How did I never notice that before?
“You can help my mom by leaving my shit alone,” I tell him. “Put that down!” I snap, when he tosses my expensive blender in a box.
“Take it easy.” Maxim walks in my front door like he owns the place. Maybe he does—who knows?
He’s impeccably dressed, as always, in a crisp blue button-down and tailored slacks. His hands are in his pockets in that GQ-casual way he has of standing. Like nothing ever ruffles him.
The past week has been a nightmarish blur with the funeral and interment. I’ve been numb, trying to help my mom bear her grief. Too angry to even examine my own. Maxim kept his distance, and I was hoping it meant he had as little interest in maintaining this sham marriage as I do.
But it appears I was wrong. And now I regret not trying to talk to him yesterday before he set all this into motion. To talk him out of this insanity.
“All your things get shipped to Chicago. If there’s something you want to leave for your mom, just tell them, and they’ll separate it out.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not going to Chicago.”
“It’s not up for discussion,” he says easily, almost like he expected that response but gives it no credence. His gaze dips to my breasts, which are pushed up and framed by my folded arms. I wore a skin-tight, pink-gold minidress today, which I’ve been using to fluster all the men swarming around my apartment this morning.
I’m way more satisfied than I should be to find Maxim is also affected by it.
“Listen.” I switch into English since we both speak it, and my father’s men don’t. “I understand you control the money now. I’m fine with that. I’ll be a good girl and do what you tell me. But we don’t have to pretend to be husband and wife. I know you don’t want me, and I obviously don’t want you.”
“The marriage isn’t about what we want, caxapok.”
His old endearment for me—sugar—rolls off his tongue too glibly and sends a riot of the shame and longing he once incited blasting through me again as if I were still seventeen.
“Your father wanted you safe, and he chose me to be your protector.”
I gesture toward the men dismantling my apartment. “Viktor and Alexei will keep me safe, as they always have.”
Even though we’re speaking English, Maxim takes a step closer and drops his voice. “Think about it, caxapok. If your father thought you were safe with them, he wouldn’t have arranged to have you shipped off to America. He wouldn’t have brought me in.”
I want to scoff. My mom and I practically own Viktor and Alexei.
After I got Maxim banished, I realized how much power I could wield with my sexuality. And since it’s the only power I wielded in my life, I used it. I played games with my father’s men. Baiting them, getting on my knees for them. Sucking their cocks. Then threatening to tell my father to get whatever I needed from them—usually my freedom.
But a whisper of foreboding runs through me at Maxim’s words. He’s right. With my father dead, everything’s changed. I don’t hold any power anymore.
“Go and pack your personal things. Our flight is in a couple of hours.”
I shake my head mulishly. “I’m not going.”
Maxim goes still and warning bells go off in my head. There’s a dangerous air to him. “Pack now or you travel with what I bring for you.”
“Just leave me here,” I try again. “You can have the money—that’s why I’d be in danger, right? So you keep it. Just give me enough to live on, and I’ll stay out of your hair. Just leave me here.”
“Do you think I married you for the fucking money?” he snarls. Maxim’s upper lip curls. He shouldn’t look so beautiful when he looks down his nose scornfully at me. “Believe me, caxapok, I don’t want it. It—and you—are definitely more trouble than you’re worth.”
I spread my hands. “Then go. I’m letting you off the hook. Vladimir will protect me here.”
“I made a promise to your father, Sasha. I won’t dishonor him by forsaking it.”
I roll my eyes.
He looks at his watch. “We’re running out of time, sugar. Looks like you’re traveling with what’s already packed. Go and get in the car that’s waiting outside.”
I don’t know why I have to push. Stubbornness has always been my downfall. I fold my arms across my chest, lift my chin and dare to say, “Fuck you.”
He cocks his head. I half expect a slap, like my father sometimes issued, but he appears completely unruffled. “If I have to make you, there will be consequences, Sasha.”
“Go ahead—make me,” I challenge.
Maxim isn’t amused. He loses the relaxed posture and launches into motion, like the sleeping lion that suddenly springs into a pounce. In one swift movement, he tosses me over his shoulder and carries me to the door, barking an order at one of the men to get my suitcases and bring them down to the car.