Page 46 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MAXIM

I left for work before Marianna woke this morning. I placed a note next to where she drooled slightly onto my pillow and pressed a long kiss to the side of her head. Greta meowed softly, so I scratched her head and kissed her too before leaving them to sleep.

Marianna’s been tired lately, dark circles under her eyes and an uncharacteristic downward slope to her shoulders. I’m not going to be the one to interrupt any extra sleep she can get.

I already texted Sasha that he’s with her today, whatever her plans are, and now drive to meetings downtown in the back of the town car. Samuel brought me coffee this morning which is a rare, but not unheard of, generosity.

“Sir,” Samuel says while I press send on an email on my phone. I slide it in my chest pocket and look to the front of the car.

“Yes?”

“I promised to keep Mary safe,” he says, with all the gravity in the world in the sentence. I tilt my head, meet his eye in the rear view mirror before his flick back to the road. “The day I met her you asked me to protect her no matter what, and I intend to keep that promise to you.”

I soften and nod. I would guess she has become as dear to him as she has to Sasha, to Elise, to anyone who lives for any time in her closest orbit.

“Thank you, Samuel.”

I smile before reaching for the cup of coffee and taking a long sip.

I used to pretend that Samuel was my father instead of my own, this nice quiet man who’s been a steady presence in my life for decades now, driving me from one place to the next in my young adulthood through now.

He was much younger when I first met him, somewhere in his thirties.

The coffee is sweeter than usual, but doesn’t bother me. The city slides by outside the tinted windows.

I watch cars move on the bridge beside us and realize we’re going in the opposite direction to the hotel I’m supposed to be at in twelve minutes. How long have we been driving? Thirty minutes almost?

I take another gulp of coffee.

I must’ve told him the wrong location, but now that I think back, I am certain I didn’t.

“Samuel?” I say, but my tongue is thick in my mouth as I speak. I clear my throat and try again. “I think we’re meant to be headed west.” My words sound slurred, not as sharp as they are in my head, and I’m unsteady in my confusion.

The car makes a sharp turn and a tire dips into a hole, jostling me. The coffee slips from my hand, falling to the floor of the backseat and spilling, but when I try to reach for it, my arm is too heavy, my hand not flexing.

“Pull over,” I slur, something very wrong. My head is spinning, vision tunneling as my thoughts race over the situation.

“I will protect her, sir,” he says. “Believe me that I will.”

I try to look at him in his mirror, but nothing is where it should be. Before I can call for help, reach for my phone, tell him something is wrong, I’m tumbling headfirst into a heavy blackness.