Page 7 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MARY

Two weeks into January, I’m perched on a stool in Vanessa’s bathroom while Willa stands behind me.

Her pregnant belly bumps against me as she pulls my hair into a braided style that she says will look fancy but effortless, so much so that nobody will be able to tell that it took more than thirty minutes and three different curl taming products.

I sigh and slump my shoulders until my sister smacks me with the comb to sit back up straight.

“We’re going to brunch, not an engagement party,” I grumble, but it falls on deaf ears.

Willa already explained that this brunch is arguably more important than an engagement party, because now that our engagement was formally announced in front of two hundred mafiosos on New Year’s Eve, it’s time for me to be seen with billionaire bachelor Maxim Orlov in the press .

Maxim isn’t a regular mob boss; he’s got a lot of illegal funds, yes, but he’s also got insane business acumen so he’s got a lot of legal funds too.

Money the rest of the world knows about.

Basically, he’s hot and rich and owns a lot of property in this city, so of course people want to talk about him in newspapers and online news sites.

And now they want to talk about me , too. Sure.

It’s not ideal, and the thought of reporters conjecturing about me and my dazzling personality makes me kind of want to hide underground for the foreseeable future, but I will do what I must.

“You want to look good for his Twitter groupies,” Willa says.

“People still use Twitter?” Vanessa asks, sending off an email on her phone. My sister is too busy to use social media, which is for the best. I think it would just piss her off.

“Yes, they make fancams of him and everything,” Willa says, then apologizes when a strand of my hair gets caught in her big ass ring.

“Fan what?”

“Wouldn’t dinner be better?” I ask before Willa can explain stan culture to Vanessa. “Then I could wear an evening dress instead of whatever this is.”

I gesture in the general direction of the outfit which I never, never, would have chosen for myself.

“You’re already salaciously younger than him, you need to be photographed in the light of day so you don’t look like some torrid love affair only marrying him because of his money,” Willa says.

“I have my own money,” I say. “I’m a Morelli.”

“Yes, but he has more,” Willa says.

“More legal money, at least. Jury is out on the rest, we have yet to compare coffers,” Vanessa muses before locking her phone and setting it on the lip of the tub next to her. “You think the famiglia is intense about appearances, the Russians are worse. You look perfect. Very Jackie Kennedy.”

“Exactly!” Willa exclaims like someone finally sees her vision. “The heavy black eyeliner and tall boots always make you look younger. You can go back to that when the whole East Coast isn’t trying to learn who has captured the heart of Maxim Orlov.”

I sigh but don’t protest more.

I feel ridiculous in this plum dress. It’s got a high neck, a white scallop collar, and pearly buttons down the front.

Willa says it’s couture and will be better received than a black leather jumpsuit or whatever the hell I usually wear.

I resented this comment because in what world would I be wearing a leather jumpsuit to a Saturday morning brunch? A black sweater? Yes. Jeans? Probably.

The skirt is short enough to not make my legs look tiny, and long enough that I can hide a small handgun in an upper-thigh holster. The new tights are nice enough, too, and I do like the boots. Calf-high, black, and a little retro with a chunky heel.

“You can make me look as wholesome as you want, but I doubt anything will make him look like I’ve captured his heart, ” I mock.

“You worry about your own face. Maxim will be fine,” Vanessa says. She absently rubs a hand over her own round belly, which is past the point of being able to hide, but still not as massive as Willa’s.

“You look nice,” Nate says from the door, way too enthusiastic. His ugly dog, Ranger, follows in, a loyal sentinel, and when he stretches his paws on my ankle, I lean over and scratch his head.

“Don’t sound so surprised, dickwad.”

“Dickwad,” Nate murmurs before he leans over and presses a long kiss on Vanessa’s cheek. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not creative, Mary Morelli.”

“She does look nice, thank you!” Willa says, and tugs my hair again as she finishes the braid. “See? Nice.”

“Kind of like an American Girl doll,” he adds, which makes Vanessa snort.

