Chapter 38
2179words
Cliffside Clearing | Southbound Overlook
Late Afternoon
The wheels crunched against gravel as the car eased to a stop.
Maxim stepped out slowly, the wind tugging at the hem of his coat, carrying with it the acrid tang of burnt rubber and gasoline. The sky above was dipped in early dusk—blue fading into bruised violet. The wreckage lay just off the bend, mangled metal scattered like bone.
He hadn’t planned to take this road. He wasn’t even supposed to be this far north. But a tip about an untraceable satellite burst led his team’s signal trace here—and Maxim, at 62, still as restless as ever, had insisted on seeing it himself.
He hadn’t expected… this. A wreckage blocking the way.
His men fanned out instinctively, boots quiet on the broken asphalt.
Maxim raised a hand—a silent signal to hold position.
He narrowed his eyes.
Something was moving in the wreckage.
Not the crash shifting. Not wind.
Movement. Low. Intentional.
He pointed, subtle. One of the men crept forward, peered past the bent metal, then returned just as silently.
“A child,” he murmured.
Maxim’s jaw tightened. “Fall back.”
The man obeyed without question.
Maxim stepped forward alone.
Closer now, he could see her—small, maybe eight, nine at most, crouched behind the upturned frame of the car. At first, she looked like a doll half-buried in the shadows.
But then she moved—deliberate, unhurried.
She was adjusting an arm. Her mother’s, most likely. Placing it gently across the chest. Smoothing the fabric. Her tiny hands brushed dirt from the woman’s face like she was tucking someone in for the last time.
Maxim didn’t speak. Didn’t move.
He simply watched.
Her hair was pinned back—tight, controlled. Not the way a child would normally wear it. Her hands were steady. Her face pale. Not with fear.
With purpose.
And when she finished—when the quiet ritual was done—she sat still for a few seconds, head bowed.
Then, slowly, she turned her face toward him.
Maxim stepped forward carefully, like one might approach something sacred—or broken.
The closer he got, the more details registered: bruises along her cheekbone. Dried blood at her temple. Scratches down her arms. But she wasn’t crying.
Her eyes—dark, unreadable—held his.
“They told me to run,” she said quietly. “But I didn’t want to leave them looking like… looking like…”
She didn’t finish. Just looked down again.
Maxim knelt beside her, his voice low. “What’s your name?”
A pause. Then: “Kristina.”
He nodded once. “Kristina… do you know what happened here?”
She shook her head.
“But it wasn’t an accident,” she said. Her voice was flat. Factual. “They were being followed. They tried to turn back.”
Maxim’s jaw tightened.
“Do you know who was following them?”
“No.” Her fingers brushed lightly against her mother’s sleeve. “But I think they knew.”
When he reached out gently to help her up, she flinched—not away from him, but as something tugged at her wrist. Her bracelet had caught on a bent shard of metal near the doorframe. She glanced at it, expression unreadable.
He freed it with care, but the chain snapped. The bracelet slipped from her wrist and fell somewhere into the wreckage.
Kristina just looked at it. Then looked away.
Maxim didn’t press.
He stood and offered his hand again. This time, she took it.
Behind him, one of his men approached.
“Sir, what should we do about the scene?”
Maxim turned his gaze back to the wreck. Then to the pale sky above.
“Wipe it,” he said. “Anything that could link them to a name or a place—take it. IDs, tags, records. Destroy the rest.”
The man hesitated. “Sir?”
Maxim’s voice sharpened slightly.
“If this wasn’t an accident, then others will come looking. And I don’t want them finding her.”
It wasn’t mercy.
It was protection.
He didn’t ask questions he didn’t need answers to.
And he didn’t leave things lying around for enemies to pick through.
“Take the second car. I’ll go ahead,” he said.
They nodded.
Maxim turned back to Kristina, still standing quiet and small beside the wreckage.
“You’ll come with me now.”
She didn’t ask where. She didn’t ask why.
She just followed him.
1993 - 2007
Maxim Thorne’s Estate
It began with a hedge.
