by Bella Rose
Maxim suddenly realized that he had seen this Thayla before. She’d been with Landry at the club where they had met. He nodded for Dinah to continue. “And now?”
“Thayla and Landry were texting back and forth. Something weird, I guess.” Dinah shot Maxim a speculative look and he could only imagine what “weird” encompassed. Then Dinah went on. “So Thayla sent her a response and received nothing back. Nothing. That’s just not Landry. So Thayla called, but it went straight to voice mail.”
Maxim jumped to his feet. “Keep talking. I have to get something.” He ran into the kitchen to retrieve his laptop. He’d thought of this briefly earlier, but until now it had felt like a gross invasion of privacy.
“We think something happened to her!” Dinah called out. “Is there any way you can track her phone or something?”
Maxim sat back down on the couch. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
He could see the two women waiting tensely from the corner of his eye. Pulling up a search box on his computer, he started keying in a sequence that would send a ping to Landry’s phone and hopefully at least tell them if she was somewhere safe or not.
“Did you get anything?” Thayla asked. She was leaning forward as if she couldn’t wait any longer. “I have a really bad feeling, you know? I can’t get ahold of my friend Morgan either.”
“Wait.” Maxim glanced up. “Was that the friend at the club who nearly assaulted me in her haste to establish herself as the most important one in your group?”
“Yeah.” Thayla looked chagrined. “That would be Morgan.”
A possible sequence of events began to link together in Maxim’s head and he hoped like hell that he was wrong. “What was Morgan’s relationship with Landry’s ex-boyfriend David?”
Thayla shrugged. “Morgan hated him. We all did.”
“No. Before.” Maxim looked down. Landry’s phone was responding, but it was in a very strange place. “As in before Landry and David started dating, what did Morgan think about him?”
Thayla pressed her knuckles to her lips. “I guess Morgan actually had a bit of a crush on David. He’s good looking and likes expensive things. They have that in common. He just wasn’t really interested in her.”
“Shit,” Maxim snarled. “And there’s your trigger.”
“What?” Dinah looked confused. “What trigger? What are you talking about?”
“Someone like Morgan usually requires a trigger—an event, something to set them off. So before, David chose Landry and that pissed her off. But then it turned out that David was an ass and he treated Landry badly. So Morgan had the satisfaction of knowing that Landry was miserable. As far as Morgan was concerned, Landry probably deserved it.”
Thayla looked horrified. “Morgan made a couple of offhanded comments over the years that Landry was too nice. She said if Landry would get a backbone like she had, then David would treat her like a queen. Do you think she thought she would have done better with him?”
“Yes.” Maxim growled. “And now I chose Landry over Morgan. Boom. Morgan was pissed and David shows up in the alley with an eye toward harming Landry.”
“Morgan called him,” Thayla whispered. “Oh God.”
“And now Landry’s phone is probably sitting on the sidewalk around the corner from my building.” Maxim gestured to his computer screen. “It hasn’t moved since I pinged it almost three minutes ago. There’s nothing right there that she could be doing. No restaurants or stores or anything. It’s just sitting.”
“David has her,” Thayla moaned. “I know it!”
***
Okay. Landry had to get over the whole Morgan, David, love-triangle thing. It wasn’t as if Landry hadn’t had suspicions that Morgan had thought she could do better with David than Landry ever had. In fact, Morgan had said as much a dozen times or more. And look, if the way he was jumping to obey her every command was any indicator, Morgan had been right in her demented fashion.
“Would you just untie her and go put her in the car?” Morgan snarled at David. “I swear! You’re worse than some adolescent female. Just do what I said and stop sniveling.”
“But that’s not what you promised,” David whined.
Landry watched in fascination. Apparently Morgan’s brand of crazy was either irresistible or terrifying to David because he was treating her like a queen. There had to be a way to exploit it.
“Ugh!” Morgan stormed out of the room. Landry could hear her screaming over her shoulder on her way out. “Just get ready to go. I’m going to go pull the car around back.”
Landry waited until Morgan was gone. Then she took a deep breath and tried to decide how best to play the hand she’d been dealt. “Wow,” she said sarcastically. “I can safely say I never thought to see your balls in a jaw on someone’s mantel.”
“Excuse me?” David snarled. He turned and glared at her. “Watch your mouth.”
“Why should I?” Landry challenged. “That crazy bitch is going to kill me and apparently she’s your boss. So I’ve got nothing to lose.”
“I can still beat you.”
“You already did that.” Landry shrugged it off. “Funny that you could stand up to me, but you piss down your leg when you even look at Morgan. Why are you so afraid of her? It’s just her ego talking. You’re a man. If you reject her and exert some authority, she’ll completely fold.”
“You don’t know shit about Morgan!” David shouted.
Landry rolled her eyes. “Oh please! She and I have been friends for years. I know her better than you do. Especially since I’ve seen that happen a dozen times or more with men. When they cater to her she doesn’t really want them. If you pretend you’d rather be with someone else, she’ll pursue you. Kind of like when you picked me, dumbass. Get it?”
