Page 48 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

I flex my fist at my side, no more keen than he is to imagine my husband dead.

We walk quietly on, heel to toe keeping in mind not to stomp over the abandoned pieces of wood and metal on the ground.

There’s a set of metal stairs we climb, trying to be slow, but they creak anyway, making us tense with every step.

On the second floor overlooking the factory, there’s a row of small offices and closets, along with a short hallway.

We can now hear the voices from outside through a metal door at the end of said hall, warm light filtering through the crack at the bottom.

This feels like we’re in a haunted house, just waiting for something to jump out at us at any second. I’m strung so tight, I’d probably shoot first, ask questions later.

There’s an office to our left, one with an old desk and the kind of vintage chair that I know Willa would love if only it was in good shape and priced way too high at an antique shop.

Behind the desk is a big window looking out over the factory’s garage, and as I inch slowly inside, I can see more of the lower level.

There’s a group of six men, most of which I do not recognize. As I look longer, though, I realize with a sinking in my gut, that there are familiar faces among them.

“Motherfuckers,” Sasha spits, still whispering.

He gets out his phone and sends off a series of texts while I squint down at the faces.

Nikolai, most notably, stands with his hands in his pockets.

As unfortunate as it is to see him here, it doesn’t surprise me.

It’s the face next to him that has me gasping.

Samuel sits in a metal chair, elbows on his knees looking uneasy.

“Samuel—”

“He wouldn’t,” Sasha says, and he sounds so sure. The concern clouding his eyes speaks a different story, though.

“What are they looking at?”

They’re all facing something under the lip of the balcony that we can’t see, watching something unravel with smug satisfaction, though it looks like it’s turning Samuel’s stomach.

“We can’t go this way. They’ll see us,” I say. “Best thing we can do is retrace our steps, wait for backup, and enter via that door.” I point to an exterior door in the far right corner, all of their bodies pointed away from it.

Sasha agrees, sending off a text to his people while I do the same in a message to the family group chat. Leo and Sean like the message in response.

“Let’s do it then,” I say, already backing out of the office, when the metal doors at the end of the hall bangs open, footsteps sounding with them. Sasha and I both freeze, still concealed mostly in the office, but my leg is sticking out of the door.

As silently as I can, I pull it back into the office, trying not to breathe or make a sound.

“I told you he was made of steel,” a man with a heavy Russian accent says.

“Everyone has their limits,” another voice says, this one feminine.

Sasha and I make startled eye contact, both recognizing the voice.

“He will quickly reach his when we find her ,” she says. She sounds calculating and confident, so much so that I could almost pretend it’s not who I’m certain it is.

“She still hasn’t shown up at the penthouse,” the man says. I’m startled to realize they’re talking about me.

“Did you check her sister’s?” Their steps and voices are exceptionally close to the office now and I’m afraid I’m going to have to shoot them if they try to come in here. They halt at a door across the hall, pulling it open with a squeak.

“Which one? Both of them scare the shit out of me,” the man confesses. “Plus, all those guard dogs.”

I am guessing he means Leo, Sean, and maybe even Nate—which I will never tell him because his ego would be through the roof and I don’t think he needs that.

“The boss. Vanessa. If Mary’s not at home, I am almost certain she’s there.”

“I’ll make a call.”

“Do,” the woman says, and shuts the door she’d just opened. A closet, if I had to guess. “Now, Logan. Have you ever tried waterboarding?”

I would laugh at how outrageously and casually evil the question sounds if I didn’t think it had lethal intent for my husband.

They shuffle back down the hallway to the metal door they came from, and once it closes behind them, I let out a shaky exhale, Sasha doing the same.

“Was that?” He sounds distressed.

“It was her,” I confirm, certain.

“But she—” Sasha trails off, then shakes his head. “ Fuck .”

I stop myself from saying something insensitive.

Elise is dead is what she is.

I don’t care how many times she’s made delicious meals for us, or laughed over the kitchen island, Elise will die for this.

The thought makes me sadder than I’d like to admit, a loss I don’t typically feel alongside these determined feelings of rage and vengeance.