Days after the crash, Maxim stepped out into the morning sun with a cup of black coffee and a folder of correspondence tucked under his arm. Lucian and Harold were already in the garden, waiting to discuss the Geneva Project. Lucian had been asking about Kristina.
Maxim said he’d check.
He passed through the hedges quietly, eyes scanning the corners of the estate—until he found her.
Crouched low behind the broadleaf myrtles, Kristina was perfectly still. Her hair, still clipped back the same way it had been at the crash site, caught the light like threads of ink. She wasn’t playing. She wasn’t hiding.
She was watching.
Maxim followed her gaze.
Lucian stood near the pergola with Harold, blueprints spread across the table between them. He looked relaxed—one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing lightly as he spoke.
Kristina didn’t move.
Maxim said nothing. He didn’t disturb her. He simply watched for a few seconds longer, then turned and walked quietly back toward the garden.
When he returned, Lucian looked up. “Did you find her?”
Maxim took a sip of his coffee. “She’s asleep.”
By the time she was ten, Maxim no longer needed to monitor her.
She monitored herself.
At meals, she straightened her utensils to perfect right angles. Tapped her glass three times before drinking. Finished her food in the same order every time: starch, protein, vegetable.
She didn’t play with the other children from the visiting families. She didn’t speak unless spoken to. But she read. And memorized. And rearranged.
Maxim once entered the drawing room to find all the books off the lower shelves—not messily scattered, but reorganized. By subject. By subtopic. By descending word count.
He said nothing. Just walked over and placed one of his cufflinks on the edge of the shelf. She stared at it.
The next day, the cufflink was centered.
When she was eleven, Maxim found her staring at one of Lucian’s old report cards—left there, perhaps not accidentally. Her face gave nothing away.
He made a sound to announce himself.
Kristina looked up slowly. “He got a 94 in Tactical Sim last term.”
“He did,” Maxim replied, neutral.
She looked back at the paper. “I can do better.”
He almost smiled.
She never said Lucian’s name.
But Maxim noticed. Every time the boy entered a room, her posture changed. A subtle stillness. Like bracing for impact.
And when Lucian left, she always watched until he was out of view. Once, when she was twelve, Maxim caught her standing at the top of the stairs, staring at Lucian’s retreating form in the foyer below. Her hand was resting lightly on the banister, knuckles white.
He didn’t interrupt.
She turned fifteen, and something shifted.
The silence grew heavier. Her rituals grew sharper. Maxim noticed the way she flinched at loud voices, the way her focus tunneled so deeply she wouldn’t hear her name the first time it was called.
One night, Maxim returned late and found her sitting in the dark at the base of the grand staircase. Her knees were drawn to her chest. Her eyes were dry.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“He doesn’t remember me,” she whispered finally.
Maxim sat beside her, silent.
She didn’t explain. He didn’t ask.
It was nearly dusk when the call came.
Maxim was in his study, a crystal tumbler of whiskey untouched on the desk, reviewing reports that didn’t quite sit right. Shell acquisitions. Silent investor withdrawals. A biotech company that vanished overnight. All tied, in subtle threads, to names he’d long kept watch on.
When the house staff buzzed through, he nearly ignored it.
“There’s someone here,” the woman said. “He says it’s important.”
Maxim stood. “Name?”
“He says you’ll know. Everett Lysander Voss.”
That made him pause.
He didn’t know the name. But something about it lodged in the base of his spine.
Five minutes later, the man was escorted into the study. Early twenties, lean, sharp-eyed beneath travel-worn clothes and wind-mussed hair. His expression wasn’t desperate—but determined. Haunted, but steady.
He carried a box.
“Mr. Thorne,” Everett said. “Thank you for seeing me.”
Maxim studied him a long moment. “Let’s dispense with the pleasantries.”
Everett nodded and stepped forward, placing the box gently on the edge of the desk.
“I’ve been looking for her for almost six years.”
Maxim didn’t blink.
Everett removed the lid.
Inside: yellowed news clippings, satellite photos, heavily redacted reports, and a crumpled family photo—Kristina at nine, pressed between two smiling parents.
