ALEXEI
Maggie stays quiet after my answer.
The hum of the refrigerator reaches the living room from the kitchen while rain taps against the windows. Maggie sits curled in the corner of the sofa beside me with one leg tucked beneath her body, her fingers loosely wrapped around the bottle she stopped drinking from minutes ago.
Every few seconds, her attention returns to my hands, lingering over the bruises and split skin like she can see the violence beneath the expensive suits and control. Most people hear enough truth to immediately start creating distance. Fear comes first. Judgment usually follows close behind.
Maggie studies me like she’s trying to understand how much pain a person can carry before it starts living beneath their skin.
Her voice is quiet when she finally speaks again. “What happened to Clara?”
The question surprises me. I look toward the rain streaking down the windows instead of at her because Clara still exists in fragments I rarely allow myself to touch. A photograph. Aperfume bottle tucked inside a drawer. The memory of her laugh moving through the kitchen of the house we lived in before the shooting.
Even after four years, grief remains like an old scar that never healed correctly.
Maggie lowers the beer onto the coffee table. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I know.”
The room falls quiet again. I should leave it there. I should stand up, walk out of this apartment, and put distance between her and the life circling me before the danger tears through another person I can’t afford to lose.
Instead, I stay seated beside her while the storm rolls over Savannah and tell her the truth.
“We were driving home from dinner.”
Maggie's eyes fill with sympathy immediately.
“She said if I spent one more dinner answering my phone, she was filing for emotional abandonment.”
The memory twists painfully through my chest because I can still hear her laughing when she said it.
Maggie watches me quietly now, listening with her entire body.
“We had just left the restaurant,” I continue. “My driver was pulling the car around front when another vehicle came down the street too fast.”
My hand tightens around the beer bottle. “I knew what it was before the windows rolled down.”
Maggie’s fingers curl together in her lap.
“They opened fire before I could react.”
The memory slams into me so fast I can smell the gunpowder all over again. I can see the shattered glass across the sidewalk and hear the people who were screaming around us. I can still feel Clara grabbing my arm before blood covered everything in seconds.
I force the images down before they consume me completely.
“Before I could push her down behind the car, she took a bullet to the chest.” I clear my throat. “Before my men could return fire.”
The last sentence nearly tears itself apart as it comes out of me.
Maggie moves closer without thinking, her knee brushing mine lightly. That tiny contact affects me more than sympathy ever could. Pain crosses her face instantly.
“Oh my God,” she whispers.
“She died before we reached the hospital.”
The apartment grows very quiet after that. Maggie’s eyes glisten in the lamplight, and what moves across her face isn’t pity but grief so genuine that I feel it straight through my heart.
“I’m so sorry, Alexei.”
