Page 102 of The Agreement

He decided to keep that piece of information to himself, just in case he wasn’t able to get out of there alive. If that happened, he wouldn’t be able to help Karine. And if her alter, Katee, was one of the ways she survived, then who was he to stop her from protecting herself?

Maxim scoffed, muttering, “I’m not taking her to a shrink. I don’t need some balding fuck with a degree on his wall to tell me what I already know about her. She is crazy. Has been for years. And yes, if someone wants her, and it works to my favor like this has, then I don’t see the problem.”

How?

God, how could he think like that?

Roman flinched, then, and not just because of the way his ribs burnt with pain. He couldn’t stand the sound of Maxim’s voice. Karine’s name on his lips. She was who she was—whether she was perfect or not shouldn’t matter to the fact she still deserved to be loved and cared for like every other human with a beating heart and a soul.

She certainly had those.

Or ... he thought so.

“So, you’re just going to hand her over to him. Like a weak man would—a scared man who doesn’t understand, can't comprehend, what they’re looking at when they see her. That’s what it is, right? You’re scared of her.”

It wasn’t even a question.

Roman didn’t need to ask what he now knew. Everything he had been missing was suddenly right in front of his face. He hated what he was looking at. The irony wasn’t lost on him, though. She terrified her father because she wasn’t okay by his standards, but clearly Maxim didn’t see it the same way. He didn’t see she was like a small kitten trying desperately to hide away from a big, mean world all at the same time. Did Karine even know the power she really had?

He didn’t think so.

“What makes you think you know anything about me, you sorry sack of shit.”

Just like that, Maxim’s rage returned. A wave that crashed against him, unable to keep himself from drowning in it again. He stormed at Roman with his bloodshot eyes narrowed, his chest and shoulders heaving.

“I know too much, that’s the fucking problem,” Roman growled, using the last seconds he had to toss out the final card trick in his pocket. The one thing that might save him, if it mattered. “And you’re wrong—it wasn’t Dima. I don’t know what Dima knows, but Leonid plotted against you with someone named Katina.”

Once again, the name unsettled him. Something felt wrong, even as he said it. And he could tell that he was right to feel that way based on the way Maxim came to a full stop just inches away from him, his shoulders lifting higher as his chin tipped up.

Staring Roman down, Maxim’s words came out slow, and hard. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t stutter.”

Not without effort, though.

“Katina—not Dima, Maxim,” Roman said, his voice hoarse now.

Maxim didn’t move an inch. “Katina is dead.”

“He was on the phone with her. I heard what he said—do you have proof of her death?”

Maxim’s breaths suddenly exploded from him in fast bursting pants that sounded like a dog huffing at the end of its chain. His fists tangled into his hair as he snarled under his breath, turning away from Roman at the same time.

The man was just seconds away from losing his shit, and Roman was prepared. What else was he supposed to do now? The only thing he could do with his hands tied—talk. It was the only thing, next to stealing cars, that he was actually good at.

“Do you have proof?” he asked again. “Who is she?”

“Shut up!” Maxim roared at him. As fast as the man exploded, the unsettling calm returned when he added, “Yes, I have fucking proof. She was my oldest daughter. I buried her.”

The two men glared, silence stretching on in the dank, musty basement.

It just didn’t make any sense to Roman. How and why was Leonid speaking to Katina—if she was dead? And if so, then who was she?

Someone with a personal vendetta against Maxim, apparently. Enough to want to see him dead.

Roman didn’t have the chance to think about it for long. That pain he’d been fighting finally took him under, dragging his consciousness with it.

Great.