Page 49 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MAXIM

I’ve felt my share of grief in my life: grief for the life my mother could’ve had, grief for lost family members, even grief for myself. My sister Vera got a degree in psychology and another in social work just to tell us that life is about grieving. I believe that she’s right about this.

Never, though, did I know that my very soul could experience agony like this.

There’s a sense of grief so intense that I’m drowning in it.

Regaining consciousness to find myself in the same dire circumstance, only now, my wife here with me, I felt something in me shatter.

It was the thing that kept me strong, firm in my decision to not give in to corrupt men and their horrific dealings. It was her.

I believed I would die, and even still, my body is telling me that I will, but I lost any chance of it being a noble death the moment I saw her, tears staining her cheeks as she rattled me awake.

I would do anything, give anything, to keep her alive. They found the one person who, above all else, I need to survive.

And then they told me she’s pregnant. I don’t know how Elise knew, but really I don’t know how I didn’t realize it sooner. Her sickness, the fatigue, I didn’t dare believe we’d actually done it. Now, the life I craved for us is dissolving rapidly in front of me.

My wife. My child. My family.

“Get that fucking gun away from her. I said I would tell you.”

Colton’s lips are twisted into a smile that turns my stomach, the kind of evil I thought died with my father. I should’ve known this bad would always exist on this earth, no matter how nice of a pocket I found for myself in the quiet moments holding Marianna in our bed.

“Was that so hard?” he asks. My shoulders relax marginally as he lowers the gun from her head. Behind her, Samuel slumps in relief. Nikolai even looks unsettled by Colton’s display.

“Did she come alone?” Colton asks.

“Alexei was with her,” Elise says, sounding almost bored. “Probably bled out by now.”

My soul breaks impossibly further, and I meet Marianna’s eyes which are already staring back at me. Hers say a thousand apologies, her pain reflecting my own, her concern for my sorry state and hers, her own agonies.

Colton wants one thing, and it is everything . He’s lost his patience waiting for me to agree to work with him, to sell him properties one after another. Our killing of his inside men last night forced his hand.

After waking here this morning, he was very clear about his demands; first, he wants every deed to every property I own.

He wants my will changed, transferring everything to Nikolai, who Colton knows he can use as a puppet boss.

He wants to kill me and Marianna and make it look like a tragic accident.

Then he’ll bring the Orlov empire to what my father used to promise him: this bloody, invincible beast for him to wield quietly behind Nikolai.

What I can’t comprehend is where Elise fits into this. Or Samuel. Both of whom I trusted so thoroughly.

“I love you,” I mouth to Marianna, in case I don’t get to say it again.

Marianna inhales and looks at Colton.

“More are on their way,” she says. Elise smirks like Marianna’s admission was a mistake.

I don’t know why she said it, they might’ve been able to help us, had they gotten the element of surprise.

But then again, the man I’ve trusted my whole adult life betrayed me in this, so who can say how many Orlovs are really on their way to help.

“Let me call them off,” she pleads. “You don’t need more bodies to clean up tonight.”

Colton thinks about it, squinting at Marianna, and then turns to Elise who nods like cleaning up a lot of corpses would be more of a headache than they need.

“Call them. Now. Try anything funny and I’ll cut off Maxim’s ear.”

Marianna nods quickly, looking full well like she believes him, which is a good impulse. The man has sliced thin lines down my jaw, side of my neck, upper chest, and biceps, cuts criss-crossing the scars my father left. A steady, lethal hand for a fucking business man.

“My phone is in my back pocket,” she says by way of explanation, her hands still cuffed behind her. Elise offers a long suffering sigh before stalking over to us and pulling my wife up by the armpit and retrieving her cell phone. She holds it in front of Marianna’s face to unlock it.

“Call Nate,” Marianna instructs, and Elise goes through the short favorites list before it starts ringing. Nate picks up on the third ring with a hello that’s cheery as ever. Sweet, strange man.

I’m surprised that Nate is the one she would call first for backup when usually she frets about him being able to protect himself.

“Hey, are you on your way?”

