Chapter Thirty-Two
My nerves were shot to hell. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this—uncontrolled. I wasn’t as tightly laced as Dom, but I knew to keep myself in check, especially around our enemies.
But seeing Ivy in the presence of Maksim had made my stomach lurch and head spin, so much so, that I couldn’t say anything to her until I got to our car.
“What the hell was that?” I barked out the second she got situated in the back of the limo.
“What do you mean?” She looked genuinely confused which pissed me off more than I thought it would.
I took a calming breath. I wasn’t mad at Ivy. She didn’t know any better and that was my fault. I’d thought that I could shield her from the realities of my world, and I had been marginally successful until tonight. “Why were you alone with that man?”
She sighed, and I knew she was catching on to what had me so angry. “I was wandering around the house. I happened to wander into his study.”
The way she spoke, as if she hadn’t just been alone with one of the most dangerous men in Manhattan, made my anger skyrocket. She needed to understand the severity of the danger she’d put herself in.
“Relax,” she said, leaning back against the seat. “I’m fine. Maksim didn’t hurt me. He didn’t even threaten me. In fact…” she trailed off, and I felt myself waiting on bated breath to know what she was going to say next.
When she didn’t, I threw my hands up in despair. “What the hell, Ivy?” I asked. “Are you trying to kill me, is that it!”
She rolled her eyes at me, but a small smile graced her lips. Normally, I would have been all over her. She’d teased me all evening in that tight dress, and I wanted nothing more than to fuck her in the back of the limo. I still might consider it, but first, I needed to make sure that she was safe.
“He was actually very nice,” she said. She’d pulled one of her curls in front of her face and twirled the dark piece of hair around her finger. It was a nervous habit I’d noticed.
“Nice?” I asked, my voice incredulous. “Maksim Ivanov is a ruthless killer. He’s not someone most people would consider nice. Don’t let the sad old man routine fool you.”
Before tonight, I’d only met Maksim once, in passing. I hadn’t thought much about him over the years—there’s been no need to until now. But I knew him by reputation. And it was a brutal one littered with bloody bodies and broken families.
“Did you know that he had a daughter?” Ivy asked.
The question threw me for a loop. “You two did talk a lot, apparently.”
Ivy shook her head and released a sigh of exasperation. “He wanted me to know that he has no plans of retaliating against you for what happened with Adrian. Said that you did him a favor.”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t know what I expected Ivy to say, but it sure hadn’t been that. “What?” I asked, my voice low. “Why would he say anything about Adrian?”
Adrian’s body has been recovered a month ago. A day before Ivy and I got married. It was what spurred us into action on that front. But he’d been submerged in the Hudson for a week, washing away any and all trace evidence from him. Anything tying him to me, except Ivy, was gone.
I’d thought we were mostly in the clear on that front, but now, it seemed that that wasn’t necessarily the case.
Ivy placed a small hand on my chest. “Relax,” she said. “Maksim told me that he would have had to kill Adrian himself anyway. Sounds like him showing up dead saved him a hassle.”
I snorted. Adrian would have had to die. Nephew or not. He’d betrayed the Bratva. His actions had led to the death of Maksim's daughter, Anastasia, which made it even worse.
But I still didn’t believe that he would just let me get away with murdering a member of his family. Our lives were run on a code, and an eye for an eye, even if that eye needed to come out. That was generally how we did things.
“I think his daughter's death changed him,” Ivy muttered, drawing my attention back to her.
“Death will do that to a person,” I muttered. I didn’t remind her that all of us in this life were touched by death at some point. Death of parents, siblings, children. People always got caught up in the crossfire, even when there wasn’t a war. The Russians were our biggest enemy in the city, but they weren’t the only ones.
The thought made that pit in my stomach widen as I remembered the man who was stalking Ivy.
“Did you know her?” she asked, her voice interrupting my spiral into uncontrollable panic.
“What?” I asked, shaking my head. I needed to get it together. Things weren’t going to go well if I couldn’t keep my head on straight.
“Maksim’s daughter. Did you know her?”
It took me a minute to think about the question. “I knew of her,” I said, which was the truth. I knew her not because of her relationship to Maksim, but her relationship to Nikolai, Sasha’s brother.