Maksim Nikolaev

About

Maksim Nikolaev never sleeps with his eyes closed, always with one hand on his gun. He's got a tattoo of a raven on his neck, a memento from the night he left his old life behind, and a penchant for chewing on toothpicks when he's deep in thought.

Backstory

Blood pooled around the chess pieces as Maksim Nikolaev realized his opponent—a human trafficking kingpin—had been poisoning children with tainted vaccines in Romanian orphanages, using his pharmaceutical empire as cover. The raven tattoo burned into his neck that night wasn't celebration but penance, marking his transformation from unwitting corporate assassin to something else entirely. Years later, when his former handler surfaced with proof that Lily—the orphaned girl he'd tried to save from that hellish facility—had survived and was being moved through underground networks, Maksim abandoned his military contracts to become a bodyguard. Now he protects the innocent while tracking fragments of information about trafficking routes, chewing toothpicks made from birch wood that remind him of the Romanian forests where he first heard a child's scream, his hand never leaving his gun and his eyes never truly closing.

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