Page 27 of The Crimson Lily

Something clicks inside my mind. That silver glimmer in his eyes…

?Maksim’s behavior seems to erupt whenever I open myself to him.

Whenever I express fear or hesitation. Whenever I don’t feel safe.

He seems to…?rush to me. He seems drawn to me whenever I’m afraid.

Whenever I look down, Maksim is always there, towering above me, ready to embrace me.

That’s it. I need to show weakness. But I also need to prove I have my head on my shoulders.

I start typing a text on my own phone as I walk by the Seine.

Maksim, it’s Liliana. I need you. I don’t blame you for anything. You didn’t do anything I didn’t want. Please call me back. Please come back to me. I really don’t feel safe right now.

Gotcha. Five minutes later, my phone rings.

“I told you to stay away,” he mumbles through the line. His voice breaks in a whisper.

“Well,” I begin, swallowing the lump in my throat. “You should know by now that I’m a terrible listener.”

Silence.

“Maksim, I never blamed you for anything you did to me, or for anything that happened.” I repeat what I said in my text.

No reaction.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I swear.

“I don’t know why you still run after me,” he says, his voice revealing nothing.

There’s no shred of affection in his tone. It hurts. Something has changed. He’s no longer the man who strokes me to sleep. It hurts so bad.

“Why are you doing this?” I plead, my lips trembling. “Why are you shutting me out like that?”

He doesn’t reply.

“We can find a way to work through this,” I assure, feeling stupid for basically implying we’re even a “we.”

“I’m perfectly fine with who I am.”

I sigh and repress my tears. “Obviously not!”

“I had two rules, Liliana,” he dictates. “I sleep alone, and I don’t get attached.”

I burst into tears. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear Maksim’s stupid rules. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take the realization that he means so much more to me than I to him.

“I broke my own rules,” he says, interrupting the long pause.

I sniffle, dry my tears so no one else in this street can see me cry.

“Why live a life like this?” I question, my voice in shreds. “Why stick to a stupid code that forbids you to be happy?”

“I never saw the necessity.”

My heart clenches itself. Here I am, in the middle of Paris, France, in white sneakers and a pink T-shirt, crying on the phone like a lost little girl. Geez, I have to stop crying. I have to stop shedding tears for this man who will never return what I feel for him.

“Well,” I begin, repressing all emotions possible and sticking to practicalities. “If that’s how you feel, then let’s go back to the mission and keep this strictly to business. We get that freaking dagger, then we’re done.”

There’s silence, then a short sigh.

“Sure,” he blurts. Something in his voice sounds like he doesn’t want to yield.

I raise my eyes to the next street sign. Quai d’Orsay.

Oh, shit!

I check to my left and see, in the distance, a big panel with the name of the one storage house. I don’t hesitate.

“By the way,” I say, too loudly, as if I’m mocking him, “I’m at Quai d’Orsay, so…?screw you, Maksim!”

I immediately regret that last part. What kind of uncalled for manipulation trick is that? Do I want him to come rush to my rescue? Am I actually luring him by making him think I’ll walk into that place alone? How low have I sunk?

Sauntering toward the large panel, I think about how this whole situation reeks of ruse again.

It just can’t be that easy. There can’t be a storage house in the middle of Paris that’s harboring a dagger worth millions of dollars.

It just doesn’t fit William’s profile, whatever that is.

He kept this dagger all for himself, all this time, only to leave it in a freaking parking lot?

No! This doesn’t feel right at all. I spin on my heels and run back to Maksim’s apartment.

I throw myself onto my bed in the Renaissance house and breathe out all the air I own. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be involved in this mess anymore. I close my eyes, squeezing the emerald pillow against my face, screaming into it so the rest of the world won’t hear me.

I want to go home.

My mind drifts off. I don’t know if I’m in Maksim’s house, in the Opera hotel, or in the Westin Vend?me.

It’s all dark until I see Maksim stand before me.

He looks like shit, crushed, his eyes dark and his face wet with tears.

I try to talk to him, but my words echo in his silence and never reach him.

I try to convince him, give him a thousand reasons to come back, to come back to me.

He just walks away. I close my eyes, and the loop starts all over again.

I can’t do this anymore. I collapse to my knees and cry as if I’ve never cried.

As I drift off further away from anything real, I feel someone behind me, wrapping their arms around me. I feel their breath on my skin, their lips tenderly kissing my neck. I recognize this. It’s him. I am a hundred percent sure.

