He shakes his head and heads for the door ready to end the conversation just like that.
“Wait,” I say when his hand touches the doorknob. He halts, but he doesn’t look at me. This is for the best, because I’ve got my eyes screwed shut while I try to figure out how to salvage this. Maxim just told me that, for whatever reason, he worries about me. That seeing me hurt is distressing to him. It was ungenerous of me to question that. “Look, I?—”
I release a big breath. His shoulders stay tight and pointed away from me.
I’ve never been good at letting people in, even the ones I’m closest to. I hate when people worry about me becauseI’m the one who is supposed to be okay. I want to keep everything together, everyone safe, in line, things in order.
“I can’t promise that I’ll never be in trouble, but I’ll try to tell you, okay? Beforehand. Where I’m going, and you or Sasha can come with me, or if you can’t then I’ll make sure I have Nate or Leo and I will try really hard to be safe.”
He looks at me finally, and I pull my upper lip between my teeth and shrug.
“I’m sorry you were scared,” I say.
“Thank you.”
We stand in silence for a moment before I speak again, already grimacing at how I anticipate he will react. “Now, in that vein, I have plans tonight that you arereallynot going to like, but I’ll bring you if you promise not to freak out.”
Maxim’s eyebrows tuck together, but he nods.
“We leave at 10,” I tell him.
26
MAXIM
Just after 10:30 PM,we stride side by side into a seedy building—a closed-down parking structure—before descending three flights of concrete stairs. The walls are covered in layers of brightly colored spray paint and before we even make it to the main event, people are scattered everywhere, standing in the parking lot, smoking against the wall, making out in the stairwell. There’s a cacophony of sound some distance below us, cheering and thumping rap music. It’s not so different from one of my clubs in this way, except, even the more salacious of my clubs are respected establishments, whereas this is decidedly not.
Mary walks in front of me, her hair in two tight braids that sway lightly over her back, and Sasha follows behind me carrying the backpack she brought. Mary pushes open metal doors that have LEROY’S painted in neon green across them, and it takes all of five seconds for me to understand just where we are.
A Garza fight night.
The plan Marianna didn’t want to tell me about was the fucking undergroundfighting ring.
The crowd is full of young people with mismatched beers and red cups in their hands, some smoking cigarettes, others pot, and I know the stench will linger in our clothes after we leave. At one glance at us, people begin to move out of our way. They look with a sort of reverent awe at Marianna and surprise at me. I do illegal shit as often as anyone else, and of course I’ve been to a handful of fight nights that the Garzas put on at different locations around Boston, but not for years now, not since the first night I saw the Morelli Shadow all grown up.
The thought of her frequenting these ever since should be less surprising to me than it is.
I wrap an arm around my wife’s shoulder, tugging her closer to me, and she acts well enough that this doesn’t bother her, even snaking an arm around my waist. She wears a black cropped T-shirt and spandex shorts. Not her usual going out clothes, but?—
My breath catches, realizing too late what she’s planning to do.
I lean to her ear. “What are we doing here? Do not say you are fighting.”
“Okay, I won’t say that.” She surprises me by pressing her lips to my cheek. I would love to read into the action, but that train of thought stops as I see just who we are walking toward.
In clusters of chairs, smoking and drinking, I see big heads from the Garzas, and my eyes narrow onNikolai. My cousin sits looking all too chummy with gangsters he previously claimed to hate, and a woman that is most definitely not his latest girlfriend perched on his leg.
His eyes darken when he spots us.
“I need you to follow my lead,” Marianna says.
“Orlov!” Garza shouts with a drunken sort of cheer. He is always cheerful, and it makes the bastard all the more terrifying. He’ll tell his men to slash X’s into necks with a smile, and ispowerful not just in Boston, but all over the East Coast. “It’s been too long since you joined us here.”
“All work and no fun, you know,” I say and look down at Marianna, who isn’t smiling but has a pleasantness about her face, which is more than can be said usually. “You’ve met Mary, I presume.”
“Of course,” Marianna nods. “Good to see you, Garza.”
“My congratulations are in order. I hear from your sister that it was a beautiful wedding,” he tells Marianna.
