this like it belongs in the realm of normal logic, normal people, and normal danger. It doesn’t. The second men in my world decide someone matters, they never stop using them.
“It doesn’t matter where you go now,” I tell her, my voice roughening despite every attempt to keep it even. “They know your name. They know where you live. They know you matter to me.”
“That still makes no damn sense,” she says, planting her hands on her hips.
“It makes perfect sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Her voice cracks slightly beneath the anger while she stares at me like she can’t decide whether to scream or cry. “You’re actin’ like I’m trapped in this forever because I screwed you a few times.”
The room goes completely still. Rage burns through my veins.
Maggie sees the change immediately. I watch it happen in real time. The second she sees those words hit a part of me she shouldn’t have touched.
My jaw clenches while I stare at her across the office, and when I speak again, my voice comes out lower and much colder.
“You think that’s what this was to me?”
Her breathing stumbles.
Good.
Because I want her to understand exactly who she’s standing in front of tonight.
“You think I touched you casually?” I step closer slowly, watching her eyes widen inch by inch. “You think men like me take women into our beds, into our homes, around our children, and then forget them afterward?”
“Alexei—”
“No.” The word drops between us like a threat. “You don’t get to reduce this to casual fucking.”