Page 11 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)
MAXIM
Marianna wears a deep purple gown the night before our wedding, thin straps and with a low back, hugging her body’s every slope and curve, and a slit up almost the entirety of her leg.
Pure white heels complete the look and match the delicate white ribbon one of her sisters threaded through her hair.
It’s striking seeing her in this color; it makes her pale skin look even paler, and her brown hair almost auburn.
I cannot take my eyes off of her, but she, as usual, has no difficulty keeping hers off of me.
She scans around the room, eyes bouncing constantly to each of her family members as if counting them in her mind.
I’m beginning to realize that she is never relaxed; even now she’s too on guard to even enjoy the events of her sham wedding to an old man.
I have lots of valid reasons to look at her tonight, so I don’t try to stop myself; first the rehearsal, as she walks down the church aisle to me while the lawyer Morelli directs us like an elaborate production. We are just players here, in this life, perhaps, but especially in this marriage.
Behind me stands Sasha, the one man on my side of the wedding party, and behind him stands Nate, Leo Morelli, and Sean Donovann.
The kind of line up that would make my dad roll in his grave.
He would rather have died than see his son marry a Morelli with a Donovann also in the party, and that thought pleases me.
Marianna will have a host of bridesmaids between her sisters and mine.
Willa was first to propose the idea of inviting my sisters to the wedding party, and the three of them were all too excited to be involved.
Nadia and Vera were with my mother in Russia, and Sofia has been navigating her own, new, loveless marriage arrangement to a boss in Chicago, but they all deemed my wedding reason enough to get together.
They’re all here tonight and were fast friends with every Morelli.
It’s uncanny, my three sisters talking with the three Morelli sisters.
The make up of our families isn’t so different, but where the Morellis were raised in a home full of love, trust, and respect, we had a monster of a man who preferred fear to friendliness.
I’m amazed my sisters turned out as lovely and personable as they have. All thanks to our mother.
Mother didn’t make the trip, the city too haunted by her twenty-nine years of marriage for her liking. I cannot blame her.
“Mary, you’ll stand here,” Willa points to the spot in front of me.
“But first, offer your hugs, and at this point, the wedding party will take a seat in the front row.” Marianna hugs her mother, who has a mist of tears in her eyes alongside what I believe to be guilt.
Grief for her daughter’s loveless future, I gather.
The rest of the wedding party sits in the first row and looks up at us expectantly, save for Vera and Sofia who are whispering like teenagers. I stand beside Marianna, Willa still buzzing around us, nine months pregnant but not missing a beat.
“This is when you’ll hand Angel the flowers. You can’t forget, okay?”
“Mhm.” Marianna mimes handing off a bouquet.
“I’ll take them and then you’ll hold Maxim’s hands in front of the priest.”
Marianna stands opposite of me, though doesn’t take my hands, instead letting them fall at her sides. Beneath the left strap of her dress I see the star-shaped scar from where she was shot last year. I want to run my thumb across it.
“Go on,” Willa urges. I think for a nonsensical second that she means I really should reach out and touch the scar, but come quickly to my senses.
Marianna sighs slightly before putting her hands in mine, her fingers warm in my palms. She looks me in the eye, maybe for the first time since the rehearsal began, and my lungs constrict in my chest. I would be concerned if this wasn’t how it always felt to be in her thrall.
“Good! Perfect,” Willa says. “Then you’ll have the ceremony, the kiss, and then everyone will cheer and be so excited.”
Willa gives a meaningful look urging us to mime this part as well, Marianna lets out a barely audible sigh.
Her heels are so tall that she can’t push much further up on her toes, but she leans toward me and offers her cheek.
I swallow, probably loud enough to echo in this cavern of a place, and lower my mouth to her cheek.
She tilts her head slightly and my lips land on the corner of her lips, instead.
I retreat after the kiss, pretending that something isn’t igniting in me at just that touch.
“Make it real tomorrow if you know what’s good for you,” Willa sing songs just loud enough for the two of us to hear. “Good then! After the kissing and the clapping, you two will walk down the aisle holding hands—Mary, for the love of all things holy, please smile . You too, Orlov.”
Marianna rolls her eyes, then flashes that wholly unnatural smile from our first brunch. It startles a chuckle out of me, and she smirks, a real smile gracing me like a miracle. Our first, and only, inside joke, something we share that’s just ours.
“Yes, like that! Thank God,” Willa mutters, and ushers us down the aisle. “You’ll walk off first, followed by the wedding party, and you can take like thirty minutes to pose for pictures before we do the reception. Yes?”
“Yep,” Marianna says. “I have been to a wedding before.”
“Don’t be fresh,” their mother chides. “She’s helping you.”
