Page 41 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

I still, listening, but it’s silent so far as I can tell. The fridge clicks on, humming in the kitchen, and the sink drips. I twist the handle until the dripping stops.

I retrieve my phone and text Elise, the only other message in our thread from when I asked her a few weeks ago to bring ingredients to make extra juice for Willa.

Mary: you left your knives, I think.

I send the message, then hear a ping from the living room.

“Elise?” I call, but again there is nothing.

I shuffle to the couch where her purse is laid out on the cushion next to her coat. Right where she always puts it when she comes to cook.

Bathroom, maybe? Or she took a trip to her car?

Sufficiently tense now, I set my shoulders and inch back into the kitchen. The security alarm isn’t usually armed when Elise is here, but Jean would call if someone was coming up. For as startling as I thought it was that an elevator opens into our home, the building is quite secure.

It’s probably nothing, but the hair on my neck and arms is standing on end, and until I can confirm all is well, I know I won’t settle.

Starting with the kitchen, I head for the pantry, but my foot catches on something, nearly tripping me. I realize too late that it’s a shoe, a bright pink Ked, and as I catch my balance, I see Elise laid out on the ground unconscious. There’s no blood, but when I shake her, she doesn’t rouse.

I press my fingers to her neck where she does have a pulse, and then sigh, relieved that our private chef didn’t die while I was upstairs taking an uncharacteristic nap.

An ambulance seems dramatic, so I text Maxim to send his doctor to help me with her. I reach for a fresh towel to put under her head, but while I’m doing this, I spot movement in my periphery. It’s slight, but I watch the unmistakable toe of a black shoe as it slowly slides out of sight.

As casually as I can muster, I stand and take a step back, holding my phone to my ear. Maxim picks up on the first ring.

“What happened?”

“Hi, yes, my name is Mary Orlov.” I try to put on my most polite voice, like I’m talking to a stranger who I need to help me.

“I’m at the Glastonbury. Penthouse apartment.

My chef is passed out cold in the kitchen, and I don’t really know what happened, but I’m really worried about her. Can you please send an ambulance?”

Maxim is quiet on the other side of the line.

When he speaks, his tone is lethal. “Is someone there?”

“Yeah,” I say while I untie her knife sleeve. I pull out one of the big ones and creep back toward the wall with the pantry. “I just came downstairs and found her like this. Please send someone as soon as you can.”

“Marianna, you need to get out of there. Can you make it to the elevator or the stairs?”

I flicker my eyes in that direction. I would have to turn my back to the pantry to get there, and I don’t know for certain that there’s no one in the entryway or front room. Maxim curses and says some feverish demands in Russian on the other side of the line.

“Thanks so much, I’ll stay right here with her.” I lower the phone to the counter, though I can still hear Maxim’s frantic speaking on the line. I won’t hang up, because if it seems like I’m about to be overpowered, I will go Taken on their asses and call out every defining detail I can.

When I turn the corner, I pounce. I have surprise on my side, but the intruder has about a hundred pounds and ten inches to his advantage. He’s dressed in a blue jumpsuit, like the ones I’ve seen the window-washers wear.

He lunges for me, and yelps when I land a slice to his bicep with the knife. He grabs my wrist, holding tight enough to make me drop the knife between us, but I take the opportunity to punch him with my other arm, my palm colliding with his nose to sickening effect as the cartilage breaks.

“FUCK,” the man yells, but only attacks with a faster fury, grabbing for me as I retreat into the kitchen for another weapon. There’s an empty cast iron pan on the stove and I test the weight in my palm, flipping it once before swinging up and bringing it down on the man’s head.

Between the broken nose and the thunk I just gave him, he stumbles. I’m about to take the opportunity to knock him out when another man rushes into the kitchen in a matching uniform.

The second man dives for me, and I just barely slip past his grubby paws, dropping the pan with a clatter as I slide over the kitchen island.

Maxim would tell me to run, but then these men would be in our house where they could do anything, hide anything—maybe they already have—and they’d be alone with Elise.

All of this is unacceptable, so I rush to the hall and unstrap a gun from beneath the side table.

I’m about to unload a round into the second man’s chest, when he leaps for me, grabbing my wrist and making me shoot upward instead, the bullet landing in the ceiling and raining down drywall dust.

I grapple with him, but the fucker is huge , and it’s a battle of strength to turn the gun toward me.

I change my footing, twisting and putting my bare feet between his, tripping him enough to break his hold on the gun, but his other hand grabs my bicep hard enough to bruise. I land an elbow hard enough into his chest that his grip loosens enough for me to break free.

I twist and shoot him in the chest twice. He falls like a lead weight in the ocean, choking on his own blood, just in time for his buddy to jump out, broken nose and all, wielding a huge knife.

I dodge the blow he meant for my head, and aim the gun, but slip on Thing 2’s blood, throwing off my balance enough to catch his blade in my forearm.

My arm zings with white hot pain as the gun slides away from me.

