Page 50 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MARY

Even with my bound hands, I try to help Maxim get to the car via extremely unbalanced hobbling.

His arms are not cuffed, which would feel like an oversight if there weren’t six men with guns trained on us as we walk.

No way in hell could any of them carry Maxim and he can’t very well walk with the hole they put through his foot.

I feel horrible about that, but I couldn’t let Tenneson think I was too cooperative, not when I was just being so helpful calling off the backup and telling them about the safes.

The safes that are very much not real.

My heart plummeted when the gunshot sounded, echoing everywhere in the abandoned concrete dungeon, but of all the places Tenneson could’ve shot Maxim, I am pretty confident that he will survive the foot injury.

If we can survive this at all.

Calling Nate and saying all that shit I would never in my life say was a gamble.

If it doesn’t pay off, we will be facing inevitable death when we get to the Brickyard to find, indeed, the old key code safe that Nikolai remembered.

I have told Nate no less than thirteen times that I would die before I played organized sports with him, so I think he got the memo.

They stick us in the back of Samuel’s town car, the fucking traitor looking haunted by the whole of the situation. Nikolai is in the front seat, a gun slightly shaking but trained on me in the back in case one of us decides to try something.

Of all the seating arrangements, this one is the most ideal—like I can’t imagine my fucking luck ideal, because Nikolai is the weakest little bitch of a man I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and Samuel looks like he is sick with guilt over betraying his beloved Maxim.

This, I can work with.

First, though, the cuffs.

While Samuel drives the tense car out of the lot behind two much larger vehicles, I take a deep breath, and prepare to do something I loathe.

On a sharp exhale, I dislocate my right thumb, biting down on my cheek so as not to grunt while it pops down and out of place.

Leo’s dad taught me this trick, and he and Dad bought me ice cream the first time I did it successfully. I was sixteen.

Doing this now gives me exactly enough room to wiggle my hand out of the metal cuff, though it hurts like a bitch.

When I can get my hands in front of me I brace myself and pop the thumb back into place. Maxim watches with trepidation and anguish in his tired eyes.

While Nikolai is barking orders into a cell phone, gun still held in my direction, I decide to risk stripping out of my sweater. I make Maxim lift his leg as much as he’s able so I can take off his bloody shoe and use the sweater to tie as tight of a wrapping around the bullet wound as I can.

“Mary,” Maxim mutters, his voice weak.

“I know it hurts, baby,” I say, pulling the fabric tighter. “You just have to trust me, okay?”

“Darling.” His hand falls on mine and I look up at him, his handsome face, dark blue eyes, blood caked on his cheeks and jaw.

“I love you,” he says, so unbearably sad.

“I know,” I say. “I know.”

“I wish you hadn’t come for me.”

“I’m not letting them kill you.” I close the gap between us and press my lips to his gingerly to not upset the wounds. “Okay? You’re old but you’re not that old. I need you for like fifty years at least, we can revisit you sacrificing yourself for me when you’re ninety.”

“I—”

I kiss him again, more insistent this time, before I pull away looking at him, imploring him to try to trust me.

“I could’ve sworn you were a lesbian,” Nikolai says, phone call over. His gun is still pointed at me, still slightly shaking. I refrain from rolling my eyes and turn to look at him. “I seen you kiss a girl before at Leroy’s last year.”

“Yeah, well I contain multitudes,” I snipe. I reach across Maxim’s chest and pull the seat belt out until I can buckle it across his body. I do the same for me before turning back to Nikolai who is looking at the cuffs dangling from my wrist like I must be a magician of some kind.

He must decide that me having use of both hands isn’t that much of a threat when he has a gun pointed at me, because he says nothing.

“Safety first,” I muse. He scoffs before reaching back and wrestling his own seatbelt on.

We’re still twenty minutes from the Brickyard at least, more if we take the bridge.

“I knew you were a weak snake, Niko, but I didn’t think you were stupid enough to let Elise string you along.

” It’s another gamble. When she said she would be married to the boss and that boss wouldn’t be Maxim, I used the process of elimination to land on the only other Orlov the Russians would accept.

“Oh please,” he says. “Like you know anything.”

I smile, though my entire insides are tense with the act I’m putting on. “I know she’s using you as a pawn of epic proportions.”

His forehead crinkles with his glare. “She’s not.”

