Page 23 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MAXIM

It took some convincing that I wouldn’t be a dick bag (her words), but Marianna finally acquiesced to Sasha and I joining her on this hit of hers.

For safety. She grumbled about how I shouldn’t be slacking off from my job while she threw various items into a duffel bag in a hidden closet in the Morelli basement.

She insisted on driving, said our car was too fancy for trying to do secret illegal things, and now drives us in a black sedan, Sasha’s long legs folded up in the back seat while she drives.

He’s looked entirely amused through the whole of this. Prick.

Marianna makes a few calls, succinctly issuing orders to the people on the other line, never having to repeat herself nor explain further than her few-word requests. She speaks with a brutal efficiency that would be hot if she wasn’t actively orchestrating the death and clean up of a man.

Honestly, I hope Sasha is taking notes. He takes far too long on things like this, drawing out hits when they ought to be quick. Maybe that’s why he and Marianna get along so well: they’re both comfortable ending lives.

By the time we get to where we’re going, we’ve made three stops and we’re an hour out of Boston in fucking Swansea. Marianna maneuvers through residential streets until we park in a quiet suburb. She waves at a woman who jogs by, and the woman smiles back, nodding as she jogs down the road.

“In the middle of the morning like this?” Sasha asks, awe tainting his voice. “What about the witnesses?”

“I’m not doing anything sketchy,” she says, and opens the trunk to retrieve the bouquet of flowers we picked up. “Just bringing flowers and an early lunch to the family. Get the sandwiches.”

I do as she says, retrieving the take out bag from the back seat and follow her up the walk to the house where she rings the bell.

“No one is like her,” Sasha mutters to me as we follow. “ No one. ”

An Italian man lets us in, giving Mary loud kisses on both of her cheeks before handing her off to his wife to do the same.

I’m on edge, but they’re perfectly nice. The man is her great uncle, it turns out; her own father’s godparents. They were at the wedding but in the hubbub of the day were only able to greet us briefly.

“The flowers are nice, bimba .”

“Well you only turn seventy-four once, Zia ,” Marianna says as she retrieves a set of plates from a cupboard before handing them to me. “Set the table.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I muse, setting the plates on top of the pink place mats that match the pink and red candles down the middle of the table. A remnant from Valentine’s day, maybe.

And then we do the damndest thing. Marianna sets half a hoagie and a bit of chips on all of our plates, her great uncle retrieves bottles of seltzer water, and we eat a meal.

Twenty minutes bleeds into thirty while the old couple tells us about the various dramas of their neighborhood, all completely mundane; no mention of illegal activities of any kind, and when they ask about our honeymoon, Marianna kisses my shoulder over my suit coat and it shocks me into stillness.

An act , I remind myself. Always just pretending. For appearances sake.

“We were in Mexico but then Willa had her baby. Do I look tan?”

“Not at all,” her aunt says, and laughs.

“Too much time in the bedroom,” her uncle muses, and I have to drain my water to keep from choking on my bite, wincing at the bubbles.

“Guilty,” Mary says before leaning over the table and retrieving everyone’s empty plates. Sasha protests, standing to clean up, but her uncle directs a question at Sasha, keeping him at the table. I follow Mary into the kitchen.

“What are we doing here?” I take the plates from her before she can load them into the dishwasher herself. “You’re going to kill someone here? In her lovely home?”

“We’re eating lunch, Maxim,” she says like I’m stupid. “Now we’re cleaning. Then we’re gonna play a few rounds of cards. Then we’re gonna pose for a few photos my auntie will want to take on her iPad and then we’ll go.”

I blink at the explanation, speechless not for the first time today.

“Why? You got somewhere to be? I told you this would take a while.”

I load the rest of the plates and watch as she breezes back into the dining room, deck of cards in hand.

The next forty minutes go on just like she said, even the pictures on the iPad, Marianna and I posing on the old leather couch, my arm around her waist while I’m unable to look away from the gentle smile she wears for her family, no hint of what we’re supposed to be doing today.

“Beautiful,” her aunt says. “I’m going to change the background on these on Facebook, you’re going to love it.”

“Can’t wait. Next month will you make pierogis?” Marianna asks, and then makes a scene clasping her hands in front of her chest. “Please, Zia, please.”

Her aunt laughs, always laughing at Marianna, and agrees. She pulls my wife, then me, and then Sasha in for tight hugs. Business isn’t mentioned, Marianna gives no hint to our plans, we just leave after ninety minutes of visiting. And then we’re off down the road the way we came.

Halfway back into Boston, though, Marianna brings the car into the parking lot of a butcher next to a Dunkin’.

She stops for a coffee first—one cream, three sugars—and tells Sasha to get the cooler from the car.

In the butcher’s shop, the man working is Irish, and greets Mary warmly, yelling that it’s been too long and just who the hell has she been getting her guanciale from if not him.

She hands him the fresh coffee. “I haven’t been cooking! Didn’t you hear I got a rich new husband who follows me around and has a private chef for us?”

The butcher looks at me as if just noticing I’m here, sizing me up. “She eating right?” he asks me.

“Of course,” I say. “Whatever she wants.”

He can respect this, mutters that she’d better, and offers a sturdy thud on the shoulder as we pass him to go to the back.

We pass through the back of the old, tidy shop, and I think we’re going to go old school and find ourselves in one of the freezers, but Marianna leads us out the back door and up a set of exterior steps to an apartment, opening the door without fanfare.

Three men sit shooting the shit at a table, and one of them pales when they see Marianna.

If I had to guess, that’s our guy.

“Shadow,” he starts after clearing his throat, trying to act cool. I’ve never met the man, but he can’t be that much older than me. “What brings you to these parts today?”

