15. Maxim
15
MAXIM
F or the second day in a row, I woke up to the peaceful sight of Nadia asleep in bed with me. And also for the second day in a row, I lost myself in watching her rest.
No smirks or sassy scowls lined her face. No chance for her to roll her eyes or blind me with those bright smiles that felt like a direct hit to my heart.
Despite her tendency to be defensive and stubborn, I was slowly coming to realize she wasn’t terrible. She wasn’t a problematic brat for the hell of it. I saw in the somberness of her stare last night that she truly, completely believed that she would suffer if she married Lev.
And I hated the hunch that she was probably right.
We didn’t question arranged marriages. They happened. They’d always happened, and the tradition would continue well past our time. No matter how archaic and primitive they might seem in our contemporary culture, Nadia and I were not going to be crusaders and change the status quo.
But I didn’t want to be so quick to give up on her. After that long talk last night, I saw her in a new light. I woke up conflicted because it was so damn clear how compatible Nadia was with me. She knew of the Mafia life, and she wasn’t an outsider to the politics of it. She was smart, sexy, and compassionate too.
I checked the range of motion of my wounded arm, reminded of her careful and delicate touch as she helped me bandage it up. My muscles ached, likely from this crappy mattress, but the skin tugging at the gash wasn’t unbearable.
What did seem unbearable was the possibility that I was making the biggest mistake of my life with her.
Can I actually get her out of this situation?
Could she stay with me?
How bad would it be if we figured out how to sever this engagement she’s never wanted?
It felt wrong to even think of a loophole to her being promised to Lev. If it was just the matter of Gregory fulfilling his debt to the man, I wouldn’t have given a shit. Petrov sounded like a horrible parent, selfish to the core, and if Lev killed him for not giving him his daughter in marriage, I wouldn’t care.
But now that the Valkovs were involved, it made it trickier.
Alek called last night for an update. And he’d also shared the bad news that Nadia was correct. When I found her in London, it was an Avilov who’d spotted her. My brother was confused by the report that I was stopping one of the Avilovs from getting their boss’s bride.
He was understanding. Alek wasn’t too pissed at me for defending Nadia. If I’d known who that man was, that he was there for his boss, I obviously wouldn’t have fought him.
However, Alek left me with a clear message. Lev Avilov wasn’t a man to be messed with, and I had to bring Nadia home as soon as possible so Lev didn’t misinterpret the situation, assuming I wanted to keep his woman and prevent her from going to him.
I got out of bed as quietly and carefully as I could, not wanting to wake her as I tried to strategize how I could make that happen. Now that the thought was taking root in my mind, I wanted to keep Nadia with me. I wanted to see if I could put an end to this arranged marriage while not causing hell for my Bratva.
We didn’t need another war.
Casting one more glance at Nadia sleeping so sweetly, I took my phone and headed to the balcony. I’d already spoken with Alek, but that wasn’t the brother I wanted to talk to. Instead, I called Nikolai.
He answered quickly, and after we greeted each other, I felt like I needed to stall a little longer. I’d been starting to dream about how I could avoid surrendering Nadia to Lev, but voicing my wishes out loud seemed too hard.
“What’s going on?” Nik asked, sounding a bit hurried. “Problem with your assignment?”
“No.” Yes. “Kind of.”
He chuckled. “Well, what is it?”
“I was hoping to get some advice from you.” I cleared my throat, remembering why Nik would be an ideal man to discuss this with.
“Fuck.” He chuckled again, drier and lower, like he was pained to say anything more. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me you want to keep her.”
I pressed my lips together, unsure what to say.
“Maxim,” he scolded with a groan.
“I wanted to hear your thoughts about such a scenario, if it was a potential idea. Hypothetically speaking.”
His sigh sounded heavily over the line. “You’re not calling and asking to speak about this hypothetically.”
“It can’t be as impossible as it seems.”
“What can’t be?”
I furrowed my brow. “Not bringing her home so she can marry that old asshole.”
“It’s not your decision to make, Maxim. This isn’t your decision.”
His words hit me hard. That was just what Nadia was imploring me to understand last night. That it was too cruel and unfair to expect her to have a stay with him, to be coerced without any option or the chance to give her individual input on being Lev’s bride.
“I’ll make it mine,” I said, feeling confident about it.
“You?” He grunted. “With what power?”