David suddenly came to a halt in the center of the room. He looked utterly shell shocked by her words. Had the idiot truly never put it all together? The man was even stupider than she had originally thought and completely lacking in imagination. He and Boris were two of a kind. The thought actually made her chuckle in spite of everything.
“Don’t laugh!” David shouted. “Don’t you ever laugh!”
“I can’t help it,” she snickered. “It’s funny.”
“Fuck you!” He smacked her across the face.
It hurt like hell, but Landry wasn’t about to let him know that. She made a face and then laughed again. “Morgan even hits harder than you do. Now that is just sad.”
Landry was pretty certain he was about to completely go off on her, but Morgan chose that moment to walk back into the room. David was worked up into a righteous rage. He bolted toward Morgan, snarling something completely undecipherable.
“What are you babbling about?” Morgan demanded. She put up her hand. “And back out of my personal space, you moron!”
David didn’t even miss a beat. He reached out and grabbed Morgan by her long dark hair. He twisted it around his hand and yanked her head back. Balling up his fist, he smashed her face again and again until her nose was pouring blood and she was screaming like a wild hellion.
Landry watched in fascinated horror as Morgan managed to break loose. She launched herself at David and took him down. They grappled on the floor. He had the obvious advantage in weight and bulk, but she was insane and that seemed to give her some extra juice.
Morgan smashed David’s head against the floor. He flipped her onto her back in a neat reversal, only to have her curl up her legs between them and send him flying across the room. Instead of taking the advantage and running for her damn life, Morgan attacked some more. She jumped on top of David and pummeled him with her fists.
“I broke my fucking nails!” she screeched at the top of her lungs.
Landry struggled to get out of the poorly tied knots behind her back. David had used some black nylon rope that had probably been part of his bedroom gear. It was slick and loose, but she was having trouble with one of the knots.
“You bitch!” David shouted
back. He caught her hand and used it to twist her arm practically out of its socket. “Did you think you could just treat me like your slave forever?”
“Yes!” Morgan retorted. “Because you’re too ugly and stupid to be anything else!”
That seemed to be all that David could take. He shoved Morgan away from him and jumped to his feet. A quick rummage in the kitchen was all it took to provide him with a gun. He pointed it at Morgan and gave her the same smirk that Landry had seen a thousand times.
“Too bad for you,” he told Morgan bitterly. “You could have had everything, but you’re a greedy bitch so you get nothing.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maxim banged on the door of David’s downtown loft. Five members of the Maximov security team stood behind him in body armor and carried assault rifles. It was definitely overkill as far as Maxim was concerned. He could not imagine a scenario where his men would need any firepower, let along that much. But he wasn’t taking chances with Landry’s safety either.
The head of the security team—Gomez—nudged Maxim. “I’ve let local PD and SWAT know what’s going down. They’re on the way just in case we need backup.”
“Or official authority,” Maxim murmured. That was his bigger concern. He didn’t want any of this blowing back on Landry and landing her in trouble. That would be unfair in the extreme. “Shall we go in?”
“The guy isn’t answering,” Gomez mused. “Ralph went around back. There’s a car idling out there like its waiting for a getaway of some kind. There’s something really off here.”
“I agree.” Maxim didn’t add that he was worried as hell about Landry’s safety if something had happened to pit Morgan and David against each other.
Maxim stepped back and Gomez nodded to one of his men. They beat the door in with a ram and then spilled inside. Gomez turned to glance at Maxim. “Do you hear that?”
It sounded like two people fighting or struggling over something. Grunts and groans were suddenly punctuated by the sharp sound of breaking glass. Then a woman shrieked something angry and violent and Maxim had had enough.
“Go!” he urged Gomez. “Go. Go. Go!”
The men swarmed up the stairs to the loft itself. As soon as Maxim cleared the staircase he found himself gaping openmouthed in shock as he watched David and a woman he remembered as Morgan fly across the room. Morgan was swinging a broom at David and he was throwing glass trinkets at her. Every few throws she would manage to hit one, sending it back at him where it would bounce off a wall and shatter. They were screaming obscenities at each other and were completely oblivious to the security team in their midst.
Then Maxim noticed Landry struggling to get out of a chair. She appeared to be tied. He pulled a knife from his pocket and made his way carefully in her direction.
“Maxim?” Her eyes were wide with surprise. “How did you find me?”
“Thayla contacted Dinah,” he said quickly. “They both came and got me.”
“Oh my God!” Landry was struggling, trying to get up.
Maxim took hold of her hands. “Just hold still. I’ll cut you loose.”
She calmed at his touch and he felt a shot of hope despite the insanity of their current circumstances. He plucked Landry out of the chair and swept her up into his arms. Then he gestured to the men.
“They don’t even realize we’re here,” Gomez said with amazement. Behind him, Morgan managed to score a hit with the broom, which caused David to lash out with a foot and kick her hard. Then the grappling began all over again.
“Just wait until the cops get here and then report back to Maximov,” Maxim told Gomez. “And nobody needs to get hurt because of this idiocy.”
“Deal.”
