Page 44 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MARY

The medicine is called Zofran and it helps immensely.

By the time Maxim came home to share dinner, I was able to eat for once and did not fear I was going to throw up.

I was still tired, though, from all the not sleeping I’ve been doing, so when I sat down on the couch next to a reading Maxim, I fell directly to sleep.

When I woke, I was alone on the couch, but now with a pillow under my head, a blanket tucked in around me, and Greta two inches away from suffocating me on my chest.

It was darker, the house quiet, and there were no signs of Maxim who, last I remembered, I had been using as a pillow.

On the coffee table, I found a note written in his surprisingly neat cursive that read, Dealing with trouble at the Brickyard. Sleep well.

And, reasonably, since I haven’t felt this healthy in three weeks, I grab the keys to one of Maxim’s cars and head straight over.

I’m still wearing his shirt and a pair of bike shorts, so by no means club attire, but the bouncer doesn’t bat an eye before he lets me in with a polite, “Good to see you, Mrs. Orlov.”

I don’t find Maxim in his office upstairs, but as I’m trekking back down to the main floor, Sasha finds me at the bottom of the stairs. His sleeves are rolled up, shirt unbuttoned a few times, and his hair mussed, too.

“Hot date?” I yell loud enough for him to hear over the music.

“I wish.”

“Have you been fighting?”

“Something like that.” He jerks his head toward the hall next to the bar and I follow him there. It’s the same way Maxim led me on Christmas Eve when I was having a panic attack. I’m calm now, collected, albeit curious.

Instead of the back door to the alley, we turn left and descend two flights of stairs and Sasha opens a thick metal door using a code I don’t see him enter but am sure he would tell me if I asked.

I’ve never seen this room before, but I know right away that Nate would call it Maxim’s murder dungeon or his demonic torture chamber.

Really it looks like a storage room, some walls of shelves, a concrete floor slightly sloped to a drain, a big sink in the corner.

There is a man strapped down to a metal chair in the middle of the room, and that’s what gives it away, really.

There is also blood dripping from his jaw, so that really seals it.

The restrained man catches sight of me and laughs. If I squint, I can almost recognize him. Low-level Orlov crony, if I had to guess.

“You called in your bitch to finish the job?” The man asks, and I recoil, but smile. This just got a lot more fun.

Maxim looks over his shoulder seeing me with Sasha, and his posture goes rigid before he turns back to the man and unleashes a fierce slap that sends more blood and probably one of the man’s teeth onto the floor.

I tut and waltz up to the scene, stopping at Maxim’s side with a hand on his shoulder. He shakes lightly, perhaps from the beating he’s been giving, but more likely from rage barely kept beneath the surface of his skin.

“Who’s this?” I ask.

The knock made the man dizzy, but he rights his head on his neck after a few moments of saliva and blood dripping from his lip.

“Mikhail Kozlov.”

“He looks old,” I say.

“Not much older than your husband,” Kozlov taunts, and I grin.

“My husband wears it much better,” I say. I turn my attention to Maxim. “What did he do?”

The man must’ve really pissed him off for Maxim to be here bloodying his knuckles instead of at home softly snoring on the couch. Beating up a mobster in a murder basement feels like it toes the line of the enforcer work that Maxim seems to think he and I are so far above, but duty calls.

“Nothing!” Kozlov shouts. He spits, blood and saliva landing on the ground next to his chair. “As I was explaining, it was just business.”

My eyebrows jump in amusement. It’s just business , being said by anyone other than the boss is a sure way to tell that they were getting up to shit they shouldn’t be.

“So you’re an entrepreneur,” I say. I wrap an arm around Maxim’s waist and rest my head on his bicep. Every bit of him is tense, practically vibrating with the anger twinging through his body. “Cute of you.”

The description annoys the bound man, but he has some desperate hope in his eyes while he talks to me, like I might take his side and convince Maxim to take it easy on him. Like I’m the merciful one of the two of us.

“It’s a good opportunity,” he explains. “I swear I was going to tell you—I just had to try it out first to make sure it was viable.”

“And what was this little start up then?” I ask. “And don’t say crypto.”

“ Selling . Girls ,” Maxim spits through clenched teeth. My stomach drops, though I don’t let it show on my face.

“What kind of girls?” I ask.

“See?” Kozlov’s face alights with more hope. “That’s the thing, they’re not even from the states, we bring them in.”

