He doesn't miss a beat. “Tell me what I can do.”
Vanessa was going to marry him. It was to be a political marriage—certainly not one of love, not when her heart belonged so clearly to Nate—allying herself with the head of the second largest mob family in the city. It would have reassured our clan that the Morelli dynasty was secured, but it also would have come with something much more valuable to me: more eyes, more guns, another prayer that we could keep us all in one piece.
I knew he was wrong for her, but she believed Maxim could protect us and I agreed. He was ready to tie himself to us then. . .
I must look bad, panting in the frigid night like this, because he adds, “Anything,” and there’s pleading in his voice now.
I cannot fathom Maxim Orlov begging, but I couldn’t imagine him kneeling in an alley, either, so I suppose the man is full of surprises.
“How old are you?” I ask. He looks confused by the inquiry. He has black hair that’s just graying at the temples, a sharp nose and even sharper jaw.
He still looks quite young. Looking at him is no hardship.
“Thirty-eight.”
Twelve years.
He can’t think of me as a child, can he? I’m closer to thirty than twenty.
“Marry me,” I say, surprising us both.
“What?” he asks.
On the street at the end of the alley, a car honks. The winter air swims with our visible breaths between us.
I take a deep breath and set my shoulders before I gracelessly rise from the ground, wipe off my knees and palms, then look down at him. He doesn’t move, seemingly frozen there, eyes studying me.
I steel myself, and meet his gaze. I step closer, as unfamiliar with looking down at him as he probably is with looking up at anyone.
“I need you to marry me,” I tell him.
3
MAXIM
The day after Christmas,two days after she demanded I marry her, Marianna Morelli calls my phone.
I’m eating breakfast, Eggs Benedict, at the Orlov hotel, sipping black tea and stewing about her so intently that I fear I’ve conjured her call. I’ve been trying to convince myself that she really did say what I remember her saying, and in so doing, I’ve incited a phone call, and now she’s going to take it back. She will tell me that it was a lapse in judgment due to a panic attack. A momentary low point that led her to think that, for even a moment, she was desperate enough to marry me.
I told her yes, because in that instant, I had promised I would do anything to help her. She’d nodded, used the backs of her hands to wipe the tears from her cheeks, and then walked past me without saying goodbye.
I almost thought I dreamed the whole interaction.
“Marianna,” I answer in greeting before it can ring three times. There’s a moment of silence through the line, and then a throat clearing.
“Maxim,” she says.
“I hope you had a nice Christmas,” I say. It seems better than what I’ve been thinking, which is,Get on with it, don’t worryabout my feelings, they won’t be hurt. Tell me I’m an old fuck and you’d never marry me in any universe. I’ll understand.
“Where are you?” she asks. I briefly worry that we established plans I’ve forgotten, but the concern is fleeting.I would remember.
“What’s wrong?” I demand more than ask.
“Your doorman says you’re not home,” she says, annoyed. “Says I’m not on your list, so I can’t come up and wait for you.”
I don’t understand these words; my mind translates them into Russian as if this will help. It does not.
She is at my apartment building, asking after me. She presumably wants to see me, and further, she wants toenter my home. Wants to wait there for my return.