It’s betrayal. Something akin to what I felt when we found out about Cillian. But he was family. Elise, well, she and I weren’t as close as she and Sasha and Maxim, but I had fondness built in the penthouse over weeks of Thursdays and Sundays.

“Come on,” I tell him. I’m ready to stride right back where we came from, only to be startled to a halt at the resounding pop of a gun near me.

I duck and look around, eyes landing at the end of the hall where Elise stands holding a pistol up, a half smile on her face. Her eyes are wide and elated, that bright blonde princess hair braided over her shoulder.

I lift my own gun to shoot, but she screams, “I’ll kill him!” and I freeze. I’m not sure who she means, but my mind stutters on the thought of her killing Maxim.

She nods to my left and I glance in the direction of her pointed gun. Sasha is there on the ground, groaning in a growing puddle of his blood. My stomach drops at the sight, and I want to go to him, but Elise might kill me or him or both of us if I do.

“I’ll shoot him in the head, Mary. I really will.”

I want to call her bluff, say she isn’t that good of a shot, she’ll miss and I can get her down first. The door opens behind her before I can, bright light flooding the space as another man holds a gun in our direction.

I could take out one of them, I know it, but then they might shoot Sasha and even if I can’t see where the bullet landed, his lack of fight on the ground tells me another shot would kill him.

“Drop it, Mary,” Elise calls, her voice sharp when she says my name.

Sasha coughs next to me.

“Shoot her,” he says in a pained voice. I can’t let him die, I will not, so I turn on the safety and let the gun drop to the floor.

I like Sasha too much—another person I didn’t mean to care for—and even the thought of Maxim hurting like I did when Vanessa was taken is enough to make the decision without hesitating.

“Kick it behind you,” the man commands in the same heavy Russian accent as before. I do as he says, using the toe of my boot to kick the gun behind me.

Elise gives a sweet smile. “He’s going to cuff you, but if you give him trouble, I will shoot Alexei. Do not test me.”

I nod, knowing I could best the Nate-sized man in fifteen fights, but not sure how to do so without first getting Sasha killed.

“Don’t listen, Mary,” he says through labored breaths. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you, little fucker,” I bite through gritted teeth.

“Maxim will kill me if she doesn’t first,” he says, and the pleading in his voice is so heavy it makes my eyes water with his sense of self-sacrifice. I stay firm in my decision and lift my hands higher in surrender.

I look up at Elise and nod again, doing as she says, gritting my teeth while the man stalks toward me and pulls my hands into cuffs that he clips too tightly on my wrists.

He pushes between my shoulder blades and I stumble forward before righting myself and walking on ahead of him. Sasha groans behind me and I can only pray that someone will come find him in here—one of the people we called.

God, please not Sasha, Maxim’s only brother and best friend. My heart aches leaving him here, but I go forward anyway.

“What’s in this for you, then?” I ask her.

“Simple,” Elise winks at me. “I get to be married to the boss.”

I give her a look that I hope encapsulates me with equal disgust and confusion. “Maxim?”

Elise laughs, her sweet musical laugh, but it’s poison now. “No, Mary. You ruined him.”

She leads me across the threshold into the garage area, and Elise whistles, drawing all eyes from the lower level to us.

Samuel pales when he sees me, and he drops his face into his palms. Nikolai smiles.

“Maxy, you got a visitor,” Nikolai yells. The man shoves me not-so-gently forward, and we descend the metal stairs, my hands bound tightly behind my back.

The six men I saw before are strewn in a semi-circle, some standing, others sitting in rusted metal chairs. They all have guns, except for Samuel who just has his apparent despair. Nikolai winks at me as I walk past him and I spit on him, earning me a firm shove from the man behind me.

When I can finally see what the previous position hid from view, my stomach lurches.

Maxim, my Maxim, is slumped in a chair, his arms and legs restrained, his head lolling to the side. Next to his chair is a short folding table, the kind of set up I would recognize anywhere. They’ve been torturing him.

There’s a lot of blood, too much, I think, because any amount of blood outside of his body is too much. There are two slices down the side of his face, straight lines that leak blood down his neck and over the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.

A pained whimper escapes me, a sound I didn’t know I could make.

I pick up my pace and cross the space between us until I can drop to my knees beside him.

