Page 143 of Unorthodox
“You can thank him for that.”
I grind my teeth together, glaring at her, dropping my hands into fists by my sides. “He’s going tosellme like I’m a—”
She glares right back. “He won’t be able to, because your brother loves you very much and I cannot, in good faith, let you become a slave.”
I feel some of the anger leave me as she stares at me. Despite who she works for, she’s helping me. She’s risking her very life—if Dante is any indication of how Max treats betrayal—by helping me escape.
“I don’t think Max Bennett is a saint,” she continues. “He’s the furthest thing from it, but you are the first woman in this house, aside from me, that he’s shown any ounce of affection toward without fucking their brains out.”
I bite my tongue, thinking of what we’ve done in the night. Still, I don’t argue.
There’s no point.
She’s going to help me. That’s all that matters. Not her fucked up ideas of Max having something like a fucking heart.
“What happened to his face?” I ask her, my voice hushed as I glance over my shoulder, ensuring we’re still alone. “The stitches above his eye?”
She frowns, her brow furrowed. “The same men who want you, the same ones that will come for him when you’re safe…they did that.”
I try to ignore the way my stomach flips, thinking of what it would take to hurt Max like that. I push away any feelings of guilt over what’s going to happen to him, knowing what he’ll do to me if I don’t escape.
And before I can think too much about it, Mamie pushes away from the counter, comes to stand in front of me, bending down so her mouth is over my ear. “But those men last night were sent from his friend, Luca.” She speaks quickly, so quiet that I can barely hear her even though she couldn’t get any closer to me. The scent of the muffins calms my nerves as she talks about things that could get us both killed, and I focus on that instead of what we’re going to do. “Max is going to be more volatile than usual”—I almost laugh out loud at that—“and he’s going to be pissed off. He’s not going to want you out of his sight. You’re to eat here, under my guidance, and then I’m going to escort you to his bedroom.”
His bedroom.
I realize with a sense of foreboding that I’ve never been in his bedroom. I hate that the idea is as exciting as it is terrifying.
“He’s okay. The bullet has been removed and his personal doctor patched him up. But when you go up there, you’re not going to talk about your brother, your father, anyone. You’re going tosurviveuntil it’s time for you to go.”
She takes a breath, and I hold mine, wondering why the prospect of escaping with Danik doesn’t make me feel as happy as it should. Why these whispered plans between us should fill me with relief and instead, I’ve only got dread twisting up my core.
“Get a muffin, eat it, and please, Addison, no matter what you think of him…try to remember that he really, truly is still in there.”
Without another word, she straightens, walks past me, and stands at the sliding glass door that leads out to the pool.
I turn to stare at her, so many questions on the tip of my tongue, but I voice none of them.
Instead, I do as I’m told, and stuff a blueberry muffin down my throat, preparing to spend a week with a pissed off, vengeful Max Bennett.
“He’s still in there.”
I try not to choke on my muffin.
“Two are coming in tonight,three more in the morning, sir,” Silvestre’s voice is clear and confident through the phone.
I nod absentmindedly, flipping through the television channels, my phone on speaker as my eyes glaze over, not taking anything in.
The exhaustion is almost insurmountable, but I refuse to sleep. Not until she’s in here, and not until the two guards Silvestre is relocating from my warehouse in Tijuana arrive on my doorstep in Athena.
They’ve been working for me for ten years, and I’ve met them personally dozens of times.
They’re not Dante, but they’ll do.
I flip through another dozen channels while Silvestre waits silently on the other end of the line.
I think TV is a waste of time, and it wasn’t until this morning that I had one put in my room, thanks to my dayshift doorman who is one of the only guards of mine alive from Luca’s carnage last night.
Luca will still be healing from those wounds in his thigh if he didn’t bleed out, but his body might as well quit while it’s ahead.