“Yes, traffic’s a bitch, they’re doing construction on the bridge,” he starts, but Marianna cuts him off.

“Well, you can turn around,” she says. “It was a false alarm.”

A beat of silence on the other side of the phone, before he can say anything, she goes on.

“I think it’s, you know, the pregnancy brain.

It’s making me fucking crazy. Paranoid. You were right when you said it’s just an old textile factory and Maxim is probably out, like, screwing around on me.

I just thought he might’ve been in trouble. ”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nate says. The conversation makes no sense to me; Nate knows I wouldn’t cheat on her, he’s always looked so knowing around me and Marianna. I know love when I see it, he told me after a family dinner once.

“Whatever. It’s not like I can kill him if he’s cheating on me.

I knew what I was signing up for here,” she says, and Colton’s amusement at the conversation grows ever more.

“Anyway, go ahead and call off Leo and Santi, too. I think I just need to go to the penthouse, take my nausea medicine, and sleep.”

“Good plan,” he agrees. “Hey, will I see you for pickleball tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

I’ve never heard of pickleball, much less heard of her partaking in whatever it is.

“And Nate?” she gets out before Elise can try to end the phone call.

“Yeah, Mar?”

“Thank you. For being willing to come on such short notice. You are. . .my best friend.”

Elise hangs up then, and Marianna closes her eyes for the span of a big inhale. When she opens them, she meets mine and nods.

I think if I were one of her sisters, with the secret long-spoken language, I would know what message she means to convey with that look.

But if there’s anyone to help us, they’re called off now.

She wants to protect them, I know, but who will she let protect her ?

If not me, and not Sasha, or her family, then who?

I don’t currently see a way that I survive this, and I can only pray to any holy entity that will listen that Marianna will. And that the people she just spared will recognize what she did and protect her where I cannot.

I believe they will. I have to believe they will.

“The code, Maxim.”

“It’s not a code,” Marianna says. “He’s not a fool, you think he would have anything less than bio-sensors on his safes? And only one?”

“Careful,” I murmur about her sharp tone. I have two dozen shallow cuts to show how Colton feels about what he deems as disrespect.

“He married a Morelli,” she says by way of explanation at Colton’s blank expression. “We wouldn’t let him have old tech. You need Maxim to open the safes. And you need him alive.”

This surprises both him and Elise, their heads tilting in opposite directions as they try to detect the lie. It is a lie, but God is she convincing.

Their expressions mirroring each other, Elise and Colton Tenneson bear a striking resemblance. One I can’t help but wonder how I never saw it before.

“Except for the one at home, which you need both of us for,” Marianna says with a sort of tired sigh. “What, you thought it was a locker combination? A simple touchpad with a six digit code?”

That’s exactly what it is, but I won’t say so.

“Why didn’t you mention this?” Colton barks at Nikolai.

“I don’t know shit about tech safes, Dad used to say there was only the one and that the code had to be changed every ninety days,” he defends.

“I haven’t seen one in the house,” Elise adds.

“Oh, when you were snooping around our bedroom you didn’t think to look for false panels?” Marianna says, like Elise is the most stupid woman in Boston. “I mean, what kind of operation do you think Maxim is running? He’s not an amateur.”

“Where are they?” Colton demands.

Marianna shrugs, pushing him. The tick of her jaw is the only thing giving away to me her apprehension when she looks like a bored brat.

Colton loses his patience, lifting his gun and shooting it once, the bullet slicing through my right foot with a white hot agony. I grunt and tumble over, the chair and cuffs the only thing keeping me up.

“Okay!” Marianna screams. “One at the club, one in the house, and another at my sister’s.”

“Little Mary, why must you make things so difficult? That was easy, wasn’t it?”

Blood is pouring from my throbbing foot, a fresh puddle joining the dried spots from my other wounds. The blood loss and pain threatens to take my consciousness again, but I stay as focused as I can manage.

“Well, get them up then. We’ve got some safes to open.”

Marianna holds my gaze, an apology of sorts in hers, and then they start to move us.