“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 canonly 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.
