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 mylifesay 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 Ithinkhe 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 Ican’t imagine my fucking luckideal, 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 andthat 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.”