“How old?”

“Twenties,” he says, then amends, “most of them at least.”

Kids , is what he’s saying.

Facing children , ripped from their homes and brought to another country without their families so that rich men can do God only knows what with them. It makes me feel sick all over again.

Vanessa confessed that Cillian was mad that we were too virtuous for those markets and that we were wrong to think weapons were any less dangerous than selling real humans and their various body parts. There’s money in that, but as Dad always said, “The cost of such business is your very soul.”

“You told him no?” I ask Maxim. His eyes meet mine, a slight question in his and I nod just barely, imploring him to trust me. “Could be good money.”

“Money we would of course give you your share of,” Kozlov says. His tone of spitting and calling me a bitch has changed now that he thinks of me as a potential ally.

I’ve never gotten to play the good cop before, usually just my face inspires fear, but this man doesn’t seem to know me. For once, my reputation really does not precede me other than the wife of a powerful man.

“Give me the financial spark notes,” I say, and he does, listing sums well in the eight figures over the next six months.

The prospect makes me want to gag, but I just keep my hand on Maxim’s waist, squeezing ever tighter as the man goes on.

“Quite the ordeal. And complicated. Who do we have to thank for this operation?” I ask.

The man looks nervous at the line of questioning, bites his lower lip then winces remembering too late that it’s busted. There’s blood on his yellow teeth.

“Tell her or I shoot you,” Maxim demands.

“Colton Tenneson,” he confesses. Maxim’s shoulders move with a quick inhale.

He’s surprised to hear this, and so am I.

Last I saw or heard about Tenneson was our brief stay in Mexico.

The man is clean as far as I know. Well, as clean as a multi-millionaire can be.

He’s got money to throw around, but he’s not tied to a crime family.

At least not the Morellis or the Donovanns, and I didn’t think he was under the Orlov’s protection.

“Quite the extracurricular,” I murmur. “What team do you propose for this?”

He names three men I’ve never heard of, but when I look back at Sasha, he inclines his head, familiar with them. “They’re ready to start, and I promise we weren’t trying to cut you out, Pakhan .”

Oh so now he wants to be respectful.

“It’s what your father would’ve done,” Kozlov says, sounding so solemn and righteous about it. “We honor him by trying to grow the wealth of the Bratva .”

“Well, in that case,” I say with false cheer, and retrieve the pistol from the holster on Maxim’s shoulder, aiming at the man and firing without hesitation.

My ears ring from the sound, swimming in the room which is otherwise quiet. Maxim’s mouth has fallen open as he looks at the now dead man.

I click on the safety and return the gun. When Maxim still hasn’t looked away from the gruesome sight, I raise a palm to lightly touch his cheek and urge his gaze toward me.

“Hey,” I whisper. “Take me to your office?”

Maxim is no stranger to death, I think he was about to kill the man himself when I arrived, but he’d gone preternaturally still when Kozlov spoke of Maxim’s father.

“Come on.”

He nods and leads me away from the dead body, not the way we came, but the opposite direction to another stairwell which we scale three flights until he pushes open a door which turns out to be attached to a bookcase in his dark office.

He immediately stalks over to the fireplace and flips the switch to light it, kneeling briefly by the flames and staring into them. I don’t know what solace he finds in fire, if it’s a comfort he feels from watching the dancing burn or a craving to succumb to the chaos.

Unbidden, an image of him thrusting his hand into the fire flits across my mind and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment in an attempt to clear it.

It does nothing to make the image go away, so I cross the room to his side and put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him as much as it is to appease my own anxiety that he’ll do something I know he wouldn’t do.

He’s wearing the watch I gave him, and me the necklace he gave me.

“Are you mad?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

“At me?” I clarify, and he gives an almost-laugh. There’s no levity to it.

“No.”

Maxim stands, my hand holding his shirt’s fabric as he does, still gripping him as he towers over me this close. “If not you, I would’ve done it. Probably sooner. I wouldn’t have gotten those names.”

“You can’t catch a break,” I say. “Was your life this dramatic before you married me?”

His eyes soften for a moment before whatever haunts him resurfaces with a vengeance, his face paling as he side steps me and crosses the room. I don’t follow.

“We’ll take care of it,” I assure him. “He’ll be an example not to get into business without your approval. I can call Nessa’s girl at the feds and leave a tip about Tenneson, and then we can forget all about it.”