KEPT

ALEKSA’S POV

“You’ve got about thirty seconds, Aleksa.”

I didn’t look up right away. I stood there with my hands clenched at my sides, rainwater dripping steadily from my coat onto the flawless marble floor, my jaw locked tight as I gathered what little dignity I had left.

“Thirty seconds before you become a very embarrassing security incident,” the voice continued calmly. “And I hate paperwork.”

My boots squelched when I shifted my weight. I hated that sound. Hated that it made me feel smaller.

“The elevators lock at five,” Maksim Volkov went on, unhurried. “I don’t take meetings after five. I don’t take calls. And I certainly don’t take charity cases.”

“I’m not a charity case,” I muttered.

There was a pause.

Then the soft, deliberate click of a fountain pen.

“No?” Maksim finally looked up.

The magazines had lied. His eyes weren’t icy blue or sharp silver or any of the other dramatic nonsense sports journalists liked to romanticize. They were dark storm-dark, the color of deep water right before it turns violent. He leaned back in his chair like he had nowhere else to be, like time itself bent slightly around him.

“Then what do we call a man,” he said mildly, “who breaks into a private building, bleeds rainwater onto a twenty-thousand-dollar rug, and brings me a folder full of debts he can’t pay?”

“A man who knows you caused them,” I shot back.

That earned a smile. Not a real one just a faint curl at the corner of his mouth, as if he appreciated the effort.

“Caused is such an emotional word,” he said and gestured lazily to the chair across from him. “Sit. You’re distracting me.”

“I’m fine standing,” I replied, planting my feet harder.

“Of course you are.” He glanced at his watch. Gold. Thin. Expensive. “Two minutes until the bailiffs arrive at Centennial Park. Two minutes until the Serbian White Eagles stop existing.”

The words hit harder than I expected.

I stepped forward and slammed the folder onto his desk. It skidded across the black glass surface and stopped just short of his fingers.

“You didn’t just beat us on the pitch,” I said. “You strangled us in the boardroom. Shell companies. Predatory loans. Quiet acquisitions. You boxed us in, Maksim.”

He didn’t even look at the folder.

“Did you think the Eagles survived on nostalgia?” he asked. “No sponsors. No leverage. A stadium begging to be condemned. You were beautiful.” His gaze flicked up to mine. “And doomed.”

“You’re destroying my family,” I snapped.

As he stood on the sidelines, I had always known Maksim Volkov was tall, but seeing him across a field was a world away from being trapped in his orbit. On magazine covers, he was composed as a polished, untouchable icon of industry. Up close, he was unavoidable. He was too solid, too still, like a monolith built to withstand a total collapse. There was a gravity to him that seemed to pull the oxygen right out of my lungs, leaving me lightheaded and exposed.

He wasn't just handsome; he was a masterclass in lethal symmetry. His face was a landscape of sharp, unforgiving angles, a jawline that looked as though it had been carved from the same black obsidian as his desk, and a nose that sat straight and proud above a mouth that never seemed to fully relax. Even in the dim, storm-filtered light of the penthouse, his skin looked like bronzed silk, flawless and taut over high, aristocratic cheekbones.

"I’m not interested in your family history," he said, his voice a low, honeyed rasp that vibrated in the small of my back.

He began to circle the desk, his movements possessing a quiet, predatory grace that made my pulse spike. Every step was deliberate. He didn't just walk; he claimed the space around him. The charcoal fabric of his suit, clearly bespoke and worth more than my entire life's earnings, strained slightly against the broad, powerful swell of his shoulders. He was a man who clearly spent as much time in a gym as he did in a boardroom, possessing the kind of raw, physical power that no amount of tailoring could truly hide.

"Or your traditions," he continued, stopping just short of my personal space. "Or your sentimental attachment to dirt and concrete."

He was so close now that I could feel the radiant heat of him, a stark contrast to my rain-chilled skin. He smelled of expensive sandalwood, cold iron, and the kind of limitless power that didn't need to raise its voice to be heard. When he looked down at me, his lashes dark and thick cast shadows over eyes that weren't just observing me; they were dissecting me. They were the color of a winter sea, turbulent and deep, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely, utterly transparent. I wanted to look away, to break the spell of his perfection, but my feet were rooted to his expensive rug. He was a beautiful disaster, and I was standing right in the path of the storm.

