His (Ties That Bind #2) - Natasha Knight Page 0,15

careful.”

“I will,” I assure her. “We’ll be back together before you know it.”

We both end the call, and I move my attention back to Maxim. He reeks of whiskey, but despite that, he seems to have his faculties in order.

“If what she says is true, it sounds like you’ve really gotten yourself into a bind, kid.”

“It is true.”

“Regardless”—he sighs—“I don’t want to get involved. I left that world for a reason. I don’t need you bringing trouble back to my doorstep.”

“I just need some answers. Give me one hour, and I’ll fuck off out of your life and you’ll never see me again.”

“Sounds too good to be true.” He laughs sourly. “Fucking Christ.”

“You know me,” I tell him. “I grieved for you. I believed you were dead. You were the only asshole in that place I liked.”

Maxim scratches at his stubble and chuckles. “You better not make me fucking regret this, kid.”

7

Lev

Maxim sits down in the recliner across from me, gun still clutched in his hand. We’re back at his place, and the state of his affairs is even sadder than I originally would have thought. The house is mostly just an empty shell, and in that aspect, it reminds me of my own place back in Philly. I understand the concept. When you might have to pick up and leave everything behind at a moment’s notice, there really isn’t any point in collecting things.

“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