“No new orders and no ongoing operations that require your full attention,” Alexei said, then paused. “So tell me, Maksim, what exactly is keeping you so occupied?”
Silence stretched, and Maksim held it.Then Alexei exhaled softly, almost like a laugh.
“I had you followed,” Alexei finally said.
To be honest, Maksim wasn’t surprised.It was something Alexei would do.
Alexei had always been the kind to watch from the edges, to notice the things others missed and pull at threads until they unraveled.But there was more to it than that.
Resentment had lived under Alexei’s skin for years, quiet but persistent.
Maksim had been named Dimitri’s second-in-command not because he was the second-born, but because he was the most reliable.The most decisive, and the one who never hesitated when it mattered.
Alexei had never accepted that, not fully.He hid it well, but it was there in the way he pushed, in the way he tested boundaries that didn’t need testing, in the way he seemed almost eager for Maksim to slip.
He wanted Maksim to fail, to prove that Dimitri had chosen wrong.
“I know about the girl,” Alexei added.
The room went still.Maksim shrugged, the motion deliberate, controlled.“She’s my new toy.”
The words were careless by design.Still, Dimitri’s expression didn’t change.
“We don’t keep loose strings,” Dimitri said, voice calm.“You know what needs to be done.”
Maksim felt the anger rise, hot, sharp and immediate.He buried it deep, because anger here was weakness, and right now, he was already outnumbered.
Three brothers, three voices, but tonight, it was two against one.
“She’s useful to me,” Maksim said instead, his tone steady.“She saw too much, so I decided to keep her.”
Alexei’s gaze sharpened.
“And then what?”he asked.“You need to end this.”
“This isn’t like you,” Dimitri added.
That landed harder than anything else.Dimitri didn’t use an accusatory tone, but Maksim could hear his disappointment, carefully contained.
Maksim didn’t react, and he didn’t let it show that Lena had grown on him.
“She’s a liability,” Alexei said.“Don’t make this bigger than it needs to be.”
Maksim wanted to punch Alexei in his smug face, but Dimitri finally stepped in.
“If you won’t do it, we will,” Dimitri said.
Maksim held Dimitri’s gaze unflinchingly, but he said nothing.There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t tip the balance further against him.
Dimitri watched him for a moment longer.Then, with a small shift of his posture, the conversation ended.Just like that, he was dismissed.Maksim turned and left without saying anything else.
****
The drive back feltlonger, the city quieter.Or maybe it was just the noise in his own head that made everything else seem distant.
His brothers were right.Lena was a liability.A problem that had a simple, permanent solution.He had solved problems like her a hundred times before without hesitation or thought.
So why did he feel the need to keep her around?
