“I don’t bow. And I don’t fake interest either.”
His voice was smooth. Deep. The kind that settles low in your stomach and tightens everything under your robe.
God, his neck was thick, ink wrapped all the way around it—dark lines and symbols climbing from his collar to his jaw. The tattoos traced every inch of him, and all I could think about was dragging my tongue along them, tasting the heat beneath.
Does he have tattoos under that shirt?
Under all of it?
I tried not to picture it. I failed.
“No manners, then,” I said. “Father won’t like that.”
“He’ll survive. I’m not here to charm his... Whoever you are.”
That made me blink.
The nerve of him—cold, unreadable, smug. I should’ve been insulted. Instead, I was turned on.
I stepped closer. “You’re ambitious.”
His eyes finally landed on mine. Focused.He still didn’t move. But I swear the air between us shifted.
And then he said it—
“Careful,Malaya.”
I went still.
Little one.
The word slid over my skin like a private claim. My pulse jumped hard enough to hurt, heat rushing straight between my thighs before I could stop it. It wasn’t the nickname. It was the ownership in it—the quiet certainty that he could get under my skin and stay there.
He had no right. And yet… it hit.
I clenched my jaw.“Call me that again and see what happens.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, smirk cutting across his face like a knife. The kind of smile that says: try me.
My father’s voice cracked through the door—
“Maksym. In here.”
Maksym. It didn’t sound like a guard’s name. It sounded like trouble.I could already hear myself screaming it.
He passed so close I caught a breath of him—clean, lethal, addictive. I even forgot how to breathe until the door clicked shut.
2
Interview with the Reaper
—Maksym—
By my mid-twenties, I had already lost count of how many men I’d buried with my own hands—and not a single one haunted me.
Conscience is for men who can afford it. I can’t.
That was never supposed to be my life. I remember having a family—faint memories buried under years of numbness and violence, but still there, like ghosts that refused to leave. I remember knowing what it felt like to be happy, to want things that didn’t come with blood or consequence. Back then, I thought I’d grow up to be something ordinary. Something good. Maybe I even wanted that.
