Page 17 of Bedazzled
The conversation felt good, normal. Nothing about physical therapy or recovery or - good god - wound care.
“Tell me again, brother,” I used the innocent, sincere tone that I knew drove him mad, “why you traded in your Maserati MC20 for a Levante Trofeo? A MaseratiSUV?Are you turning into a family man?” I smothered a chuckle as his eyes narrowed warningly at me in the rearview mirror.
“Thisfamily car,”Maksim growled, “goes from zero to sixty in three point eight seconds and has a top speed of 187 miles per hour.”
“Yeah, and you could put a car seat back here, huh?” Tania chimed in. There was nothing she enjoyed more than taunting my brother.
As the uniformed guards moved to open Tania’s door, I put up my hand and they halted. “Before we go in, you need to know most of these people are utter bastards. No matter what you hear, no matter what anyone says, do not engage them. It is important.” Her lovely golden eyes were wide, but she nodded.
“I get it,” she said, “you need to be seen here, don’t you? To show how invincible you are?”
I drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Yes.”
Her hand on my thigh tightened, “I wish it didn’t have to be so soon. It’s only been two weeks-”
“Stop.” I didn’t mean to sound so harsh; Tania pressed her lips together and nodded.
The warm lighting inside the club mellowed the chill of the stone walls, and antique oriental rugs covered the intricate design of the granite and marble floors. Tania stared at the huge, sweeping staircase leading to the second floor, overlooking the restaurant.
“Where does that go?” she whispered.
“The private,privatedining room,” I whispered back. “We keep a table there.”
She gave me her mysterious Mona Lisa smile. “Ooo, we’re so bleedin’ posh!” She affected a terrible cocky accent that made me chuckle and I instantly regretted it. I grit my teeth against the flare of agony in my abdomen, which set off corresponding pulses in my shoulder. Dr. Gulianos had done a masterful job of reattaching my deltoid muscle, but every movement felt like it was tearing it loose again.
Earlier that evening…
“We don’t have to go tonight.”
Maksim was watching me make a drink in his office, lounging behind his huge mahogany desk.
“Yes, we do,” I poured two fingers of vodka into the glass, shrugged, and filled it to the brim. Holding it up, I asked, “Do you want one?”
“No thanks,” he said, “you know if Ella smells vodka on your breath, she’s going to follow you around, nagging you about mixing pain meds and alcohol.”
I smiled bitterly. “Is that what you are doing, brother?”
“No,” he sighed, “you’re an adult, you make your own choices.”
“I threw the pain meds away yesterday,” I added, closing my eyes to enjoy the soothing bite of the alcohol hitting my throat. “They made me slow. Stupid.”
Maksim laughed, “There’s nothing on this planet that could make you slow. Stupid? Well, you have always been that.”
“I can see six items on your desk alone that I could use to stab you,” I returned pleasantly, but I was grateful that my brother still treated me the same as he had before the fucking O’Connell’s had… Well, before then.
“We found out how the Irish tracked you that day. They had someone working at the flower shop- a girl. When you picked up the flowers, they knew they had time to set up the ambush at Tania’s.”
Remembering the wide-eyed girl at Bud’s, my jaw tightened. “Mrs. Novikoff claimed the girl had a crush on me since she was so interested in my orders.”
“Yes, we questioned the Novikoff’s very closely about how they could have been so sloppy in their hiring practices,” Maksim’s jaw was tight enough to crack a tooth. “The wife told us the girl didn’t come back to work that day after leaving for her lunch break.”
“Don’t hurt them,” I said, “they’re under our protection.”
“That agreement no longer exists when their sloppiness allowed my brother to be taken,” he hissed. “I told them to leave the city quietly and if I ever saw their faces again, they would get the same treatment you did.”
I picture Mrs. Novikoff’s open, cheerful expression and how she refused to ever let me pay for the flowers. A memory of those men cutting into my shoulder blurs out her face. “That is fine. Have you found the girl?”
Maksim met my gaze steadily. “We will.” He rubbed his eyes and stood, “Two weeks isn’t enough time, brother. You have nothing to prove.”