“Marriages can be arranged and they can be intercepted too. Look at what Alek did when?—”
He cursed. “No. Maxim, that’s not the same thing. You and Alek are not the same. And no, before you can take my words the wrong way and act like I’m making you out to be an inferior brother of the Bratva, I mean it. You and Alek are not of the same standing, and your motives— Wait. Why do you want to keep her?”
I snorted. Why wouldn’t I? That was a more appropriate question. The more I thought about giving Nadia to Lev, the more I realized how wrong it was.
“If you’re going to claim you love her or some bullshit like that… Come on, man. Think with your head, not your dick.”
“I’m just?—”
“You’re just trying to say why can’t you do it too, since Alek stole Mila as a bride. He did it to prevent war. He did it to tell Sergei to fuck off with his plans to bring out Bratva down. And we’re still dealing with the consequences of that.”
Fine. He had a point. Alek stealing Mila was a different scenario. But he wasn’t the only one who’d pulled off a stunt like this. “You took Amy from another man.”
“No,” he argued easily. “Not another man. I took Amy from a man who bought her.”
“Which is the same thing I’m dealing with.”
He huffed. “Same thing? No. Nadia’s engaged to someone, not bought like a product.”
I winced, still annoyed and hating that my sister-in-law, Amy, had ever experienced a moment of being stuck in a human-trafficking ring. The Valkov Bratva didn’t stand for selling women or children. Drugs and guns were fine, but not people.
“It’s not the same thing,” Nik said. “I rescued her out of a bad situation?—”
“And if I fought for Nadia, to keep her with me, I would be sparing her a lifetime with Lev.”
“No,” he corrected. “You’d be interfering with an arranged marriage.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, unsure whether I was smart about asking Nik for advice.
“If you’re looking for a way to keep this girl…” Nik sighed again. “You’ll incite war. I talked with Alek last night, after he’d called you. I mean, fuck, man. You fought Erik Avilov to stop him from getting her.”
“Who?”
“His name’s Erik Avilov,” Nik said. “Lev’s nephew. Alek’s been keeping an eye on him the best he can because it seems like he might be connected to other things that could complicate what we deal with.”
“Interesting.”
“We don’t mess with the Avilovs often, but recently, it seems like that might be a mistake. A lapse of staying cautious with all the organizations who could end up as enemies of ours.”
I gazed at the rising sun in the distance. Clouds covered the sky, and I bet it’d be another rainy day. While being in this tropical, humid heat was a nice change of scenery from New York, I wanted to go home. With Nadia.
“Lev wants his bride,” Nik said. “There’s no changing that fact. Gregory Petrov isn’t going to try to change that agreement. And now with the Valkov influence—you—looking like you want to interfere, even if it was accidental because you didn’t know who Erik was at the place and time, it doesn’t look good.”
“I don’t want to make Alek worry about the Avilovs coming after us.”
He waited me out.
“But I don’t want to give her up.”
His chuckle almost made me smile. “That fast?”
I grinned, rubbing my jaw. “Yeah. Man, I’m telling you. Love at first sight has always seemed like a bunch of sappy bullshit, but the second I saw her…”
He groaned. “But then again, Brother, sometimes, sex is just sex.”
I wasn’t commenting on that. I’d fucked many women, but Nadia was the only one I was starting to think I wanted for the rest of my life.
“You would know the difference, right?” he asked. “You would be able to tell the difference between a quick fuck and finding the future mother of your children.”
I didn’t know what to say. After talking with her last night, my feelings were deepening so quickly that I couldn’t keep up with them. When I fell asleep and then when I woke, that fact remained the same. It was happening fast. I wouldn’t argue that. But that didn’t mean it was wrong.
With Nadia, it felt good. It seemed right to plan a future with her.
“Listen, I can’t stay on the phone long,” Nik said. “Dmitri’s still missing and I’m catching up with Yusef to look somewhere else?—”
“Yeah. I know.” Guilt barreled through me. Here I was trying to devise a way to avoid finishing this job, the first one Alek gave me, and I could’ve been spending all this time helping my brothers find Dmitri. “I’ll call later.”
“Good luck,” he advised, almost vaguely, before he disconnected the call.
I sighed, feeling more twisted and conflicted after that conversation. I’d hoped he’d shed more insight or offer support, but I understood the obstacles in my way.
When I returned to the bedroom, I stopped short, not believing my eyes.
The bed was empty.
The bathroom door was wide open, showing that room was vacant too.
She was gone.
Just when I was coming around to the idea of trying to keep her with me, she took off again.