Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Sarah

I spin in my chair and twirl a pencil between my fingers. I’ve been dreading this day since my first tense visit with Maxim last week. I look up at the clock. He’s late. Again.

And he’s deranged.

My boss doesn’t like that word. He wants me to use appropriate terminology, but I just want to call a spade a spade.

Maxim is either psychopathic or sociopathic, but I haven’t figured out which one because I’ve only spent two very guarded hours with him so far. I’m not surprised he went to prison. In fact, I’m more surprised he’s out of prison. His record wasn’t all that lengthy, but his convictions aren’t what unnerve me.

When I’m looking at him, I see nerves firing in his mind that are best left dormant. I can almost feel the hum of the devil coming to life when he enters a room. His presence demands my attention, but he doesn’t look especially menacing...until he speaks. He’s?—

I turn my chair and see him behind me, leaning against the doorway. Just watching me.

Watching me while I think about him.

“Doc,” he says as he kicks his foot off the doorway.

“You’re late, Maxim. Again.”

“I’d come up with a lie, but I’m just really bad at time management, which I hope you can help me with.” He takes a seat across from me and folds his large hands in his lap.

He doesn’t have issues with time management. He just doesn’t give a shit about time—mine nor his. I take a deep breath and swivel to face him fully, crossing my legs at my ankles as I bring my laptop closer.

He brushes back dark hair that’s faded on the sides, and his chilling green eyes assess me as much as I assess him. His strong arms stretch the sleeves of his shirt as he flexes and tugs a pillow from behind him. He’s a piece of fucking art to look at, but this pretty painting is also cursed.

I clear my throat and drop my eyes to the bright screen in front of me. Our last session ended after talking about his childhood. Well, trying to talk about his childhood. I had typed TRAUMATIZED in big bold letters, underlined and everything, regarding something he experienced as a child. He gave me very little information, but researching the news articles from the incident gave me more. It unfolded much differently than his brother just “falling into a well.”

His twin brother had gone missing, and he watched their mother mourn for weeks. Maxim had witnessed his brother’s death, yet he said nothing to anyone. Even as police and searchers scoured the land for the missing child, even as his mother wept in her bed, he remained absolutely stone cold about it.

Who the fuck just...keeps quiet about where the body is? What happened to him?

I’m assuming the event caused serious damage to his psyche, whether he wants to admit it or not. Or was he like that before the incident? We’ll likely never know because his parents died in a fire a few years after his brother’s death. Maxim was the sole survivor, escaping with only second-degree burns on his forearms. Webbed scarring marks the event on his skin.

Suspicion forms in my mind, though I try to fight it off. As a psychiatrist, it’s not my place to fabricate fiction about my clients. But I can’t shake the unsettling feeling in my stomach. His presence is enough to make me uncomfortable, but the more I uncover about his past, the more I want to bury it again. I don’t want to learn more.

But I have to. It’s my job.

I scroll down the page. “We touched base on your childhood last time, Maxim. What about your teenage years? Did you go to high school or anything?”

He leans back and interlaces his fingers behind his head. His shirt rides up his muscled abdomen. “So we’re back to this?”

“Yes, Maxim. We have to try to talk about...something.” Anything. I’m not particular.

He scoffs. “I did, for a year. I got through tenth grade and dropped out after my foster mother died in a tragic car accident. It’s too hard for me to talk about her death,” he says, as cold and stone-faced as ever. It doesn’t take my doctorate to know that he’s faking emotions, and poorly at that.

Death follows him. A path of bodies in his past. Maybe in his wake.

I turn to my computer and begin typing.

Maxim is very affectless regarding the death of his foster mother. He couldn’t be more despondent. Sociopathic tendencies ?

“What happened to you once your foster mother died?” I ask.

“Juvie. Then jail. And now I’m in your office, doc,” he says with a shrug.

I’d like to know more about that section of his past, but juvie records would be sealed, and I doubt he’ll be honest if I ask. I try anyway. “What were you in juvenile detention for?”

He throws me another shrug. “Assault.”

His violent history. The deaths. I brush my hand over the back of my neck to try to pat down the raised hairs. Though I try to stop my mind from formulating an opinion, my heart knows the truth: He isn’t innocent. He’s the catalyst for every loss he’s experienced. It’s not there in black-and-white, but it’s there in a very damning shade of gray.

“Care to elaborate on this assault?”

“Nah, I’m good, doc.” He goes silent.

“So we’re back to this?” I throw his words back at him.

He replies with a sinful smirk, his eyes darkening as they settle on mine.

The clock on the wall ticks away the time, the sound growing until it thunders in my ears. Then, sudden realization hits me. I’m in a dark and desolate office, alone with him. If he wants to repeat the behaviors from his past, I’d be helpless to it. I have expired pepper spray in my purse, but I’d be dead before I could even find the damn thing. He could do anything he wanted to me.

Anything.

I make a mental note to move his future appointments to a time when office staff is still around. But even then, with staff present, could they really protect me from someone like him?