My smile morphs into something genuine, because he sounds too defensive. He’s shown his hand—his festering insecurity given a name, an outsider confirming his suspicions.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but we’re getting married.”

I laugh out loud, a sharp, high thing, and hope it doesn’t sound forced. “Oh, Niko.”

Samuel is shooting me nervous glances in the rearview mirror, and I glare at him before looking back at the target of my needling. “Is that what she told you? Get your guys to stage a coup and you’d be in charge with her, your doting wife? You’d even have a rich backer behind you?”

Nikolai’s eyes widen and wow I really didn’t think that would be as spot on as it appears to be. Makes sense, though. Elise is the mastermind behind all of this; she’s a sore loser about Maxim not marrying her, and decided to take matters into her own hands?

“Tenneson is her father,” Maxim says, but his voice is strained.

“What?” Nikolai and I say in unison.

“I just put it together. Her mother and Tenneson divorced when she was young. Her mom became one of my father’s girlfriends, it’s how she and Sasha knew each other. He put their moms up in the same apartment building.”

Nikolai stews on this news in the front seat, eyes not even on me where the gun is still pointed. I take the opportunity to go after Samuel.

“And what the fuck is all this about, Samuel?” I ask. “Elise promise you an empire too?”

His shoulders slump as we roll through a yellow light.

“They swore they would leave you out of it,” he says. “They have my son.”

I sigh. Absolutely classic move, holding-a-loved-one-captive to sway loyalties. Nothing quite so effective for a soft-hearted man than attacking his family. I’m one to talk, though. It would probably work just as well on me.

“I’m very sorry, Mary.”

“Mrs. Orlov,” I correct, though the words are as sour as the broken trust between us. “Your apologies mean nothing to me.”

I feign annoyed dismissive glances out the window, eyes searching for familiar black vehicles.

It’s dark outside, almost too dark to see the cars next to us with the tinted window, but I spy Elise in the passenger seat looking at me through the window.

I lower mine enough to see my face and flip her off.

Normally I would love an evil woman going after what she wants. Unfortunately in this instance, that thing is the lives of me and my husband, so I cannot abide.

“Hey, close that,” Nikolai snaps and I do as he says, but not before slipping a remaining shred of my sleeve over the glass, pinching it between the car door and window so it’ll flap against the car.

It won’t do much, but if someone in my family can find our convoy maybe they’ll see it and know not to try their luck on the bulletproof glass.

“You know, you could be nicer to people who could kill you at any time,” Nikolai snips and I force another smug smile.

“Niko, did you think I was nice?”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes in annoyance, but before I can quip anything else, an unmistakable crunch sounds outside to our right and everyone recoils, turning to look at where the car of one of the goons is swerving between lanes, having just been rear ended.

“What the hell is—” Nikolai is cut off as Samuel swerves the car sharply left to avoid another black SUV slamming the brakes in front of us.

It’s Leo’s car.

Thank God.

I breathe my first exhale, and grip Maxim’s thigh while Samuel rights the car and steps on the gas.

“What was that?” Nikolai asks, his voice shrill.

Both his eyes and the gun are no longer pointed at me and I jump on the chance, unbuckling my seatbelt and lunging forward to grab the weapon from his grip.

He’s too distracted to put up a fight, and I get the gun easily before training it on his head.

When he tries to grab it back from me, his seatbelt auto stops him from getting too far.

I take the opportunity to shoot him in the arm, and at the sound, Samuel swerves the car, narrowly missing the one next to us which honks.

“Keep driving,” I shout.

“You shot me!” Nikolai sounds incredulous. I almost laugh at the audacity he has to feel betrayed by this.

I would’ve killed him, but I am attempting not to be so hasty in murdering people before they can help give us information. Think first, kill later, instead of my usual.

“The next shot goes in your head, do not try me , Nikolai.”

He looks to Maxim as if he’ll help him and even pale and injured as he is, Maxim gives a lopsided smile that’s almost proud.

Someone is hanging half out of the window of the SUV that holds Elise and Tenneson, shooting a gun behind them at a baby blue Prius. Nate’s .

I curse, lowering the window and taking two shots at the man trying to brain Nate, one missing, the other hitting him in between the shoulder and neck.

“Drive faster,” I yell, and Samuel does as I say, breaking away from the pack. “Lose them or I will kill you, Samuel, don’t think I won’t.”