She glared at him as if he were the devil before she slapped him across his face with a quick hand.
His blue-green eyes hardened before he backhanded her across the face, his expression unchanged. "Don't you ever touch me again, not if you want to make it out this vehicle alive. I remember exactly what you and that animal you call your husband did to me and believe me, I will seek my long awaited revenge against you as opposed to Sean and Edward."
A look of fear and attempted horror passed across her Botoxed features. "That was never negotiable. It was part of the contract you agreed to when you began working with Dimitri. You have to take your father and brother out-no exceptions."
The silence between them was so thick it could've been cut with a butter knife.
Max smirked, more than happy to make his mother suffer just a little bit. "What do you know? I'm starting to have second thoughts about whether I should hurt Edward or Sean, let alone kill them. My bone to pick isn't with them but with you . . . and the monster you married."
Chapter Fifteen
Magnolia
I didn't like the way this night was beginning to turn out at all.
Of course I trusted Max; at this juncture in my life after knowing him for such a short time, I never thought I'd ever get to this point but I'd arrived.
I wasn't ready to say I loved him without further prompting on his part but I could unequivocally say-without a doubt-I trusted him with my life.
His mother, on the other hand, was a heartless bitch who would manipulate Max if she were given the opportunity. I could only hope she didn't have the hold over Max she seemed to have in the past.
My heart thundered in my chest as I followed the Porsche Cayenne back to the ostentatious estate where Mila was kept like a Queen in her own palace. We were basically walking into a trap. The chances of us escaping from this gilded cage unscathed were slim to none.
I could only prepare myself as I grabbed the matching Desert Eagle .45 Undercover Max had given to me. I checked the gun and chambered a round before I checked for the three spare clips I had. Twenty-four bullets. That didn't seem like nearly enough to get out of this place.
As soon as the Porsche parked, I pulled up next to it and grabbed my handbag before I stepped out. I grabbed the keys but I didn't bother to lock the door. What was the point when we had no idea how much time we'd have before trying to escape this place?
The problem was I felt like every horrific episode from my past-including the death of my parents, years with the WKs and meeting Max had all led up to this point in my life. This standoff between the man I knew I had feelings for-though I wouldn't dare admit I loved him-and the woman who'd damn near destroyed him.
I refused to believe Max was damaged and needed my help to become a better person. Nothing was ever black and white. I'd rather believe both Max and I could help each other heal ourselves.
People didn't truly change and once we'd had our DNA imprinted on us and life experiences that molded with nature, our personalities were set in stone. I knew I couldn't change Max anymore than he could change me but we would make each other better human beings. We still had a shred of our humanity and if we had that then nothing else mattered.
I strode towards Max and the woman who'd carried him for nine months and birthed him into the world. With her long, fake platinum-blonde hair, plastic face and the body of a twenty-year-old, there was nothing about her that was real at all. Not even the slight look of contrition she tried to feign but failed miserably due to only the slight movements she could make with her face.
He wrapped an arm around me protectively as soon as I was within his reach before we followed her inside. Her sheer arrogance and fearlessness could be forgiven since as soon as we entered the grand foyer, several soldiers from the Koslakov Mafia appeared out of nowhere, including that 'roid-raged fucker I knew only as Viktor.
"Mila, what's going on?" he demanded as he walked towards us with an air of authority.
"Viktor, I need some time alone with my son. We'll be in the library but no one is to enter without my permission. Feel free to guard the doors with the rest of your minions," she replied with utter condescension as she led us through the foyer and past rooms decorated with antique furniture, Persian rugs, and sparkling works of art by all the greats over the last two hundred years.
"Holy shit! Is that a Basquiat?" I whispered to Max as we passed a colorfully grand painting that looked like the love child of a Jackson Pollock and a blue-period Picasso.
"Yes, it is. I knew the man and we had a casual relationship when I was eighteen, a couple of years before he died. I loved him in my own way . . . that painting was all he left me."
I looked at Max and he shrugged his shoulders. He would have been a toddler at the time but it seemed like his mother made no apologies or excuses about how she'd been around . . . and around . . . and around again. Was there anyone notorious she hadn't fucked in her lifetime?
We followed her, flanked by soldiers until we reached a set of double doors that opened to a grand library. She walked inside, Max and I following her closely before Viktor leaned in and said something to Max in Russian. He replied back in a cold voice as Viktor closed the doors. Max flipped the lock and turned to face his mother.
She shrugged her shoulders. "What did you expect? Of course Viktor is going to inform Dimitri you two are here. It will make it more convincing when you escape. I can help you with that too but . . . if you're only going to murder me then what is the use?"
He looked my way, his gorgeous aquamarine eyes unreadable as he shook his head slowly.
"God knows I want to do it." Max walked toward his mother who seemed so small underneath his towering height. "I've dreamt of how I would end you. Slit your throat, put a bullet in your head. Alas . . . perhaps it's just everything is different now. I have Mags to think about and our life will be hard enough. I can't put her through that."
My eyes narrowed toward him as he stood with his back facing me. "How did I get brought into this? I always said that if you couldn't do it then I happily would! We can't die here, Max-I refuse to end my life in this gaudy, overdone pseudo-palace. I haven't had a chance to live!"
"And that is why we will leave Mila alive, sweetheart. I love you." Max looked away as if he'd confessed he hated me. "It wasn't supposed to happen but it did . . . maybe I realized it when we met and perhaps it's why I did everything in my power so you would never feel anything for me. I thought I could make it just go away if I tried hard enough and you showed me nothing but venom and fury. I filled my head with lies about how I would always be a substitute for Edward and you would only see him in me-never me for who I truly was."
Mila laughed out loud before she murmured in Polish. "This slip of a girl has managed to fuck both my sons and screw with their heads entirely? How can this be?"
Max turned toward his mother. "You're not the only femme fatale in the world, you know. Mags has skills you could only dream of-"
"Is she a good shot?" his mother asked seriously before a Ruger SR9 materialized in her left hand. It was a small nine-millimeter that made it easy to be carried in a woman's handbag but powerful enough to do major damage.
I heard the fire and I knew I was hit as I crumpled to the floor but the pain in my right thigh forced me to stay in the moment. My whole body felt like it was beyond my control as I started to froth at the mouth and generally shook on the floor like an epileptic before my body seemed to slowly return to normal. It hurt like a motherfucker but I refused to cry. It hadn't hit bone, thank God, but it had pierced my flesh and it would need to be treated.
"What the fuck?!" Max yelled frantically. "Why did you do that?"
"No is going to believe you got away from me if no one was injured. It was an electric bullet for Christ's sake. They do damage and they enter the skin but other than a scar, she'll be fine. It didn't even shatter the bone. If you make me fire again, the rest of the bullets in this gun aren't electric-I assure you."
I tried to sit up but there was no use. An electric bullet had taken me down and made me piss myself? I was almost glad I hadn't done anything else remotely embarrassing besides slobber all over the place along with the inability to control my bladder functions.
"The money. So we can get the fuck outta here before we're trapped in this ostentatious hellhole indefinitely."
Mila rolled her eyes and walked away with Max on her heels.
Shortly afterward, I heard another gun shot-definitely one of ours-before he came running toward me and scooped me up as if I weighed nothing.
Max dragged a Louis Vuitton wheeled carryon while he navigated us through the library until we came to what looked like an ordinary set of books. He pulled a hardback-Of Mice and Men-and the door swung open. After the door shut behind us, he locked it from inside and we navigated through a tunnel with minimal lighting.