Page 6 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

“Sound logic,” I remark. I don’t doubt that she is smarter than most people she meets, and not just because she hangs out with gangsters. The kettle finishes boiling behind me, clicking off. “How do you take your tea?”

“I don’t know, like with honey or milk or something?

” she says, and I take that to mean she’ll have it however I offer it.

“I’m very good at protecting the people I care about, but—” Mary takes a deep breath, slows her speaking.

I pour hot water over two black tea bags.

“There are getting to be too many of them.”

My chest warms at her sincerity, the obvious concern in her eyes as she imagines each person she cares for. Her family is growing fast, first with Nate, now with the two new babies.

“Can they not protect themselves?” I ask as I spoon sugar into the cups. “I’ve seen your sisters fight, and your cousin is a force. Nate, too. He killed Cillian.”

“He shouldn’t have had to.” Mary sounds haunted as she speaks this. “And yes all the adults are perfectly capable, but if they keep fucking like rabbits, the kids are going to outnumber us.”

I try to withhold a smirk at her derision. I’ve seen her with those kids; she adores them, and they love her likewise. The two new children will be just the same, and all of the little Morellis and Donovanns that come after them.

“I must be clear that I asked you to marry me for one reason only: security,” she says.

I shouldn’t be as pleased as I am to hear that she thinks I can offer her security.

It’s like a hindbrain response to knowing that she thinks I can provide for her.

Caveman shit. I hand her the mug of tea, and she eyes it before taking a sip and flinching like she wasn’t expecting to burn her tongue on freshly boiled water.

“Christ, that’s sweet,” she says. I cross the kitchen to the fridge and retrieve a container of lemon slices.

“Vanessa told you that she couldn’t love you, but I think after enough years, she probably would have. You seem. . .” Mary squints at my face, and I don’t allow myself to wilt under her stare or look away. “Kind.”

I blink at this assessment, then squeeze a wedge of lemon into her mug.

“I will never love you, though. I have a limited number of spots in my heart, which are rapidly filling up. I need you to know that.”

I pass the mug back to her slowly, and she looks down at the wedge floating on the surface before taking another sip.

“And what of your own children? Would you have room for them?”

Marianna nods and holds up two fingers. “I can manage two. Any more and I’ll be stretched thin worrying about them. It’ll be best if I get my tubes tied after that, I think.”

She’s being serious, no levity or irony, she’s thought deeply about this question ahead of meeting with me, and this is her answer.

Love, to her, is like an equation. Like a sack of beans that she can divvy up between a set number of people and no more.

She confounds me.

“I can offer you two children,” she starts, “and I will protect them with my life. In return, you will protect them, and commit to protect everyone else in my family too. I will live with you, try to look pleasant enough at parties, stay out of your affairs as well as I can, and remain faithful so long as your protection extends to every Morelli and Donovann in my inner circle.”

“Romantic,” I can’t help but remark.

“I didn’t say I was offering romance. You told my sister you need a child, and I can offer you that so long as I can trust your people will have my people’s backs.

” She looks me up and down, checking me out.

It’s not common that I feel heat rising up my neck, but I do now. “And sex is fine. No romance, though.”

For the second time this week, the youngest Morelli has rendered me speechless. She drinks another sip of tea, burning her tongue again, before this time setting the mug back on the counter to cool.

“Why are you telling me all of this? It’s like you want me to reject you.”

“I was going for transparency,” she says.

I follow the movement of her hand as it pulls at the collar of her sweater before she clasps her hands in front of her, slender fingers interlocking.

“If you’re going to marry someone as messed up as me, you ought to know beforehand. I can never love you, Maxim.”

The words should hurt me. They’re not a threat, but a stern promise, a proclamation in no unclear terms. They should dissuade me from this arrangement.

Looking at her now, loose curls hanging around her face, I can’t bring myself to care.

“Do you love someone else? Is there a middle school teacher in your favor that you’re running from?”

Marianna cracks a smile. Well, a smirk. A slight upturning of her lips. I can’t see her teeth, but I’m going to count it anyway.

“There’s no one. There’s never been anyone,” she admits simply.

I think of the dozen patrons I’ve seen her leave my club with, the ones who would’ve loved her if she let them, a plethora of pining hearts strewn about the city.

I’ve never seen her with the same person twice.

“Why?” I can’t help but ask, and then take a long sip of my own tea to hide my blatant interest. I don’t know that I can achieve any sense of nonchalance around her.

“Dating is a distraction, love is a liability. I have to stay focused.”

I watch her for a few too many silent moments. Her eyes remain fixed on mine, unflinching.

“You’re right that I need a child,” I say. “I’m thirty-eight, and if I died today, everything I’ve built would go to the wrong person. He’d undo everything. I will not lie to you, I am running out of time.”

Mary takes another sip, this one not causing her to recoil. She inclines her head for me to go on.

“You are very young.”

“Not that young,” she interrupts. “I’m twenty-six.”

Hearing this makes me feel only marginally better about my obsession, and only marginally. She’s still twelve years my junior.

I am still an old fucking pervert.

“You’d be a young mother, but I can’t wait years. I need an heir. You have to know that now.”

A flash of concern is there and wiped from her face in an instant. After brief deliberation, she straightens her shoulders.

“If I can’t make a child? If I’m incapable for some reason?”

“Are you?” I ask.

“Not that I know of. Everything seems to be in working order. But you never know.”

“Well, then we’ll cross that bridge when, and if, we come to it.”

“But you’re saying we’ll need to try to conceive,” she says bluntly. “Immediately.”

