The Russian Fighter (Mafia Men #1)

Secrets We Keep

Chapter 18

Edited

I was back at the Nikolaev residence, inside the office of Maksim's father. He was a tall guy with beefy arms, and shaggy white hair shaved close to his ears. And like several of his sons, the man's eyes was a liquefied, bright gold. Almost hazelnut.

"How did this happen?" Dr. Nikolaev spoke after what seemed like a thousand years of silence, cutting a glance to his son for an answer.

"It was," started Maksim, irate, "not me if that is what you are implying."

"I am only trying to get a grasp of her state," he admonished. "No one is blaming you, my son. I know you. You are like me."

"Not in the slightest," he retorted, unkindly.

Dr. Nikolaev sighed, returning to stitching my forehead. "Do you wish to tell me what caused this?"

I dropped my gaze. It was clear he and his son did not get a long well, but one thing they had in common, that chilled my blood, made my skin foreign, was the intensity of their eyes. Like he could see past my bullshit.

I was thinking of lying. I didn't know this man, or if he was safe to protect to my secrets. His son, I had to remind myself, was working against my boss with his enemy. That made him one as well.

But his family?

Did they know what he was caught up in?

"She does not want to tell me," Maksim told his father, tapping his jaw with a finger impatiently as he waited. He was doing that a lot since I was put here. "She is stubborn when it comes to giving up information to anyone."

"That's irrelevant," I hissed at him, "in this situation. Just slipped on some glassware."

"Well this," said Dr. Nikolaev using the forceps to pull back the string inside my forehead, "is more viscous than I have seen glassware do."

"And there is no glassware at the club besides in the offices," Maksim reasoned, crossing his arms. "And I know he knows nothing about her, yet."

"Who doesn't know about me?" I questioned.

It was a rhetorical question. I knew he was talking about Angelo.

"A man very dangerous that controls my boys," Dr. Nikolaev supplied, cutting the stitch and applying two butterfly strips. "You do not want to know him. A girl like you would not last long in the eyes of a dangerous man like Maksim."

"Then why are they with him if he is so dangerous?" I asked.

"That is discussion for another time. And not for me to provide." He put down his supplies and removed the latex gloves off his hands, dotted with specs of my blood, throwing them in a nearby trashcan. "You should get some rest to let your wounds heal better. Maksim. I want to speak with you outside."

His son hesitated, glued to his stance where he watched me, taking measures to know I would not try to escape. "I need to watch her."

Dr. Nikolaev chuckled. "She will be fine, son."

Maksim walked out the door with his father and left it partly open. Their hushed voices carried in the room, to my desperate ears, both resigned with a tension long dragged for years.

His father asked in his native tongue, "Chto ty delayesh' s etoy devushkoy, moy mal'chik?" What are you doing with this girl, my boy?"

I imagined Maksim shrugging to not give a legitimate answer. The impossible Russki.