Page 2 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MAXIM

Today I'm thirty-eight years old. Well, yesterday. It’s past midnight now, so I suppose that just makes it Christmas. It’s past time for celebration, anyway. If I felt I had anything to revel in.

Thirty–eight years old, and what do I have to show for it? An empire, plus more money and power than any one man should hold alone. That weight is not something I bear easily. I have no partner, no heir, only a tenuous grasp on a power I don't dare believe I deserve.

And more expensive vodka than I could safely consume in a lifetime, so I guess there’s that.

I take a long pull from my glass, the burn sliding down my throat, then place it empty with a clack on the side table next to my chair.

There’s a fire going in the mantle, but even that does nothing to soothe me.

I watch the flames consume the logs, spitting white, then blue, then orange and red licks of flames, crackling and smoldering.

I imagine putting my hand in the heat and wonder how long it would take to burn, then consume me entirely.

I wanted to be left alone for the remainder of the night, and in this vein, asked my half-brother to send away any visitors. This was all for naught, though, as he strides into my office.

“You've got a birthday present downstairs,” he says. He stops next to me and nudges my shoe with the toe of his own until I turn away from the fire to look at the half grin on his sharp face.

“It's not my birthday anymore,” I say.

“Christmas gift, then.”

“Tell them I don’t want it.”

“Even if it’s a Morelli girl?”

I stiffen, watching Sasha with a still gaze. He just smirks, hands stuffed in the pockets of his slacks. Smug fucker.

“Which one?” I ask.

“Which one do you think? The little one who's captured your attention.”

I roll my eyes and get up, the leather chair groaning as I do. Alexei Orlov—better known as Sasha—is the closest person to me, which has its disadvantages. Namely, he’s too observant, and I can never keep a secret from him.

“She hasn’t been here for months.”

“Well, she is now. Wearing a tacky Christmas sweater, even. More festive than her usual style, but she can pull it off,” Sasha says.

This image he paints is so discordant from the picture of her that lives in my mind.

I almost think he’s lying about her showing up here after months away, but my brother is not cruel.

“She's not here for me.” I walk toward the window to study the street. It’s more productive to watch the cars drive by than it would be torturing myself watching her .

“Come on, it's fate she'd show up here tonight right when you were about to put yourself out of your misery.”

“I should kill you for talking to me like that,” I say over my shoulder. Sasha winks.

“Your mom would be too mad at you.”

“And yours would be relieved ,” I mutter, which only amuses him further.

Fate.

Sasha has always been too excitable about things like fate and destiny.

Sometimes he reads my horoscope to me over breakfast. I blame his mother, the kindest of my father’s secret conquests, and the only one to get a bastard child from the arrangement.

God knows our father would have beaten Sasha's fantastical dreams out of him had Sasha been permitted to live with us.

As it was, Sasha’s status as the disgraceful Orlov bastard kept him safe from my father’s cruelty.

“Fate that I watch her go home with another twenty-something. Best present I could imagine.” My voice drips with sarcasm, but Sasha raises an eyebrow, ever aware that I’m more than happy to torture myself watching her until she's danced away with another beautiful young someone.

With the new year, though, I ought to put all that behind me.

No more watching her, no more thinking of her.

This will be the year I forget about Marianna Morelli. It will be my New Year’s resolution.

“I could call her up here. She knows this is your territory, the least she could do is say hello. It's common courtesy.”

He’s right, and if she were anyone else, I would've demanded their audience on their first visit. But she’s not anyone else. She’s the Shadow of Boston. The youngest Morelli. A menace to my peace.

"Don't bother. Let the girl have her fun.” I sulk across the room to pour myself another drink. She doesn't need an old fuck raining on her simple solace, getting lost in the music and bodies.

I pour Sasha one too, then take a silent sip, glancing one last time at the fire still crackling. Despite promising myself I wouldn’t, I lead us wordlessly out of my office, and down the hall to the elevator which deposits us on the second floor.

There's a ringing in my ear as I stalk down the hall, toward the upper balcony of the club, my sleeves rolled halfway up my arms and shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Not as put together as I like to look when visiting The Brickyard, but it is my club after all.

I feign casualness as Sasha and I stride past the staff, who do a good job pretending not to look surprised to see me here after I’d retired with strict orders not to be bothered.

When I reach the balcony, it takes only a moment to locate her.

Even in the throngs of people, my eyes are drawn to Mary Morelli like magnets.

She’s not in her typical uniform of tight, short, and all black, instead wearing dark jeans that hug her muscular legs and a multi-colored Christmas sweater. When one of the yellow lights slides over her, she is like a flushed visage, pink cheeks, and a halo of frizzy brown hair.

It’s been months since she last came here, not once since last summer when she was almost too late to save her sister. I thought she might have found a different club to frequent, and maybe she has, but tonight she’s back .

Marianna used to enter alone with her flirty smirks and narrowed eyes, catching every receiver into her web like flies buzzing about her.

The bartenders always offered her free drinks—which she never took—the bouncers thrilled to see her and the patrons stared; everyone was weak to the enigmatic pull into her orbit.

I’ve seen her when she’s working. In the light of day, she is hard lines and no smiles, the single best enforcer for the Morelli crime family. She is formidable and intense, but in these walls, she became something entirely different.

In her months of absence from this place, I both yearned to see her and was relieved to be free of her. And here she is again, like she never left.

Just when I’d decided to never think of her again.

She dances with abandon—the freest thing I've ever seen. It's impossible to look away as she closes her eyes and tilts her head back, moving with the music, dancing alone, dancing with anyone who approaches her, dancing, and dancing, and dancing. And from the second story, I watch.

I used to try to look away, but these attempts were short-lived. My determination to forget her this year has already been forgotten as I stare at her now.

I don't know how to look anywhere else when she is here—this strange, vibrant creature.

Marianna Morelli is propulsive and consuming.

I am addicted to studying her. It’s been four months since I spoke to her last, at her sister’s wedding to the math teacher.

I saw her again, two months later, laughing with her cousin in a restaurant.

I wish I could say I thought of her as infrequently.

“You should go to her,” Sasha says.

“Thank you for the input.” I’ll settle for watching instead. It’s probably less devastating than having her laugh in my face when she sees the unquenchable interest in my stare.

I release a long sigh, but my eyes narrow on the place she dances now.

She’s squeezing her eyes shut, not smiling, maybe not even breathing.

She shakes her head, and then her eyes open and land on a dancing pair.

She puts herself between them, and it seems all is back to her normal ways of bewitching strangers.

“Could be you down there,” Sasha says, but holds his hands up in mock surrender at the glare I point at him.

“Please, Alexei. Go do your job before I fire you.”

He chuffs a laugh and claps me on the shoulder. It is the first touch I’ve had all day.

“Merry Christmas, brother,” Sasha says before leaving me to my brooding. Marianna dances on, her arm sliding around a woman’s neck while a young man slides his hands down her sides. She kisses her, and then him.

I’m debating how long I’ll torment myself here and decide I’ll stay until she leaves with them. Then I can drink myself to sleep in peace.

This is when she breaks away from them.

Marianna pushes away from the couple who look on in obvious confusion and longing, and her shoulders rise and fall as she spins, disoriented on the dance floor.

Her face is drawn up, anguished.

I do the one thing I promised myself I never would: I go to her.