Page 95 of The Marriage

Well ...

“I don’t think words are going to be enough to cut it,” Demyan replied. “At this point, if you know what I mean.”

Then he pulled up a chair and sat across from the man everyone thought was dead. The two stared at each other, seconds ticking by far too slowly, before Demyan sighed.

“What the fuck were you thinking,” he muttered.

It wasn’t even a question.

Flatly, Maxim replied only, “I wouldn’t go out like that. By Leonid, while they curled like snakes around my legs. I deserved a better death than that.”

Demyan sat a little straighter in the chair. “You realize the position you’ve put me in, and how it—”

“I’m sorry. What can I say, yeah? Who else would have cared, old friend?”

He didn’t glorify that with a response, even if it was true.

Instead, Demyan asked, “How did you do it?”

“Leonid thought he was coming for me that night, but I was really there for him ... It doesn’t matter, I got my answers.”

“Answers?”

Maxim lifted his broad shoulders, and for the first time, Demyan noticed the man wasn’t as well put together as he normally might be. His shirt wasn’t perfectly pressed. His suit jacket had needed a wash a while ago, by the looks of it. And none of it appeared to bother the man at the other end of the table.

“About my daughters, and his son ... I had to know, Demyan,” Maxim explained, glancing down at his clasped hands.

Demyan didn’t ask details, just like he hadn’t with Roman. And he wouldn’t—unless they offered. It didn’t feel like his business.

Why inflict more trauma?

“But in the end, I didn’t really need to ask Leonid anything,” Maxim added after a moment. “It didn’t matter if he knew or not. All that mattered was he knew what his son was capable of, and that he wanted me dead.”

“How long had he worked on this plan?” Demyan asked.

Maxim shrugged, and finally picked up his coffee to take a swig. Smacking his lips, he said, “I suspect it had always been his plan. He played a long game, Demyan. Snakes have the greatest patience.”

Didn’t Demyan know it?

A man was never ready ...

All the talk was nice and everything, but Demyan figured he should move on to what was most important. What he suspected his son was probably racing there to ask himself.

“Where is Karine, Maxim?”

“I heard about the wedding,” the other man said flatly.

Demyan let out a hard breath, eyeing the gun between them, though he had one in a holster at his back. “He does love her.”

“I know. She wasn’t safe there, you see, if I could find her ... Dima would, too, eventually. Better that’s on her terms, I think. If she sees him coming, maybe—.”

“What do you mean?” Demyan interjected fast.

Maxim didn’t answer, asking instead, “Did you tell her what I asked you to say?”

At first Demyan was confused, but then he remembered the end of that fateful conversation before the fire. When Maxim made him promise he would tell Karine that her father loved her.

“I haven’t had the opportunity,” Demyan admitted. “A lot has happened.”