Maxim

I saw him kill a man. He should have killed me. Instead, he locked me in his penthouse.

Elena Morozova restores old icons for the Russian Orthodox Church. She's twenty-three, covered in gold leaf, and invisible. Until the night she walks into a chapel and watches Maxim Sokolov shoot a priest in the head.

He's forty-five. He's the most dangerous man in Moscow. He takes me home the way you'd take a painting off a wall.

His penthouse is a gilded cage. Silk sheets, fresh flowers, a studio with every colour I could want. And a door that only opens from the outside.

I should hate him. I do hate him. But at night he sits in my studio and watches me paint like I'm the only thing keeping him alive.

Then I find out I'm carrying his child. And the men who want him dead want me even more.

He offers me my freedom. I'm not sure I can take it.