Safe.He tightened his jaw.What a fucking joke.No one near him stayed safe for long.His gaze drifted downward to her face in the dim light.Sleep softened her completely.She looked younger like this, and vulnerable in a way that unsettled him more than it should.
Maksim had spent most of his life around fear.He knew how people looked at him.Men feared him, and women desired him carefully, usually because of his name or power or the danger attached to him.
Lena, though, looked at him like she was trying to understand him.That was infinitely more dangerous.He moved his thumb unconsciously against her waist beneath the blanket.She made a soft sound in her sleep and shifted closer instinctively.
Maksim went still.There it was again.That sharp, possessive thing inside him tightening every time she touched him willingly.He hated how much he wanted to keep her here, and not temporarily either, but he wanted to keep her.
The thought alone should have alarmed him more than it did.Instead, his mind drifted back to the attack at the safehouse.The timing and precision was suspicious, and the fact the men had known exactly where to strike.
His expression darkened slowly.Dimitri and Alexei.Maybe not Dimitri. Dimitri would have simply ordered him directly if he intended Lena dead immediately.He believed in structure too much for games like that.
Alexei was different.Maksim exhaled smoke slowly through his nose.Alexei had always tested boundaries sideways, smiling quietly while he did it.
“If you won’t do it, we will.”
The words echoed unpleasantly in his head.He tightened his fingers slightly against Lena’s waist.The men who attacked had not tried to kill him first.Instead, they had gone for her.That told him everything he needed to know.
A cold weight settled heavily in his chest.Lena would never truly be safe near him, not while she remained what she currently was.A witness, an outsider standing too close to Bratva business.
His brothers would keep coming.Even if Dimitri stayed his hand for now, Alexei wouldn’t.Loose ends always got cut eventually.Maksim looked down at the woman sleeping beside him.Then at the gun resting on the bedside table.
The thought of Lena dead made something ugly twist beneath his ribs, because she had become precious to him.That was the truth.
Somewhere between patching his wounds, glaring at him over burnt coffee, and looking at him like a monster worth understanding anyway, Lena had embedded herself somewhere dangerous inside him.
Maksim crushed the cigarette out roughly.His mind moved automatically then, cold strategy replacing emotion.
Lena needed to disappear completely.
He could do it, obtain a fake passport, new documents, then hand her enough cash so she could survive on her own.She’d start a new life somewhere far from the city and the Bratva.It would cost him favors, but favors were currency he possessed in abundance.
It was the smartest option.The only option that did not end with her dead.Beside him, Lena stirred faintly before settling deeper into the pillow.Maksim watched her quietly.Would she take it willingly?
It was a clean escape, freedom.The very thing she had wanted since the first night he dragged her into this world.Something unexpectedly bitter moved through him at the thought.If she left, then Lena would disappear from his life entirely.
Maksim would miss her sharp tongue, her dark curls tangled across his pillow, even her kind hands patching him back together after violence.There would be no more Lena.The possessiveness inside him reacted violently.She’s mine.
Maksim closed his eyes briefly.This was exactly why his brothers no longer trusted his judgment where she was concerned.He no longer thought clearly, and he was lying beside a woman he should have killed long ago while contemplating how to save her instead.
His father would have called him weak for this.The thought pulled an old memory loose unexpectedly.His mother standing near the kitchen window in their old house, elegant despite the bruise hidden beneath makeup near her jaw.His father cold and distant even before the violence started.
Bratva wives survived by belonging completely to the world their husbands occupied.They were protected, possessed, and ultimately, trapped.
Maksim had spent years swearing he would never drag a woman fully into this life, and yet here he was.
****
Lena woke slowly.Maksimwas already sitting at the small kitchen table when she emerged from the bedroom wrapped in one of his shirts.
The sight hit him harder than it should have.His gaze lingered on her dark curls, messy from sleep, on her tempting bare legs.He noted the marks from his mouth he left on her last night still remained faintly against her skin.
Something territorial flared immediately in his chest.Lena rubbed at her eyes slightly before noticing his expression.
“You look terrifyingly serious,” she murmured.
Maksim said nothing at first.He watched her pour coffee quietly, and waited until she sat across from him.
“I’m going to erase your identity,” he told her.