I glare at Willa in the mirror and she clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Well, usually you look like a Bratz doll, so I’ll take it.”

After a few more tugs and about twenty bobby pins, Willa steps back and surveys her work.

It’s a single braid down the center of my back, little thin twists of hair leading into it.

My bangs are their normal curly, albeit less frizzy than I usually leave them on account of the mass of taming products.

Between the dress, the hair, and the simple makeup, I look exceptionally soft.

If someone didn’t know me, they might even think I’m sweet, looking like this.

Friendly .

I scrunch my nose at the thought.

The doorbell rings from downstairs. Ranger yelps once, running in a circle before retreating from the crowded bathroom and trotting out.

“Let’s get on with it then,” I hop down from the stool.

“Wait!” Willa calls. I turn around, already grumpy about whatever additional primping I need, but she just holds up the big ring I’d left in the dish by the sink, the diamonds sparkling.

I take the thing, much too precious and vintage to look normal on me, and slide it back onto my finger.

I’d usually wear a stack of silver rings on either of my hands, but today I wear only this.

It’s a delicate, beautiful ring; shiny yellow gold and a sparkling diamond.

Maxim gave it to me without fanfare on New Year’s eve, and said it was his grandmother’s, so it’s probably cursed.

Like, his babushka might actively be haunting me.

“ Now you look perfect,” Willa says with a wink before following Nate and Vanessa out of the room.

I am the tail of the procession, clipping down the stairs to the foyer where the whole family is greeting Maxim with shoulder slaps and handshakes. They’re obsessed with him, I swear.

Maxim gives each of them a slight, though genuine, smile, but his lips fall when his eyes find me where I’ve stopped near the bottom of the stairs.

His shoulders are taut in his charcoal suit, and huge.

I agree with Nate’s assertion that Maxim looks like he was built like a refrigerator—the fancy, industrial kind, stainless steel and fit to hold a few week’s worth of meals and many sodas.

The collar of his shirt is unbuttoned, showing the base of his thick throat, and it bobs with a swallow. He looks nervous, or like he’s just now realizing that agreeing to marry a volatile twenty-six year old with anxiety issues that’s been dressed up like a debutante was actually a very bad idea.

Too late to back out now.

I nod at him, and he belatedly nods back, greeting enough for us.

“Willa said I need to look like I have a kid in a prep school if we want the general population to think I’m not a harlot slut trying to seduce you for your fortune,” I explain.

“I did not say that,” Willa denies. Maxim’s eyes light with amusement, which pleases me.

At the root of it, he’s doing me a favor by marrying me instead of finding someone nice who can love him.

Sure, I’m offering to bring life into the world, but that doesn’t change that this is a big, life-altering favor.

It’s the least I can do to make sure he’s not miserable all the time about it.

“Well, you look beautiful,” he says. “That color suits you.”

I blink in surprise at the compliment, my cheeks heating slightly.

“Shall we?” he asks. I nod before I thud the rest of the way down the stairs and brush past him to the door.

“Have fun!” Willa says, helping me into a thick, pink peacoat that I’ve never seen.

“Don’t flip off the paparazzi,” Nate says, and I flip him off instead.

A sleek, black town car is idling in the driveway, and an older man in a suit stands ready to open the door for us. I stop in front of him, eyebrows raised.

“You are fancy,” I muse, and the man offers a warm smile. We don’t have drivers, but then again, we tend to move in pairs at least. When I can, I make Leo drive.

“I’m Samuel,” he says, his Russian accent evident. “Good to meet you, Ms. Morelli.”

“Mary is fine,” I say, before sliding into the car’s back seat.

The seats are leather with heating and cooling, which is how I know the car is expensive.

Plus, there’s lots of legroom, but I guess there has to be, because Maxim slides in beside me and doesn’t look cramped at all even though his legs are massive.

I wonder how many cars he has. I expect they’re all as nice as this one.