“Ms. Morelli,” another man greets.

“It’s Orlov now, Ronny.” She wiggles the fingers of her left hand, her ring impossible to miss. I feel an absurd urge to preen at her correction, though she was just calling me an idiot this morning.

“Have you met my husband?” She nods in my direction and I nod at the three sitting around the table. “I wanted him to meet my uncle. Thought I’d stop by here after.”

Mary takes her cooler into the kitchen like she owns the place, and the quiet that follows is unsettling. Two of the men at the table look at the one who’s now sweating, their faces grim. If I was a betting man, I would bet his name to be Hugh Sullivan.

The man puts his cards down after tapping them on the table a few times.

“I think I should be going. Duty calls and all that.”

“Nah, Hugh, I just got here,” Marianna calls from the kitchen. “Sit.”

His eyes flash, terrified, and he looks to where Sasha stands with his back against the front door, arms crossed over his chest. Sasha smirks at the man.

“I, ah—” Our Hugh stands as Marianna reenters from the kitchen, four short glasses in her hands.

“Sit the fuck down,” she says, nothing friendly about it, and he does. Mary takes her time sitting at the folding table after setting the glasses down. She slides one to each of the players, then chuckles to herself and switches two of them.

A bead of sweat slides down the side of Hugh’s forehead.

“Baby, why don’t you sit down?” she says to me, standing from the chair so I can take her place. As soon as I do, she sits on my leg, shocking the hell out of me, doing so like she’s done it a hundred times.

Nobody touches their glasses, and Marianna snaps like she’s forgotten something, retreating into the kitchen only to return with a bottle of Vodka. She sits back on my lap and my arm snakes around her waist settling on her upper thigh.

The man across from us watches the movement.

“I didn’t get to congratulate you,” Hugh says. “I heard it was a beautiful wedding.”

“It was,” Marianna says. “You know, I worried people would be mad about it. Maxim’s such an eligible bachelor, he’s got so many ears and eyes around the city, and well, I’m just—what’s it we heard recently?” she asks me.

My lips part and I answer, “A little psycho.”

The words burn coming out of my mouth, no matter if it’s part of her game. She doesn’t act like they hurt her, but after hearing it enough times, it’s bound to. Marianna grins and snaps.

“That was it. But people have been really supportive. Blending families is nothing new around here.”

Mary unscrews the cap and pours a shot’s worth into each glass.

She hands hers to me instead of drinking it herself, and nods at the man across from her to pick his up. He does just that, reluctantly, though, like he’d rather be doing anything else.

“I’m not really drinking these days,” he says, but it’s weak.

“Today you are. For the happy couple,” she says. “To our ever growing family.”

The two men on either side of us lift their glasses, faces grim while they drink theirs. I drink mine too, the burn familiar down my throat. Still, Hugh sits unmoving.

Marianna leans forward, the only sound in this apartment the creaking of the table as she leans her elbows on it. Her ass on my thigh is distracting, but the tension is so high in the room that I could drown in it.

“Drink,” she commands, and with a shaking hand, he does. The taste of the vodka seems to offer him some relief, and his shoulders relax slightly as he puts the glass down. He even smiles.

Marianna’s face remains blank.

“You scared me, Shadow. Coming in here acting all crazy.”

Marianna lets out a breathy laugh, and he laughs too, much too loud, before he cuts off with a sharp inhale and a cough.

“You could’ve had a very long, very comfortable life,” Marianna says. “I want you to know that. You really could have.”

“What?” he says, but he’s breathless, and his face is turning red.

“It’s not that hard to fall into line. We ask so little of you, Hugh, and we take such good care of you.”

His hand claws at his chest, pulling the neck of his shirt as if it will offer him any breathing room. Nobody speaks.

My hand tightens on her leg as the man fights for breath across from us.

“Look at me,” she says, but he can’t. She slams a palm on the table. “Look.”

He does, eyes wide, almost bulging from his head.

“You are a weak man, Hugh. I am not a shadow. I am the grim fucking reaper, and this is faster than you deserve.”

The man falls from his chair then, shaking on the ground as the other two men look sadly on. They knew what was coming, knew there was nothing to be done to stop it, but probably have known him most of their lives, and that loss stings, deserved or not.

When his shaking and choking finally comes to an end, the sound of the heater clicking back on radiates through the apartment, and Mary takes a deep breath. My hand on her thigh finally loosens.

I’ve heard rumors of this version of her; the stories of the ruthless shadow of Lorenzo Morelli, a demon in her own right.

Seeing it first hand is completely different, it’s sickening and magnetic all at once.

She’s impossible to look away from like this, but lethal enough that looking feels like a great danger.

And she is mine.

“Take care of him,” Marianna says to the man next to her as she stands.

“Of course,” he says. She puts a surprisingly gentle hand on the man’s shoulders, and he pats hers in return. They both understand.

Sasha no longer leans casually against the wall, now standing ramrod straight while he watches the scene, his eyebrows low. He looks like I feel: transfixed. Possibly horrified.

Marianna retrieves the cooler and his glass before brushing past and out of the apartment without any theatrics or discussion.

When we get back to the little shop, the butcher offers Marianna a serious nod, one that says he knows what he has to do and will make sure he does it.

Then he trades coolers with her, replacing hers with an identical one.

“Good to meet you,” Sasha says.

“We’ll be seeing you.” The butcher nods at us, and it’s like a peace offering, a promise that he won’t make the mistake the other man did. He knows what would happen if he did—who would visit him.

When we get in the car, there’s a stony silence as Marianna backs us out of the parking lot and off toward Boston. She clicks on the radio, old jazz playing through the speakers. Sasha speaks first.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side, Mary.”

She smirks.

“Noted.”