Page 47 of Marrying the Silver Fox

I’ve never heard that tone in his voice before, the searing, furious anger that sounds like venom on his tongue. I know he’s only as furious as he is because he knows that I’ve been attacked, but still, it scares me. Reminds me, all too clearly, of how I felt when I first discovered that my brother had died, when I would have done anything in my power to take revenge and make someone, anyone pay for what I had lost.

“Stay here,” he tells me, and he turns to stalk back out and stand over his brother. He lifts his foot, kicking him hard in the side, forcing a splutter of blood from Max’s lips as he keels over toward the ground. Red splatters on the ground below, and his eyes are heavy, distant, as though he’s barely there at all.

“Look at me, Max.”

I rush out to Nikolai’s side. I know I should do as I’m told, not stand in the way of whatever is happening here, but I can’t let him do this. No matter what Max has done, I know what it costs to lose a sibling, and I wouldn’t wish that on him, not a chance in hell.

Max forces himself to look up, staring at his brother through hazy eyes. He doesn’t even glance in my direction, and I realize, in that moment, that it was never anything to do with me.

No, this is between them, it always has been. Two brothers trying to prove themselves, and Max thought the only way he would be able to do so would be to take what Nikolai had.

Nikolai draws the gun from beneath his coat, his knuckles streaked with blood, and he lifts it to plant it against Max’s head. His brother lets out a whimper of terror—pathetic, like a kicked puppy, a far cry from the sneering confidence that he met me with when he had me all locked up. Facing off against a man with a gun who is willing to use it and a woman trapped with no help of escape, they’re very different things. I can’t help but feel a shimmer of satisfaction, seeing him like this, feeling the same way I did when he told me what he planned to do to me.

“You think you could take her from me?” Nikolai murmurs. “That you could take my fucking child from me?”

Max doesn’t reply. He strains his head away from Nikolai, closing his eyes. “Just do it,” he snarls. “Get this over with. I don’t want to hear your fucking speeches. I’ve had enough of those in my life already.”

“With pleasure,” Nikolai replies. He cocks the gun—and in the split second before he pulls the trigger, everything seems to slow.

I know Max has done more than enough to earn this fate, and that I shouldn’t so much as concern myself with an attempt to protect him, but—but the thought of Nikolai losing a brother is more than I can take. The pain of letting someone you share blood with, someone you share a childhood and a family with, die, it’s a hell I wouldn’t want anyone to go through. Even if Max is a million miles removed from Chris, and shit, my own brother would probably want to see his brains painting the walls right now.

“Don’t do it,” I plead with him.

Nikolai turns to me, looking utterly shocked. “What?”

“Don’t do it, please,” I beg with him. “I—I know he deserves it. I know he does. But I don’t think you do, Nikolai.”

“What are you talking about?” His voice is laced with frustration, clearly longing for nothing more than to put a bullet in his brother’s brain and be done with this once and for all.

“I don’t want you to have to lose a brother,” I tell him softly. “Trust me, it’s not something you want to live with. No matter what he’s done, he’s still your blood. There’s still a part of you in him. And if you kill him, you have to live with being the one who destroyed that.”

Nikolai looks down at his brother.

I hold my breath. I have no idea if he understands what I’m saying, if he believes me, if it’s enough to cut through the furious rage that’s coursing through him right now. I have never spoken to him about Chris, and he doesn’t understand that I’m speaking from genuine understanding, not just speaking for the sake of it. I gaze at him, imploring him to hear me, to understand me, to trust me when I tell him that I mean this.

“For me,” I whisper.

And that, at last, seems to cut through into his good sense. He lowers the gun slowly, and Max lets out a gasp of relief. He looks stunned, as though unable to understand why I would do such a thing for him. I wish I could tell him that he’s not worthy of my mercy—that I’m doing this because of my own brother, a man a million times kinder and more loving than he could ever be, and he’s lucky that his memory lives inside me after all this time.

“Get out of the country by sundown tonight,” Nikolai tells him, slipping his gun back into his pocket. “And don’t come back. I don’t care where you go, but you’re not a part of this family anymore. I’ll tell our father. Don’t ever set foot in our home again, or in America, or anywhere I might see you. Because if I do…” He grabs Max’s hair, yanking him back. “I will kill you on sight. You hear?”

Max nods. I can tell from the terror in his eyes that he’s going to play by his rules. He knows he’s lucky to have made it this far without a bullet lodged between his eyes, and he’s not going to waste the chance.

Nikolai turns to me. I can tell that he’s still raging inside, but he puts an arm around my waist, pulling me close. “Come on,” he tells me. “Let’s get out of here.”

And with that, he leads me to the door, and out of that nightmarish apartment to the world beyond.

24

NIKOLAI

We step out of the car, and Andie leans against me heavily. Though she doesn’t seem physically injured, it’s clear that she’s exhausted, and I hold her close, leading her back inside now that she’s back where she belongs.

I have called off my men across the city—well, all but one, who I have tracking Max to make certain he plays by the rules and actually leaves the country once and for all. I can only imagine how he would try to snake out of that given the chance—another kind of defiance against me, despite the fact that he’s damn lucky to have survived this long as it is. If it had been my choice, I would have left his body rotting back in that apartment he held her in, but when I heard the tone of Andie’s voice as she pleaded for me to reconsider, I knew I couldn’t go through with it.

I don’t know why she decided to show him such mercy, when he doesn’t deserve it. She told me—in halting, stumbling terms, on the way back to the townhouse—what he had planned. Some ridiculous plan he’d strung together about claiming her for himself, as if anyone would have believed that for even an instant. I don’t know what drunken, drugged-up state he’d been in when he put the scheme together, but it would never have worked. The moment Max tried to show Andie off to my father, he would have seen through his bullshit. But I am glad that Andie didn’t have to go through that mess in the first place.

And the worst of it was that Max had planned to just raise my child as his.