I duck my head to try to meet his eyes, which I find closed.

I wish I could touch him, feel for his pulse, hold him close to me, stitch him back together, but I can only nudge his thigh with my shoulder and say his name over and over until he opens his eyes, the deep blue wells looking lost before they train on my face.

He looks confused, but relieved. And then, perhaps realizing the situation I’ve found myself in, he looks absolutely overcome with sadness.

“No,” Maxim whispers, his voice so hoarse.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” I mutter quickly. “We’re okay.”

None of this is true, and he knows it, pain awash over his beautiful face. But he is breathing and that is enough right now. Broken as he looks, he is alive, alive, alive. I don’t see any gunshot wounds, or otherwise massive injuries. Mostly topical.

A long, loud laugh bursts from behind Maxim, from the space I didn’t even care to look after I’d found my husband, but I now see a man wearing a suit, laughing like the scene before him is hilarious. A man I last saw in Mexico.

Colton Tenneson.

“She came right to us?” he says through laughter. “How did you find us? No really, tell me.”

My nostrils flare as I take him in; luxury suit, hair perfectly slicked back, teeth that are just too straight. If Vanessa’s friend in the CIA was going to move, it wasn’t fast enough. They’re never fast enough over there, way too much tape and paperwork.

“God, they were right, you do look scary,” he says, still grinning. “Like a little feral chihuahua. Now really, how did you find us?”

I meet Maxim’s eyes then look down to where his right hand is cuffed down to the chair, his wrist stained a rusty red from fighting against the bonds. His watch sits on his wrist not ticking, the glass broken.

“I tracked him,” I admit. If the situation wasn’t so dire, I’d think Maxim almost looked soft at the admission that I’d planted a tracker in his watch, the same way he’d put one in my necklace.

“Trust issues, Ms. Morelli?” Tenneson muses.

“Orlov,” I correct, and his insidious smile grows wider still.

“You told me it was a sham marriage,” he addresses Elise where she stands behind me, her arms crossed over her chest watching the scene unfold.

“It was. For her, at least. For a while.”

“You keep making this easier for me, little Mary,” the man says and closes the gap between us in three quick strides of his long, scrawny legs.

He lifts the toe of his leather loafer and presses it into my bad shoulder until I fall back on my heels, nearly collapsing to my ass.

Maxim thrashes fruitlessly against the handcuffs, yelling, but Colton’s movements are slow and deliberate.

He smiles and pulls a gun from his waist before raising it to Maxim’s head.

“What are you doing?” I ask, but Colton Tenneson looks unfazed.

Maxim closes his eyes in grief and agony before opening them again to look at me.

“Stop,” I cry, my voice breaking.

If I could hold out my hands, I would do so in surrender to get him to stop. I am not above begging; I think I would do anything to see Maxim live through this night, anything. I’d kill, forfeit a finger, a hand, anything.

“The codes to the safes, Maxim, or your little wife watches you die.”

“I won’t,” Maxim says, and I whimper.

“What codes? Maxim, please just?—”

“Marianna,” he says, his tone an apology.

“Wait, wait,” Nikolai shouts from behind me. “You didn’t say anything about shooting him. You said he lives.”

Colton looks over my head at Nikolai. “Well, Niko, plans change.”

“You need him,” Samuel shouts, desperation evident in his voice. “If you kill him, he’ll never be able to tell you.”

Tenneson pauses, considering this, before he clicks his tongue and changes his plan, holding the gun to the next nearest skull: mine.

“ No ,” Maxim roars, and Tenneson cocks the gun.

A chorus of “Woah, woah”s and “Hold on”s sing from the group behind me, but Tenneson is unyielding.

“Tell me, or I’ll kill your wife.”

“And don’t forget the baby,” Elise says, an obvious smile in her voice. I glance at her with as much derision as I can hold, which is a lot.

Maxim’s face washes with shock at this news, and I wish my eyes could explain everything, how I was going to tell him, tonight even, if only he’d come home.

“A baby?” he asks, and I nod just barely.

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell you,” Maxim says, and the room falls silent.

After a moment so tense and silent, a dozen breaths held, Tenneson smiles.