He stopped in front of me. “The club,” he continued, “is worthless to me.” Then, quieter: “But you are not.”

I swallowed hard. “What do you want?”

He studied me like a puzzle he’d already solved but enjoyed revisiting. “I bought the debt because it was the only way to get you into this room,” he said. “And to make you look at me without pretending you don’t care.”

I let out a sharp, humourless laugh. “So what? You name a price, and I crawl away?”

“It’s not about money,” he said and reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper, laying it flat on the desk between us. “It’s about duration.”

I glanced down, and the numbers blurred together and the clauses stacked like traps.

“The Eagles’ debt is forty-two million,” he said. “I’ll clear it tonight. I’ll pay for your grandfather’s surgery. And your brother will start for Vorkuta.”

My head snapped up. “Luka?”

Maksim nodded once. “He’s talented. Underused.”

“You can’t just” I stopped myself, breath hitching. “What is this?”

“A solution.”

“No,” I said. “What kind of contract is this?”

His voice dropped. “Ownership.”

My chest tightened painfully. “Ownership of what?”

He met my gaze without flinching. “Of you.”

The words landed heavy and final. “You are f*ck*ng crazy,” I said hoarsely.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice until it brushed my ear. “Am I?”

The digital clock on the wall chimed softly, and it hit 5:00 PM. Maksim’s phone vibrated on the desk.

“My lawyer,” he said. He picked up the pen and held it out to me. “He’s waiting to wire ten million dollars.” He tilted his head. “Or to let the auction proceed.”

I stared at the paper, my pulse roaring in my ears. “You walk,” he added evenly, “and the funding stops and so does the medical care.”

I closed my eyes, and I thought of my grandfather’s hands shaking when he tried to lift a glass. Of Luka pretending he wasn’t disappointed every time he got benched or the locker room at Centennial Park, paint peeling, history hanging on by threadbare pride. I leaned down and signed, and the pen felt too heavy and the ink too dark. The moment it left the page, Maksim took the document and folded it neatly, tucking it into his jacket pocket without even checking the signature.

“Clear the debt,” he said into the phone. “All of it.”

He ended the call and turned back to me. The sharp edge in his expression softened into something else, something calmer, more intimate. His hand came up to the back of my neck. “You did well,” he said. “You’re freezing.”

“I’ll go back to my apartment and pack,” I said quickly.

He smiled politely. “No need. Your apartment’s empty.”

My breath caught. “What?”

“Your things are upstairs,” he continued. “The ones worth keeping.”

“You did that before I signed?” I stared at him in shock.

“I knew you’d agree,” he said easily. “Honor makes men predictable.”

He guided me toward a door I hadn’t noticed before. “I’ll have a bath drawn,” he said.

I reached into my pocket, panic spiking when my fingers found nothing.

“Looking for this?” He held up my phone, its screen spiderwebbed with water damage.

He dropped it into a nearby bin. “It’s broken,” he said. “You don’t need it.”

He stepped closer. “I’ve given you a new one,” he added. “One number that can never be erased.”

“Yours, I bet,” I said weakly.

“Yes.” He reached up and undid the top button of my coat with deliberate care, his eyes never leaving mine.

“I’m going to take very good care of you,” Maksim said, and somehow, that was the most frightening thing he’d said all night.

The first thing I realized when I woke up was that the rain had stopped, the second was that I didn’t know where I was, and the third was that I was no longer a free man.

I bolted upright, my heart hammering against my ribs, and realized that the sheets beneath me weren’t the scratchy, pilled cotton of my apartment in Little Belgrade; they were silk, cool, heavy, and smelling faintly of the same sandalwood and cold iron that defined Maksim Volkov.

The suite was larger than the entire home I’d shared with my brother. Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a Toronto skyline scrubbed clean by the storm, the CN Tower piercing a bruised purple dawn like a needle. Everything was white, grey, and silver. It was beautiful. It was sterile. It was a tomb with a five-star view. I looked at the bedside table. My cracked phone was gone, the only link to my father, my team, and my reality. In its place sat a sleek, titanium-framed device and a glass of water that looked like it had been fi