“Do you have a yacht?” I ask, and Maxim’s nose scrunches.

I bob my head. Knew it.

It’s funny that he’s embarrassed about his obvious wealth.

It’s not like I didn’t grow up rich—organized crime pays—but so far as the general public knew, my dad was just in charge of a big, successful construction company.

They expected him to have a nice house, they didn’t expect him to wear a thirty thousand dollar wrist watch.

Dad had a boat, not a huge one, but there was a big deck that he entertained guests on sometimes.

He liked the boat, and I liked it too. I suppose it belongs to Vanessa now, or maybe my mother, but we don’t use it.

I think it stings too bad, being there without him.

Mom should sell it. Put it into a college account for one of the million babies my sisters are birthing this year.

“Honestly, it would be weirder if you didn’t have one,” I say, and mess with the row of buttons on the door panel, clicking each one. They lower hidden shades on either of the back windows, then a knob changes the volume of the music.

As I said, very fancy.

“It has its uses,” Maxim says. “Certainly better than hosting people in my home. And more private.”

“I like boats. Better than planes, anyway.” I pause, then look at Maxim who is already braced in anticipation of the question. “You have a plane too, don’t you?”

“Not a big one,” he says.

I smirk and shake my head. Maxim is in charge of a massive holding company of luxury hotels and clubs around not only Massachusetts, but the entire country.

There are even some international resorts, Nate informed me last week after a deep dive into everything he could find on Google about my fiancé.

No one expects Maxim Orlov to fly coach.

I can’t imagine why he would care what I think of his money unless he really does think I’m marrying him in an elaborate ploy to take his dirty fortune.

“I agree about hosting. I hate when people come over and put their germs on all of our things,” I tell him.

I squint out the window (the tint certainly illegal) at the thought of all the old mafiosos who come over and don’t even wash their hands before sitting to dinner.

They don’t even ask if they can help clean up.

“We do have a holiday house,” I offer about the beach place in Rhode Island.

“It’s not unfortunate to be as comfortable as we are.

But it’s okay to be ashamed. Eat the rich, or whatever. ”

“I’m not ashamed, per se, it’s just—my father was. . .excessive,” Maxim says. I would like to pry about his miserable father, but the tense set of his jaw tells me that doing so might be like pressing the butt of my gun into a bruise, so I refrain.

We’re pulling up to the curb beneath a huge Orlov hotel before he can say any more on the matter, and I shoot him a glance as I inhale, straightening my spine. “Willa says we have to look in love if we want to sell it, think you can manage?”

His throat shifts again with another swallow before he nods.

“Alright. Now, don’t look too alarmed,” I say.

“Why would I be alarmed?”

I set my shoulders and then attempt a sweet smile which feels more like pulling my mouth away from my teeth to show him how great a job the braces did in high school.

He recoils slightly, exactly the shock I imagined at my attempt.

It makes me laugh, a surprised snort and now he really looks surprised.

“Not natural?” I ask.

“Not particularly,” he says, and for the first time since we got into the car, he’s smiling too. “Just be you.”

“I don’t think that my resting bitch face is what your public image needs.”

“You’re perfect,” he says definitively before sliding out of the car first and offering me a hand as I follow suit.

Maxim’s PR manager worked with Willa to make sure the right paparazzi were tipped off about the public day date of Maxim Orlov and his mysterious, soon-to-be, gold digging, child bride.

There isn’t a legion of photographers like I imagined, but as we walk down the street and he offers me his elbow for me to slip my left hand into the crook of, I hear the sounds of shutters going off down the street, a cluster of a few men with cameras trained on us.

I seek Maxim’s eyes instead of looking at them, and he’s already looking down at me, searching my face as if to decode how I feel about it all.

I’ll give him credit, he looks wholly focused on me, which isn’t the “enamored by his bride to be” that Willa thinks we need, but it might be better somehow.

This time when I smile, it’s quieter, and when he smiles back, I think this whole sham marriage might not be so impossible.