Maksim: A Dark Mafia Romance (Akimov Bratva), Nicole Fox [love letters to the dead txt] 📗

approach a steel table with a sink attached to it, but Dr. Lisov turns, heading toward another room. Maksim and I follow him, though Maksim’s pace slows down again, so we’re walking side by side. Dr. Lisov opens another door and we step in.

A blast of cold air hits me, but it’s meaningless as I look at the line of dead bodies on gurneys in front of me. There are seven bodies, all tightly packed in this one room.

“I’ll give you two a few minutes,” Dr. Lisov says. “I’ll be at the elevator.”

He leaves. It’s just Maksim, me, and seven corpses.

“All of these men died yesterday,” Maksim says, adjusting his cuffs. “You know the first one. Look at his face.”

I don’t move. I don’t know what to expect. If my father had been killed, I’d assume someone would have called me. But maybe Maksim found out his identity before anyone else. Maybe my father struck my name from the family tree after I was no longer useful to him, so nobody felt the need to tell me he was dead.

Maksim barges forward to the first gurney. He yanks down the white sheet.

Death changes people’s facial features. At first, it looks like any other man, simply more gray-skinned. But as I keep staring at him, I see the unruly eyebrows and the way his nose slants slightly to the left.

It’s one of the soldiers that Maksim had following me. The one I hit with pepper spray.

“His name was Fedot Belyakov,” Maksim says. “He was twenty-seven years old. When he heard that your father was attacking Dunlop’s Bookstore, he felt compelled to protect his brothers and our firearm inventory. He was shot in the lung. Avgar, my soldier who survived after being shot in the chest, told me that Fedot begged for his mother before he choked on his own blood.”

Maksim carefully places the sheet back over Fedot’s head. He turns around to the second gurney. He pulls down the sheet. The man is missing the right side of his face.

“Yury Kasyanenko,” he says. “Thirty-one years old. Loved his four-year-old son, Jack, and his wife, Leona. They just celebrated their fifth anniversary two weeks ago. They were looking to put their son into a great preschool.”

He covers Yury’s face with the sheet again. He flips over the next sheet.

“You know Bogdan,” he says. “I was ready to turn him into a lieutenant. Loyal, tireless, able to take initiative when it was necessary, and willing to do anything for the good of the Bratva. Before he joined us, he served in Special Forces. I shouldn’t be surprised that he and Yury died together, but your father certainly knows how to twist the knife. The police suspect he was the last to die because he was shot execution-style after suffering a gunshot wound in his abdomen and his left leg. He was an honorable man who didn’t deserve to die like that, but your family wouldn’t understand that kind of honor.”

“It’s not my fault what my father did,” I mumble through lips that feel numb and slow.

“You exposed where we stored our guns and undermined our authority. What did you think was going to happen?” he asks. “I told you what would happen. I showed you everything to prove that I was being honest. And you spread that information for all of my enemies to gorge themselves on.”

“What did you expect when you became a criminal?” I retort. “You can’t put all of the blame on me! I didn’t put a gun in anybody’s hand.”

He covers Bogdan’s head and pulls down the next sheet. He continues to show me the bodies. He knows each one in an almost familial way. There must be something infectious in the room because I feel it taking over. My skin is warm despite the refrigeration. My heartbeat is erratic. The feeling of bile is wrestling in my throat.

“Ivan Tsvetkov.” Maksim indicates to the last man. “He was twenty-nine years old. He had a deadbeat father and his mother went to prison for heroin use, so he grew up with his grandmother. He started playing ice hockey when he was seven years old. He had high ambitions of becoming a professional hockey player, but his career ended when he suffered a severe knee injury. He joined the Bratva to help pay for his grandmother’s medical bills. He was shot four times in the chest. I don’t know how I’m going to tell his grandmother because she has nobody else.”

“I get it,” I say. “You blame me. You think it’s my fault that all your men were killed. And I am sorry that they’re all gone, but it’s not my—”

There’s a knock on the door. Dr. Lisov leans into the room. “I’m sorry, Mr. Akimov, but my break is over. I have a surgery scheduled.”

“It’s fine, Dr. Lisov. We’re finished.”

As we get back into the elevator, my mind is a mess. I know Maksim is manipulating me, planting all his shame and guilt into me, but I also know that he deals with emotional pain by lashing out. I know he cared about those men. And, God, hearing their past, their hobbies, their families, their dreams—it’s a tragedy. It’s a disaster that my actions triggered.

Dr. Lisov and Maksim shake hands before Maksim and I walk back out. I take in a deep breath of fresh air. Maksim’s long stride returns as he heads back toward his truck. I consider running—it would be relatively easy for me to lose him amongst all the aisles of cars and cross in between the cars on the road. I could hide out somewhere like a motel or a shelter. But it would mean I couldn’t see Lily. It would mean he’d have time to make her disappear or tell her the truth without giving me the chance to justify my actions.

I follow him. I get into the passenger side. Maksim turns on the truck, returning to his policy of not looking at me. When