I keep my eyes locked shut. I need to stay in this dream, the dream that he is with me and holding me.

I sink back into the darkness of a restless slumber.

The ring of a bell, a few shouts, then Béatrice’s fury unleashes. That sequence of loud noise makes me open my eyes. It’s dark outside.

“You’re back,” I hear her spit at Maksim. It’s not a remark; it’s an accusation.

“How dare you, after what you’ve done? How dare you come back? The way you treated her—it’s not okay! You almost raped her!”

No, Béatrice, that’s not how it went.

“You stood up as if nothing ever happened and ran away like the coward you are. Why are you back?”

I stagger out of bed and rush downstairs. I need to stop these two before they start throwing fists. And I don’t want to know how that fight would end.

“It’s my house,” I hear him say in an evident tone, stern and unmoved.

I make it to the living room, where they’ve been arguing for about fifteen minutes. They both look at me, but the anger doesn’t leave Béatrice’s brown eyes, which have turned red. Maksim simply holds a glass of whiskey in his hand with an undefined shade in his glare.

She sends an army of words and insults at him. It starts with a “You obviously don’t live here, asshole,” then a “It’s your fucking parents’ house!” comes, and she finishes with “What happened to your parents? Did you kill them?”

As she speaks, I stand there like a child who’s done something bad, arms crossed and feeling numb. I don’t know where to hide myself. I try to catch Béatrice’s attention and tell her that everything’s fine. I try to search for Maksim’s eyes, for a reaction, but he only holds his whiskey.

After Béatrice is done, the vile shadow of a smirk is drawn upon his face. He looks her in the eyes and snarls.

“She asked for it,” he says, peering at me next.

Béatrice follows his glare, turning her face to me. She takes that deep breath again and exhales a torrent of wrath.

“I’m done,” she casts. “Liliana, pack your suitcase. You’re coming with me.”

Maksim immediately rises to his feet.

“She’s not leaving,” he barks defensively.

Béatrice raises her head as a firm warning not to come any closer. “You let her leave, or I call the police. And I bet they’d love to hear about how you killed those two men in the Opera.”

Maksim chuckles—a reaction she did not expect. Béatrice is about to go for his jaw with a furious fist when I step in her way. I hold my hands open in front of me as a plea for her to calm down.

“It’s okay!” I promise. “I’m packing my things, and I’m coming with you.”

Yeah, I’m done here too.

Béatrice scowls at Maksim, victorious. I turn to face him, my eyes puffed with the dread I feel at the idea of leaving him.

He says the one thing I absolutely did not expect.

“Don’t you have questions you want answered first?” he asks.

I frown. “What?”

Béatrice frowns too. Maksim paces away from us and marches into the hallway, where he opens the door in the staircase’s wall. He motions for us to take the stairway down to a basement I haven’t yet explored.

I am completely confused. I don’t know what to do.

I want to follow him, to understand what he meant by having questions answered.

Béatrice is more fearless than I am. She already took a few steps down the stairs, and I go after her.

Maksim follows me. I can feel his breath behind me as I saunter down to the dimly lit room drowned in a thick and damp breeze.

The walls are gray. There are a few shelves with boxes that look older than me. But what makes Béatrice gasp and me freeze is the sight of a man underneath the flickering lightbulb, tied to a chair, beaten and bruised. The man looks up to us, and I instantly recognize him.

It’s Mr. Zhang.

“What the fuck…” Béatrice murmurs.

Mr. Zhang chuckles at our surprise. His mouth bleeds. He has one black eye more than me and two teeth missing.

“I see you brought Charlie’s Angels,” Yi Zhang remarks with a sneer.

I look back at Maksim with mouth agape. “What the hell is this?”

I wonder for a brief second how long Mr. Zhang has been in Maksim’s grasp. Did Maksim capture him at the artists’ reception? No, Yi’s clothes look far too neat for that to be possible.

Maksim leans against the concrete wall and points at his prisoner.

“Your boss doesn’t keep a dagger in a storage house,” he states, as if that fact is more than obvious. “After Alejandro’s intel, I thought I’d check with my best informant. Isn’t that right, Yi?”

Mr. Zhang spits blood on the floor. “You kidnapped me!” he accuses.

Maksim hushes him with a smirk. “The storage was a trap,” he declares. “William has a whole army staged there.”

Zhang is now looking straight at me. His bruised little eyes fume with disdain. “Your little Bratva dog figured it out.”