***
If being stuck in the room with the battling tyrants was surreal, then being carried out of the loft by Maxim was even more so. Landry felt the hot trail of tear tracks down her face and wondered why she was losing it now when everything was presumably all over. She should have lost it an hour ago or more if she were going to. Now it just seemed silly.
“I’m sorry,” she told Maxim as she swabbed at her cheeks with her sleeve. “I don’t mean to act like a baby.”
“Hardly,” he snorted. “I can’t believe you held up like you did. It was extremely impressive.”
“I knew I had to get them fighting,” she told him.
He put her in the passenger seat of his car and then ran around to the driver’s side to get in. “Wait. You got them to start fighting?”
“Oh yeah. Morgan was bossing him around so I waited until she left before I poked at him for being so whipped. He was pissed!”
“I bet,” Maxim murmured.
Landry couldn’t tell if he was angry or something else. He was so hard to read sometimes. “Morgan wanted to take me somewhere and kill me. It was the only way to buy time. I was trying to get out of those ropes.”
“So you intended to escape all by yourself.” His hands clutched the steering wheel so hard it creaked.
Why did it matter? Of course she was going to try and escape. Wasn’t that what people did when some crazy person took them hostage? Or rather, most people never had to deal with something like this. Why was her life such a weird list of messes? One right after another, things just seemed to spin right out of control and smack her right in the face.
“I’m so sorry you got mixed up in this,” Landry told Maxim. “I feel so embarrassed!”
“Embarrassed?” He looked over at her, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Landry, people should be embarrassed when they do stupid things, or foolish things, or make bad decisions that blow up in their faces. You didn’t do any of that.”
“I dated David.”
“And Thayla and I suspect that Morgan was manipulating him the whole time.”
Landry made a face. She could have done without that bit of knowledge. “Morgan said as much. Apparently they were sleeping together the whole time.”
“It pissed Morgan off when he picked you and not her, but then he treated you like crap and she was satisfied,” Maxim told Landry.
Landry thought that over a minute. “So you’re saying as long as I didn’t get any benefit from the situation that slighted Morgan, she was cool with it. But when you turned out to be a wonderful, polite, sexy, successful, and rich businessman, Morgan flipped her shit?”
The smile he flashed her was most definitely all of those things. “You think I’m sexy?”
“Ugh!” She rolled her eyes and put her face in her hands. “Maxim, every-freaking-body on the planet thinks you’re sexy. How can you possibly be unaware of that?”
“I’m not.” He pursed his lips. “But you’re not like other people. So if you think I’m sexy, it actually means something.”
***
Did she really not get it? Maxim had a difficult time believing that she was so unaware of her own worth. The woman was quality. If everyone else thought he was sexy it was because they were materialistic and embroiled in social expectations and all of the cultural bullshit that drove him nuts.
Landry was different. She didn’t think that way. If she thought he was sexy it was because she saw something inside him that she was attracted to. “Landry, you’re better than that shallow crap most people say. Don’t you see?” he pleaded. “I love you.”
“What?” Her head whipped around and she stared at him as though he’d grown horns. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true. I should have said it before when I started talking about marriage.”
“But you don’t know me!” Landry protested.
“I know enough.” He struggled to explain. “It’s not like you keep your true inner self a secret, Landry. I’ve watched you for a week in a brand-new workplace. I’ve seen you handle things with grace that would have crushed other people and ruined their outlook on life. You never once moaned about how unfair things were. You just put your nose to the grindstone and looked for a way to make things better. Do you have any
idea what a phenomenal trait that is?”
She looked embarrassed and confused. “It feels silly for you to compliment me on things that should just be a part of regular human nature.”
“Ha!” he said sarcastically. “Should be and never are, sweetheart. Think about it. How often are people just assholes about pretty much everything?”
“You mean all of the Morgans and Davids of the world,” she mused.
“And the Borises and the Pyotrs,” he added.
She frowned. “Who the hell is Pyotr?”
“My brother.”
“Oh my God, your brother was with Boris on this thing?” The compassion in her expression touched him deeply. “Maxim, I’m so sorry!”
“See?” he pointed out. “You can still think about me and my uncomfortable situation even when you’ve just been through something way more horrific. You’re an incredible person, Landry. And if I have to wait decades to marry you, I will. I love you.”
***
Decades? The man was willing to wait decades?
Of course, Landry had to think about that in relative terms. She was certain that Maxim thought he would wait decades. But a man like Maxim would never wait that long. He’d find another way to get what he wanted. He was used to things going his way and always would be to a certain extent. Yet he wasn’t a spoiled brat. He was even less spoiled than David, which seemed ridiculous in a way.
“What are you thinking?” Maxim reached over and gently brushed a finger down her cheek.
“I was just comparing you to David,” she admitted. “Not in a bad way. I was just thinking how all of the people in the world who have the right to be conceited rarely are. And the assholes always think they’re the best things to happen since sliced bread. Right?”
“That’s sort of how life works,” Maxim suggested. “Don’t you think?”
“I think you need to take me home so I can assure my friends that I’m fine.”
“I have your phone.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out her cell phone. “You can text them. In fact, I hope you will. Thayla and Dinah are beside themselves.”