“After the wedding, yes,” I say, though the thought of trying to conceive with Marianna Morelli is making my throat constrict. “I’ll understand if you need time to think about it.”

I cough and drain half of my mug in one hot gulp.

Mary turns away from me. Her fingers curl around the side of the stone counter as she looks to the tall windows in the living room, and a muscle ticks in her jaw.

Her perfume is so subtle, something fresh—lavender, I think. It reminds me of spring, warm weather, and the sun on my skin.

She was sent here to torture me.

“You’re a boss, and I respect that title,” she finally says after her deliberation. “But I’m a made man just as much as you are, and if you treat me like a little wife , I will kill you.”

“You say wife like it’s a bad thing to be. Do you think so poorly of marriage?”

I always believed her parents to be unique in their love for one another. Her sisters, too, with husbands who never waver. I envied them for this when my father was so insatiable.

“Depends,” she says. “Most made men are more likely to be struck by lightning than be faithful to their wives. Sweet things to be kept at home, made pretty with expensive gifts, and chattering with the other little dolls.”

“You speak lowly of these wives.”

“You misunderstand me.” Mary turns her eyes to mine, unrelenting and hard. “They are this way because their husbands keep them this way. While they have their girlfriends, their jobs, their respect, and their street cred, their wives can’t complain. They’re not truly partners.”

“And that’s what you want?” I ask. “To be a partner?”

There’s an intimacy associated with the word I didn’t expect to hope for in this arrangement.

“Well, I’m no good at cooking,” she says.

I’m momentarily rendered speechless at what I think was a joke.

“I know what’s expected of a boss, the girlfriends and the mistresses, the second apartments, but if you have so much as a date—and don’t think I won’t hear about it—your death will be painful and slow. ”

“I believe you,” I say. There’s a light amusement in my eyes that I cannot quell.

I want to ask her how she would do it. I want her to describe it to me in great detail, but that is neither a normal question nor healthy for me to know.

“And do you get girlfriends?” I ask.

She squints like I’ve made a joke she’s not amused by.

“I’m not stupid, Maxim. Either of us having someone else would make the other look like a fool. No girlfriends or boyfriends. Just you.”

I smile and shake my head, more certain with every moment that she will destroy me.

“Okay,” I agree. “Partners.”

Marianna studies me as if to detect my bluff. There is none, though, and she shrugs when she comes to the same conclusion. “Then I accept.”

I almost choke on my tea, caught off guard by her easy decision. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything different from her, straight to the point as she tends to be.

We’re just talking about spending the rest of our mortal lives together, no need to sleep on it.

“That’s not right.” I stand straighter and peer down at her, then clear my throat. “Marianna Morelli, will you marry me?”

Marianna smiles, unmistakable this time, and I am gone for the way it makes her eyes sparkle.

“Sure.” She holds her hand out in front of her for me to shake. I hold her palm in my grip, small in mine, and shake it.

Sure . A baffled grin would take over my face if I didn’t have such great self-discipline.

When she’s satisfied with the handshake, she pulls back and steps away from me. Too soon. “I’ll tell my family today,” she says.

“Should I join you?” I’m friendly enough with the Morellis, more so since the events that have occurred over the last year, but I worry about how they’ll take the news of me marrying their Mary.

I don’t think she realizes just how protective the rest of her family is of her.

She is who each of them has the softest spot for.

“Give me a day to answer their questions. Expect Willa to call you in the next five hours with legal concerns. Vanessa, too. They’ll want you to come to dinner, but I’ll hold them off until tomorrow.”

“I don’t mind,” I say too quickly. “Any time.”

“They’ll probably be in better spirits about the whole thing after a sleep. That, or they’ll be ready to kill us both.” She says this last part with a smile. She couldn’t be less afraid of her family’s opinion.

She takes another sip, her throat bobbing as she swallows. I watch the movement.

“Tomorrow then,” I mutter.

I have a long list of questions yet to ask her, and we could talk about logistics all day, but the fact of the matter is that the woman in front of me has agreed to marry me, among other things. Things I cannot think about in her polite company.

Well, perhaps polite isn’t the right word.

“Maxim,” she says, making me stand at attention. “This is the last time I’ll ask; I need you to be sure before I tell them. You can’t change your mind.”

I search her eyes for any uncertainty and find none. She is solid, none of the panic I saw in that alley as tears spilled over her cheeks. Now, she is the picture of steady determination, looking up at me beneath thick black lashes.

“The way I see it, I have more to gain than you, Marianna, and less time. I won’t change my mind.”

She squints, looking away from me, then nods. She takes one last long pull from the mug, then sets it in my sink. I watch her walk about my kitchen casually, not like she’s never seen it before. She exits to the foyer, and I follow, resisting the urge to help her into her coat.

I suppose we’re done here.

“Tomorrow night,” she says. “Bring something for my mom. She’ll be the weirdest about all of this, but she’ll understand eventually.”

I think that every Morelli will be opposed to the arrangement of their little princess marrying for duty, but I don’t say so.

I’ll just have to bring gifts for everyone and assure them as intently as possible that I’m not looking to hurt her.

In fact, I am much more likely to be hurt by this arrangement.

“You got it,” I say.

“Hm.” Mary gives one last nod before hitting the button to call the elevator. She turns over her shoulder, and I catch my breath. She really is the most beautiful thing; warm eyes, pink cheeks, a lower lip so plump I want to run my thumb across it.

“My ring size is seven,” she says as she strolls into the elevator. “Let’s be married before spring.”

The doors close on her not-smiling face, taking her down and away from me.

“Fuck.” I breathe, take a moment, then start making calls.