Page 45 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

“He was right,” Maxim says, not facing me. “About my father. It’s what he would’ve wanted. It makes me sick.”

“He’s gone,” I say. “What he would’ve wanted doesn’t matter.”

“He won’t die .” Rage bubbles over on Maxim’s face before he launches a half filled glass against the wall closest to him.

We both watch it shatter, my gasp loud in the heavy quiet of the office. He looks down at his hand like it’s foreign to him, horror showing on his face. I rush to him and take his shaking hand in both of mine.

“It’s okay,” I soothe, unsure what torrent of emotions races through his mind, only wanting to ease the thoughts which I can almost see spiral him some place darker. He looks haunted at the broken glass on the floor. “We’ll clean it up.”

“I’m like him.”

“You’re not,” I say, firm.

“I am, he raised me to be just like him, he made me do awful things, Marianna, I am no better than him.”

“You are better than him. Better than me, even. He never would have aligned himself with my family, he probably would’ve tried to kill Vanessa ten times over by now.”

“I’ve killed plenty.” He sounds desperate, whether for me to understand or for this to not be true, I don’t know, but I hold his hand tighter.

“ So have I. Just now! I didn’t think twice about it. We’ve all had to do horrible things to survive, to protect ourselves and the people we care about. It’s not like we do this for fun.”

“What is the reason for all of this? This killing, people selling other people in our own city, my wife having to fight and to murder to protect this bloody fucking empire?”

“It’s not the empire, it’s you ,” I say without forethought, confessing too much. “It’s you I want to protect, Maxim. Like you want to protect me. That’s why we do this, because we don’t have another choice. If we don’t, that’s it. The end of everything.”

His face, normally so stern and solid, has twisted in anguish as he studies mine.

“I hate myself for who he made me. Hate that this was the inheritance I had to take,” Maxim whispers, and my heart aches for him. I pull the hand I’ve been holding to the side of my face, and he holds on like I hoped he would, sliding his fingers through my hair.

“I don’t hate you,” I say. “Your father would’ve killed me if I’d spoken to him like I’ve spoken to you. And still you treat me like I’m something precious.”

The very thought makes the cocktail of treacherous emotions on my husband’s face even stormier. “You are.”

“He’s dead, Maxim. Stop letting him hurt you.”

Maxim takes a shaky breath and lets out a huge exhale before pressing his forehead against mine. I close my eyes and hold onto his wrist as his thumb swipes against my cheek in a way that’s become too familiar, too comforting.

“You’re good , Maxim. You’re not all rotten.”

After another moment of our heads pressed together, he exhales again.

“Careful. You’re starting to sound like you like me,” he echoes. I can’t help my lips curving into a relieved smile.

“Only sometimes. Only a little.”

“Oh, Mary.” Maxim shakes his head against mine. Somehow, after calling me Marianna for so long, the nickname feels foreign and all the more intimate coming from his lips. “Don’t you ever tire of the work it takes to pretend you care so little?”

“I don’t care much,” I say, but even now I’m thinking of how I can help him feel better. How I can convince him that his monstrous parts don’t make up a treacherous whole. That he’s fine exactly how he is, wonderful, even.

I can feel his breath on my lips, so it’s not a jump for me to close the distance and press mine to his. This helped me when I was spiraling in the kitchen, kissing him in the all-consuming way that we tend to. I’m hopeful the same can be true for him now.

He lets out a sound almost like a whine, and deepens the kiss, using his other arm to tangle me closer to him, lifting me a few inches from the ground as he does. The front of his shirt twists in my grip while he turns, depositing me on the desk, where I part my legs to let him closer.

“Darling.” He exhales, and kisses me deeper still, his tongue intense in the fight against my own.

“I know,” I say, my voice coming out way too high and needy.

I don’t know, actually, only that it’s always this intense with him, always consuming and enlivening—the kind of thing I used to fruitlessly seek in his club.

I wanted to escape my incessant running thoughts and feel alive in my body, but it was hollow then.

With him, it’s different. Like every time we are together like this we are discovering something the rest of the world hasn’t yet.