“I lived a floor above them,” Everett said quietly. “Kristina used to sit on the balcony, counting coins and solving logic puzzles. She wasn’t like the others. I didn’t know how not to notice her.”
Maxim said nothing.
“I heard the fights weeks before the crash. Her parents were scared. Talking about leaving, about being followed. I thought maybe it was debt, or immigration. I didn’t realize how far it went.”
He pulled out a file. Handed it over.
Maxim took it, flipped through. Corporate statements. A disbanded lab. Medical research into “early-phase cognitive enhancement,” funded by a shell company—its majority investor listed under Alistair Miller.
“That company shut down three days after the accident,” Everett said. “No survivors reported. No child listed. But I saw the wreck on the news. I saw her bracelet. The one she always hid under her sleeve.”
Maxim looked up.
“You’re certain it was her?”
“I’m certain no one else ever counted seven steps before crossing the street.”
Then Everett added, voice low: “I found out who owns that stretch of land. Who got the cleanup contract. Who made sure the report never listed her name.”
Maxim’s eyes narrowed. “You think I had something to do with it.”
“I don’t know. But I know Kristina disappeared. And I know now she’s not dead.”
Another file came out—photos from a surveillance camera near the Marseille summit three months ago. A young woman, moving too cleanly, too precisely. Her face caught for half a second as she slipped into a crowd.
Everett’s voice softened.
“She’s older now. But it’s her.”
He leaned in, eyes locked with Maxim’s.
“I’m not here to make threats. I’m not here to expose anything. I just want to know—”
“Yes,” Maxim said quietly. “She’s alive.”
Everett closed his eyes for a moment. Then opened them again. “And you’re raising her.”
Maxim nodded once.
“I want to see her.”
The refusal was immediate. Quiet. Final.
Everett didn’t flinch. “I figured.”
Another pause.
“I’ve seen what she’s become,” he continued. “I know she’s trained. I know she’s working ops I’ll never read about. But the companies involved in her parents’ work—they’re circling again. I don’t think they ever stopped.”
Maxim’s eyes darkened. “You believe they were killed for trying to expose the truth.”
“I know they were. And I know Sinclair Dominion is connected—through one of their investors.”
Maxim leaned back. “Lucian Sinclair isn’t responsible for the sins of his investors.”
“No. But you know as well as I do—Dominion funds things it doesn’t always watch.”
Another silence.
Maxim studied the young man. Not just the logic. The weight he carried. The grief, still sharp beneath the resolve.
“Why come to me?”
Everett looked him dead in the eye.
“Because she trusts you. And if she’s near Lucian Sinclair, I want someone in that circle who sees her. Really sees her. You won’t always be able to.”
Maxim’s voice dropped. “You want to be that someone.”
“I already am.”
There was no arrogance in it. Just a truth Everett had carried for years.
Maxim stood. Walked slowly to the window. Looked out toward the darkened garden where Kristina once sorted her puzzles under moonlight.
He remembered her silence. Her steadiness. Her eyes, always measuring something others couldn’t see.
And he remembered something else.
The way she froze, subtly, whenever Lucian walked into a room.
The way she’d say nothing—but turn her face to the light after he left.
“She doesn’t remember you,” Maxim said without turning.
“She doesn’t have to.”
A long pause.
Maxim exhaled. “I won’t allow contact.”
“I understand.”
“But you’ll be placed.”
Everett blinked.
“Lucian’s team has a gap. I’ll move someone aside quietly. You’ll shadow him. Watch the room.”
“I’m not asking for a job.”
“No,” Maxim said. “You’re asking for a war.”
He turned back, met Everett’s gaze.
“Do it clean. Do it quiet. If anyone asks—your name is Eli Voss.”
And just like that, Everett Lysander Voss disappeared.
And Eli Voss was born.
Maxim never told Kristina.
Eli never reminded her.
But in every mission, every hallway, every guarded glance—
He never stopped watching.
And he never stopped protecting the girl he’d once handed a Rubik’s Cube and said nothing at all.
Some truths survive in silence—waiting only for someone to name them.
—To be continued.