Blood already drips down my arm and it hurts like hell. Thinking fast, I drop into a fighting stance and use my other fist to punch his stomach, surprising him. I knock the knife from his hand. I waste no time before I dive for the abandoned gun.

“ Bitch ,” he spits and catches my ankle.

The intruder grips my leg hard enough to make me cry out, but I kick with a fury, another blow to his already bloodied face. This one lands on his jaw and only serves to make him angrier.

I make another reach for the gun, but he yanks me across the polished wood toward him and crawls over my body, pinning my thighs under his knees.

Blood from his broken nose drips onto my cheek and I fight like hell to get out from under him, but the man is massive, nearly as tall as Maxim and just as muscular.

The trick to beating men his size is never letting them get the upper hand like this, and as his fingers clamp around my throat, I realize he has.

I try to claw at his face, his neck, any part of him that I can reach, but he just squeezes my neck tighter, cutting off my air entirely.

My fight weakens as black spots grow around the edges of my vision and all I can think is that I’m going to die here.

Maxim is going to come home and find my dead body in the hall.

I wonder if he’ll try to resuscitate me, if he’ll find the man who did this, if the scratches I left on the man’s jaw will make it easier for Maxim to locate him.

And then, it stops.

The man is ripped away from me, and he’s gripping my neck so tightly that he pulls me up with him before finally releasing me. I double over and cough, sputtering and choking while I try to get air back in my lungs.

Meanwhile, I hear a loud roar before a sickening crack. The man’s body drops to the ground next to me, his eyes still open but now unseeing. His neck is broken, and sits all wrong, but before I can really ingrain his grisly visage in my memory, a red-faced Maxim drops to his knees in front of me.

“Marianna,” he says, voice breaking as he runs shaky hands down my face, my shoulders, my upper arms, and then back up.

“You killed him.” I point out the obvious, but my voice sounds like a croak. I want to thank him, but Maxim crushes me against his chest and holds me tight.

He holds my face in between big hands and kisses my forehead hard.

“ Malysh ,” he says, like he always does. I looked it up after the second time. Baby , he’s saying.

“I’m okay.”

“All clear,” Sasha reports as he comes in from checking the rest of the floor. He points to me. “She’s bleeding.”

Maxim’s eyes go wider still and he looks between us to the arm that’s hanging limp at my side. The long gash left by the attacker’s knife is bleeding heavily now, blood flowing onto my bare legs and onto the wood floor.

“What happened?” Maxim demands as he strips out of his expensive suit coat and presses it to my wound. I wince at the sting of pain up my arm.

“I’m fine.”

“Lev is on his way,” Sasha reports of the family doctor.

From the kitchen, I hear a gasp and we turn in the direction automatically. It’s Elise viewing the scene, a hand against her head where a bump is forming.

Before I can say anything, she faints again, her body hitting the kitchen tile with a slap. Sasha rushes to her side, tending to her, but Maxim keeps his place directly in front of me, fussing and fretting.

“Maxim, I’m okay,” I repeat. “Call your cleaners for these two.”

“What happened?” Maxim says, louder this time, almost yelling as he grips me like I might not actually still be alive in front of him. His eyes are crazed, wild, and his hold on my upper arm is tight enough to bruise.

He’s terrified, I realize.

I lift my uninjured arm and touch his jaw.

“Maxim.”

“Who—”

“ Maxim ,” I repeat, and he stops talking, his eyes still searching my face for a sign of fatal injury. I lightly touch beneath his head wound that’s still healing near his hairline. “I’m okay. It’s just a cut. Like yours.”

My touch on his face seems to ground him and he settles marginally.

“You’re hurting me,” I say quietly and his breath hitches as he realized how tightly he holds me. I don’t mind the pain, but this has the desired effect of bringing him back from his stricken, panicking state. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”

I pull his head down until his forehead rests on my shoulder. From where he kneels in the kitchen, Sasha watches us with a sad understanding.

In this position, my face is close to Maxim’s ear, so I lower my voice and murmur that I’m alright, I fought them and I won, and isn’t it so good that he married such a strong fighter?

“Lev is downstairs. Cleaners are on their way,” Sasha says. Maxim takes a big breath before he stands to full height, pulling me up with him. He wipes from his face the intense panic that had just been there.

I meet his stare and give a slow nod.

I don’t protest when he leans down and scoops me up in his arms. I let him carry me to the dining room and sit me in a chair where Lev meets us and makes quick work of my arm.

Elise has come-to again, and I hear Sasha comforting her there.

I think about the three tests in the trash can. About how there will never be a good time to tell Maxim if I want nothing to change between us. About the way I never want to see that fear on his face again.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Maxim vows.

I snatch his wrist before he can leave my side.

“I’m sorry I killed him,” I say. He goes completely still. “We could’ve questioned them.”

Maxim leans down and presses a hard kiss on the side of my head.

“Never apologize for protecting yourself,” he murmurs.

When he wraps his arm around me and holds me against him, I have to admit, if only just to myself, that there’s no escaping the change in our relationship into something much messier than I planned. Not when that change has already taken place in me.