My wife. My child. My family.
“Get thatfucking gunaway 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 iseverything. 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 arereallyon 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.
