Page 88 of A Love Most Fatal
“Let’s begin.”
“Please.” Maxim clasps together his hands on the table in front of him. The way this man holds himself, his direct focus on me, ready to listen and answer—he’s so unlike the others. They all looked at this conversation as a formality, one they would easily blow past to get in front of Vanessa. Like it was a given. Maxim looks serious.
“You were recently engaged,” I say, referring to my notes. “What happened there?”
“Didn’t work out. She’s now married to someone else and they’re expecting their first child.”
Vague, but at least she’s not dead.
“Why are you here?” I ask, forgoing the usual first questions. Maxim is wearing a black tie over a black dress shirt. There are tattoos poking from beneath his cuffs and snaking across his hands, belying a different man beneath his exterior sheen of luxury fabrics and leather shoes.
“I’ll admit I was surprised to hear that Vanessa Morelli was looking for a husband and using such means to do so,” Maxim says. “But then again, I am unmarried and yet without asuccessor. If I’d had the idea, maybe I’d be hosting interviews of my own.”
Maxim looks at the grape vines and I do not speak, certain he’s not done.
“I need a wife,” he says. “I have always respected Vanessa, she’s intelligent, independent, and I believe she would do anything to keep her child safe. So, I am here. Because I would be a fool not to be.”
Over his shoulder, Leo’s eyebrows are high on his head, as impressed with Maxim’s assessment and candor as I feel.
“So, you need a child,” I start, and Maxim nods. “What if there could only be one and that one was a girl?”
“My community is a difficult one. Traditional. I won’t lie, leading would not be easy for her, but then again it isn’t easy for any of us. I would support her, Vanessa would show her how, and I would kill anyone who deemed her unworthy.”
I set my pen down next to my notebook, not a clever quip to jot down or a pros and cons column to be made.
“Your business is mostly clubs and casinos, right?” Maxim inclines his head side to side as if to say for the most part. “You both work grueling schedules, her all day and you all night. Would you sleep with other women?”
“No,” Maxim says definitively, his expression hardening. “And I would expect the same courtesy.”
“Even if there is no love between you? There is no one who would tempt you?”
Maxim hesitates. I imagine he’s flipping through a mental rolodex of women, considering the scenarios. “No,” he says, softer this time. “No.”
I’m not even glancing down at my questions; it would feel asinine to give Maxim one of the outlandish scenarios I usually do, what with his security detail and earnest answers about devotion?
I lower my voice and lean on the table.
“How do I know you won’t try to take over her business? That this isn’t just to secure her power?”
“Of course I want her power,” Maxim says. “We’ll need it if we’re going to raise a child with blood ties to this city’s most powerful entities. And as for taking her business, I have no interest in construction, nor the moving of large weapons. It will do us no good if I try to take over her position, spreading me so thin would only make us weaker.”
Maxim leans back in his chair and his hands go to the metal arm rests. One side of his mouth quirks, the first almost-smile I’ve seen from him. “Not to mention that enforcer of hers would kill me for considering it.”
Mary. He’s right about this, Mary would have no issue murdering him, even if he was married to her sister.
“You must care for Vanessa,” Maxim says, and I stiffen. Can this dude fucking read minds too? “These questions are thorough and show a lot of thought. I would want nothing less for one of my own friends.”
I swallow the saliva to wet my dry throat and nearly choke on it. “Well, a woman in her position has to be selective.”
“She is lucky then to have you in her corner.” His flattery doesn’t feel false, and that makes this uneasiness in my stomach heavier. I pick up my paper and rove my eyes over remaining questions.
“I have a few more, let’s keep going.”
31
VANESSA
After dinner,when it’s time to review the week’s candidates, Nate is more tense than he usually is. He’s been shifting on his feet, and I’ve caught him staring off at things like they might’ve betrayed him or confounded him. He’s deep in his head.