Lana doles out a wobbly smile. “It’s my choice. Think about the others. The little ones. It’s my choice, Maxwell.”
She pats her brother’s hand and with one lingering look, she and Rex step inside the office, leaving Maxwell and me on the landing.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. I think back to the gloomy day a decade ago when they saved me. He and his twin, dressed in their fancy polo shirts and slacks, found me as I lay bleeding against the wall by the dumpsters behind Fleur.
Maxwell didn’t hesitate. He didn’t do what I thought he’d do—recoil in disgust or step away in horror.
He rushed up to me, shredded his shirt, pressed it against my wound, and stabilized the knife, not caring that my blood was soaking his skin. Only concern was in his eyes.
That concern is long gone now.
“Only I can protect her,” I say, ignoring the jagged rock stuck in my throat. “They want to keep her. The Albanian mob. In their hands, I’m afraid—”
I can’t speak. I can’t describe what will happen to Lana if she doesn’t marry me.
Maxwell pales as understanding dawns in his eyes. “Why, Elias? Why? We couldn’t have been that wrong about you, could we?”
“I have my reasons. Reasons that don’t concern you.”
I turn away. An unfamiliar sensation suffocates me. Heaviness. A throbbing pain so deep, it’s in the depths of my marrow.
Grief.
For ten years, aside from the twenty-eight minutes each day when I’d let myself dream, I had a family outside of Sofia. A family untainted by grief. These men claimed me as their own, despite my best intentions to stay detached by avoiding nonessential meetings, like the family dinner Belle invited me to before.
But they’re relentless—the Andersons. They pull you in with their loyalty, camaraderie, and warmth, and whenever I’d step through the doors at The Orchid, I could forget about the bloodshed, about the violence in my life.
A reprieve.
But all good things must come to an end.
“All you need to know is,” I stare at the antique grandfather clock at the end of the hallway, “they will kill her. But before then, they will defile her, pass her around from man to man. They will snuff out the light in her eyes.”
I’ve seen it before—the way Dad looked at Mom’s still figure as the flames took them. His eyes were dead—no will to live. The Association took everything soft from our house and burned it to ash.
My hands fist at my sides. “Do you want to risk it, Maxwell? Do you want to be on the run forever? You saw what they did to others. All the murders. The crimes.”
I face him. “Play along. This game is too advanced for you. This could all go away if she marries me. I can protect her. The choice is simple. Me or them. Who do you trust more?”
Maxwell’s eyes sharpen. He scans my face again.
He’sconsidering it.
“You owe me a favor, Maxwell.” I saved he and his wife’s lives years ago when a madman nearly ended their love story before it could begin. “A favor for a favor. I’m calling it in now.”
His throat works, those startling gray eyes of his inscrutable.
“Her choice,” he rasps, “and if one hair is harmed on her person, I’ll bleed you out myself.”
He spins away as the grandfather clock chimes.
Just like the day I met her twenty years ago.
But unlike that day, the sound is hollow.
A somber death knell.
Chapter 13: INTERLUDE—THE RED UMBRELL?
