Page 58 of Maksym

“I’ll have Millie bring it,” I said.

“She already said she would.”

“Yes.”

Grace looked toward the door, then back at Remy. “And I want everyone to stop deciding what I can handle before I decide whether I can handle it.”

Remy’s answer came without hesitation.

“Done.”

Taras nodded once.

I said, “Done.”

Grace looked at me a beat longer than she looked at the others.

Then she nodded. The agreement was fragile. Thin as paper. Sharp enough to cut every hand that mishandled it.

Outside the office door, Millie’s footsteps approached with the measured confidence of a woman arriving exactly when needed, not a second earlier, not a second too late.

Grace turned toward the sound. Her back was straight. Her hands trembled only a little on the table.

I watched her put herself together in front of us with no mortar but will, and I understood, with a clarity that humbled even the king in me, that Lucian Devereux had not merely failed to break her. He had mistaken survival for surrender. It would be his last miscalculation.

Millie entered with salvation arranged on silver: coffee, cream, sugar, pastry, warmth. It should have looked absurd on a table covered in the early anatomy of vengeance. Instead, the tray became the only honest thing in the room.

She set the tray at the center of the conference table without asking permission from anyone in the room. No one would have dared suggest she needed it.

“There,” she said softly. “No testimony worth giving should be dragged out of an empty mouth.”

Grace looked at her.

Something passed between them that did not include me, and I was grateful for it. I had no right to stand at the center of every comfort Grace received. Some mercies needed my absence in order to remain clean.

Millie poured the coffee. She added cream when Grace gave a small nod. No sugar.

I remembered that. I did not mean to. My mind kept collecting Grace without permission: how she drank coffee, how she gripped fabric when overwhelmed, how she disliked being spoken about, how she preferred facts blunt enough to bruise.

Millie placed the mug before her. Grace wrapped both hands around it.

The simple movement steadied her more than any speech from me could have. Heat against palms. Ceramic beneath fingers. Coffee steam rising toward her face. Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.

Millie touched her shoulder, light as a blessing.

“I will be just outside if you need me, dear.”

Grace’s lips parted, closed, then managed, “Thank you.”

Millie inclined her head and left.

The door clicked shut. The sound was small.

After it, there was no avoiding what we had gathered to hear.

Chapter 9

Maksym