His (Ties That Bind 2)

“What happened between you and Vasily?” I ask.

“What did he tell you happened?” he challenges.

“Not a whole lot.” I shrug. “He came back to the club one night, said you were dead, and I’d need to run some extra jobs for him. That was the extent of it. He’s not exactly the kind of man you ask a lot of questions, as you know.”

Maxim snorts. “Yeah, I do know. That was the fucking problem. I guess I just got sick of taking his orders. No explanations, no logic. I did what I was told for a long time, but when I started to ask questions, Vasily didn’t like it. He likes his soldiers deaf, dumb, and blind.”

“But you weren’t,” I hedge. “Did you see something you shouldn’t have?”

He shakes his head. “You first, kid. This isn’t a one-way street. You want me to trust you, there needs to be some give and take here.”

I lean back into the sofa and consider where I should even fucking begin. Maxim isn’t in a position to do any real damage to me at this stage of his life. He has no more connections in my world, so he wants me to give him some insurance, and that’s understandable. But more than that, I’m hoping he will know something about what I have to tell him.

“A little over four years ago, Vasily asked me to do a job. He wanted me to keep an eye on one of his connections, William von Brandt. He said he’d been talking to the feds. We roughed him up a bit, gave him a warning, but William didn’t listen. He stole a flash drive from Vasily, and shit hit the fan. I didn’t know what was on it because we couldn’t find it anywhere in the von Brandt house. But eventually, I got my hands on it, and I realized it was a list of names.”

Maxim holds up a finger to stop me as he staggers into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. When he returns to his chair, he offers it to me, and I shake my head.

“Now you’ve got my attention,” he says. “Go on.”

“The list has a lot of names. Most of them didn’t mean anything to me. But I had a friend do some digging, and after connecting the dots, we realized that there was a neighbor in my mother’s apartment building on that list. A cop too. Both were killed not long after her.”

“It’s a shame what happened to your mother.” Maxim cringes as he takes a swig from the bottle.

“Andrei killed her.”

“I know, kid.”

I study him, waiting for him to say something else. It never occurred to me that Maxim would know about it, but it only makes sense. For as long as he worked for Vasily, he would have seen and heard a lot of shit.

“Were you there?” I clip out.

“Fuck no.” He glares at me. “I don’t run jobs on women, and Vasily knew that. After I fucked it up the first time, he never asked me again. I didn’t even have any idea who you were until he brought you into the club. By then, your mother was already dead.”

“What do you mean you fucked it up the first time?” I ask.

He rocks back and kicks his boot up onto his opposite knee, then takes another swig from the bottle and wipes his lips. “There was a woman. A long time ago. Vasily was using her as a pawn. She had an affair with Gleb Mikhailov and ran information back to Vasily. That arrangement worked out just fine until Vasily ran into some sort of complication with her. She tried to go into hiding, but Vasily found her a few years later. He wanted me to take care of it. But I didn’t realize she had a kid. The second I saw that, I backed the fuck out. I couldn’t do it. Regardless, it didn’t matter. He had it done anyway.”

I shake my head, trying to process what he’s telling me. There’s no way he could be talking about Kat’s mother, but it’s too similar to discount. The words are rushing from my lips before my mind can even catch up.

“Ciara March?”

Maxim’s eyebrows shoot up. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Her name was on that list,” I choke out. “At least we think it’s supposed to be her name.”

“I’ll be damned,” he murmurs. “I haven’t heard that name in at least twenty years.”

“The daughter.” My throat is so dry, I can hardly get my thoughts out. “She was Gleb’s?”

Maxim nods. “She was. Ciara told me that when I came for her. I think she still wasn’t sure if she could trust me after I warned her away, and that was the only bargaining chip she had. Nobody in his right mind would hurt Gleb’s kid, but the irony was that I don’t think he ever knew she even existed.”