Chapter 2 - The Price of PrideGrigori’s eyes flickered with a sudden, sharp panic, but he was a veteran of the streets, and pride prevented him from letting go immediately. He sneered, though his grip on Maya trembled slightly.
"Croft," Grigori spat. "This isn't your business. This girl owes Apex Capital. She signed a contract."
"Julian," Maya gasped, her voice trembling, tears of pure humiliation spilling over her lashes. "Please... don't. Go away. Please."
She couldn't bear it. The one thing she had fought so desperately to preserve—her dignity, the boundary between her messy, broken life and the pristine world of the man she secretly cared for—was crumbling into ash right before her eyes.
Julian ignored her plea. He took one more step forward, bringing him directly in front of Grigori.
"One," Julian said.
He didn't wait for Grigori to react. In a movement so fast it was almost invisible to the naked eye, Julian reached out, grabbed Grigori’s thumb, and snapped it backward with a sharp, sickening CRACK.
Grigori let out a high-pitched scream of agony, instantly releasing Maya’s wrist and dropping to his knees on the bakery floor, clutching his broken hand to his chest.
The two henchmen behind him reached into their jackets for their weapons, but Derek was already there. A heavy, silenced pistol appeared in Derek’s hand like magic. He slammed the butt of the gun into the nose of the first man, sending him crashing into a display case of pastries, and leveled the barrel directly between the eyes of the second man before the thug could even clear his holster.
"Freeze," Derek whispered pleasantly. "Or I spread your brain across Mr. Koval's freshly baked rye."
The man froze, his hands flying into the air, trembling violently.
Julian didn't even look at the fallen men. He stepped over Grigori, who was groaning on the floor, and grabbed Maya by her upper arms, pulling her away from the counter. His hands were firm, but the touch was devoid of the violence he had just displayed—gentle, protective, almost reverent.
"Are you hurt?" Julian demanded, his dark eyes scanning her face, her neck, her hands, looking for any sign of blood or injury.
"Why are you here?" Maya sobbed, pulling herself away from his touch, her shoulders shaking violently as she pressed her hands against her face. "Why did you follow me?! I told you I would handle it! I promised you!"
"You were paying Viktor Markovic," Julian said, his voice laced with a mixture of raw anger and profound pain. "You were coming home at three in the morning with blood on your hands and flour on your shoes because you were paying a monster forty-five thousand dollars for a twelve-thousand-dollar debt!"
"It was my mother's medicine!" she screamed back at him, her voice echoing off the tiled walls of the bakery. Old Mr. Koval peeked out from the back, terrified, but Derek gently waved the old man back inside with a reassuring nod. "She was dying, Julian! The insurance wouldn't cover the experimental treatments! I had nowhere else to go! No one else to ask!"
"You had ME!" Julian roared, his composure finally shattering completely. The raw power of his voice shook the room, making even Derek flinch.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Julian stared at her, his chest heaving under his tailored coat, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides.
Maya looked up at him through a veil of wet hair and tears, her mouth slightly open in shock. "I... I am your maid, Julian. I clean your toilets. I fold your laundry. I don't ask you for forty-five thousand dollars."
"You think that's all you are to me?" Julian asked, his voice suddenly dropping into a whisper so quiet, so filled with agony, that it made Maya’s heart break all over again. "You think I stand by the window until three in the morning waiting for a maid?"
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick leather checkbook, and a fountain pen. Without looking down, he signed his name on a blank check and tossed it onto the counter next to Grigori’s groaning form.
"That check is open," Julian told the whimpering thug on the floor. "Write whatever number Viktor Markovic wants on it. Tell him that if I ever see his face, your face, or the face of any man associated with Apex Capital within five miles of this woman again, I will buy his company, burn it to the ground, and bury him beneath the foundations."
Julian turned back to Maya. He picked up her coat from the chair near the counter, wrapped it gently around her shivering shoulders, and took her hand in his.
May you like
"We are going home," he said flatly.
Maya was too exhausted, too broken by the weight of her exposed pride, to fight him any longer. She let him lead her out of the bakery into the cool, dark rain of the Chicago night.