So I do the thing we do best. I slide my hands between us and fiddle with his belt and button until his pants are open.

“Stop that,” he growls, and grips my wrists.

I try to free my hands, but he holds tighter, pulling my hands behind my back.

“Why?”

“I need to tell you.”

“You don’t .” I try to kiss him again; if I can just kiss him, it will distract him from whatever he’s on about, but he keeps just out of reach of my mouth.

Slowly, he walks me backwards, and I don’t resist as he lies me back on his desk. Once my head is on the wood, he presses my hands above me, and trails one callused palm down my arm, stopping once he reaches my chest and squeezing before carrying on.

“I love you,” he says.

The words cause panic to course through me, but his grip tightens on my wrist, pinning me where I am stretched out beneath him.

“You don’t—” I say, and I mean You can’t . I can’t.

Our lower bodies are pressed together and I feel his length against me through the thin spandex of my shorts. It would be so easy for him to pull them off my legs and slide into me in the name of trying to reach a goal we’ve already achieved. That is familiar, that we know.

“You don’t know me.” I attempt to speak evenly, but I’m still breathless and my voice wavers on the last word.

“I do.” Maxim brings his face so close above mine that I can look nowhere else.

His breath is uneven, too. “You crave control in every situation and when you can’t have it, you lash out.

You pretend you hate everyone because you are afraid of them getting too close to you.

You are so insanely stubborn and so fucking brave. ”

“Maxim,” I choke, but he’s just getting started.

“You are terrified of real intimacy because you can’t stomach the thought of anyone being close enough to see you. To open yourself up to hurt. But you love harder than anyone I’ve ever met. You care so deeply.”

“That’s not true,” I deny, but my throat feels tight, my eyes glassy as he goes on without relent.

“What have you been doing if not caring for me, Marianna?” He speaks with an urgency that makes me feel fragile. “Wearing my clothes, thinking of me, killing for me, taking care of me in your quiet and thoughtful ways? You may never love me, but you care, and you know I’ve loved you.”

My breath hitches as he speaks. I can almost see how I must look in the reflection of his eyes; like a scared and cornered animal. It’s how I feel, any shred of control I thought I had in this conversation completely eviscerated.

“Don’t cry,” he mutters so gently and wipes my cheeks. “Call it whatever you’d like, but I am yours. I love you in a way that is intense and overwhelming. I think I’ll die from the presence you have in my chest, from the worry that something could happen to you when I’m not there.”

“No.”

“I do . I have, For months now, probably since before the wedding—since you came into my life like a tornado, tossing everything up and spinning it around. Of course I’ve loved you.”

“I hate you.” My voice breaks, and I close my eyes tightly. I pray he believes me while I also pray he sees right through me to the truth I cannot voice. That I’ve never hated him, never been able to. I never stood a chance in the fight against falling for him.

Maxim only exhales and touches me with that same tenderness, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw then my lower lip.

“You can hate me,” he says. “Just hate me from here.”

Idly, I do wonder how many times I must push him away before his resolve breaks?

Is that what I’ve been testing in constantly needling him?

Pushing into his feelings like a bruise to see at what point I become so insufferable that he’ll see what I believe about myself?

That only those bound by blood are capable of loving me, or tolerating me?

I am desperate for him to stay, to call my bluff, but I don’t know how to admit this, how to tell him how much I want him to stay.

Maxim releases my wrists and rubs them where he’d been holding them in place. His other hand cradles my skull, pressing my face to his shoulder. I sniffle against the black fabric that smells like him and even smells like me now.

“Hate me from our home, our bed, our kitchen over tea—hate me all you want. You never have to love me.”

“I cannot keep you safe if I love you,” I admit. “There’s no room.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to. I watch your back and you watch mine. The entire world doesn’t have to be on your shoulders. You can share the weight.”

I bite my tongue, not ready to say anything more, but nod again and wrap my arms around his neck. He lifts us and holds me tight against him for long minutes, until my eyes are dry and the music downstairs has died for the night.