Marianna clicks her tongue and turns back to her older sister. “Thank you,” she mouths, and Willa smiles, clicking her pen and closing the notebook she’s been carrying around.
“Now I think we should eat something,” Willa says.
The wedding party claps, and files out into the reception area, where although all of the tables are already set up for tomorrow, only the long family table is set for dinner tonight, little flickering candles and all.
I was told there will be floral arrangements everywhere, hanging from the walls, draped across tables, in little vases, in the hair of my bride, even.
Seeing how beautifully everything is set up, I have a renewed respect and admiration for Marianna’s sisters, their mother, and Nate, for planning this whole affair.
Leo helped too, apparently, choosing menu items and cake flavors.
I have done next to nothing to plan and execute this wedding, other than offer my credit card, stand for a suit fitting, and pretend to every Orlov that I am perfectly pleased and not at all distraught over trapping the young Morelli into marriage.
Not trapping. She chose this.
It doesn’t matter how many times I try to remind myself of this, every time I catch a flash of that spark in her eyes, I remember that I’m tying her to a cruel man twelve years her senior.
The thought excites me, followed by an overwhelming sense of self loathing for just how excited I am.
“I agree with the spritely pregnant one, don’t forget to smile, brother.” Nadia lightly bumps her shoulder against mine. “You only get married once. Ideally.”
“Ideally,” I agree.
“I hope that’s not true,” Sofia mutters while dropping into the seat opposite mine.
Not all arranged mafia marriages are so amicable.
My youngest sister was promised to Dante Delvecchio before my father died, and it wasn’t until early last year that he finally called to collect.
We thought he’d perhaps forgotten, and maybe he had, but when he came to visit and heard Sofia was seeing someone, he was all too glad to remind me of his claim.
I tried to fight it, but unless we wanted a swarm of Chicago mobsters to come down on our heads, I had to keep my father’s promises.
“Such a hardship being married to the hottest man in Chicago,” Vera teases and Sofia glares at her in turn.
“Don’t let him hear you say that shit tomorrow, he’s full of himself enough as it is.”
“I like her,” Marianna tells me as I take my seat to her left. “You didn’t tell me your sisters were so fun.”
“What, like I’m not fun?” I ask. Her eyes light with the same surprise they do every time I joke with her. I revel in that look.
It doesn’t take long for Sasha and my sisters to start mingling easily with the Morellis.
Everyone is all smiles and friendly faces; a wedding is a joyous occasion after all.
Claire has been especially welcoming to my sisters, asking with earnest interest about their lives.
I think she and my mother would love each other.
I’m glad it’s such a small group tonight, just immediate family members. Tomorrow will be enough of a spectacle, and I can’t be certain some of the older Orlovs and Morellis won’t have words with one another.
The first combined Morelli-Orlov gathering was the failure of an engagement announcement party last summer, when we were supposed to announce the marriage between myself and a different Morelli sister.
Instead, Vanessa was abducted by her brother-in-law and the only announcement shared was of the new partnerships and growing collaboration between our families.
Some were not pleased and let me hear about it.
I let them complain, but only to a point before putting them in their place.
I am the boss after all.
By New Year’s, when my engagement to the youngest Morelli was announced, the sentiments had mostly started to soften. Not entirely though. Old habits and the like.
“I’d like to offer a toast,” Vanessa says, and stands. Vanessa is also quite pregnant these days, her stomach stretching beneath a crimson dress. If all goes to plan in this arrangement of ours, Marianna won’t be far behind them. The thought makes my throat dry.
“Mary and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, probably because she’s my little sister.” I watch a soft smile grace Marianna’s lips. “You are incredibly stubborn, worse than me, and hardheaded to a fault.”
“I thought you were supposed to compliment me,” Marianna protests, grinning now.
“Right, right, okay.” Vanessa rolls her eyes, smiling back.
Her lip wobbles, eyes brimming with tears.
Nate’s too, as he looks up at his wife with so much love.
“Mary, you have an extreme sense of duty and are the most loyal person I’ve ever had the joy of being related to.
Everyone used to call you his shadow because you’re the most like Dad of any of us. ”
I glance at my fiancée, her own eyes glassy, a rare softness on her features.
“He would be so, so proud of you,” Vanessa says. “And Maxim, I know you’ll take care of her. You’d hate to see what would happen if you didn’t.”
The party chuckles at this, but everyone knows the truth behind the threat. Vanessa holds her glass of water up, and everyone follows suit with their water or wine.
“ Per cent’anni ,” she says, and all the Morellis repeat it in cheers.
Marianna leans closer to me, her low private voice surprising me. “For a hundred years. That’s what it means.”
“That’s a long time,” I whisper, and can’t help but smile down at her.