Chapter 15 - Max

Wow. To say I was shaken by what a wildcat my new wife was would have been an understatement. I barely got out of there without grabbing her and kissing her until we were both senseless. Again.

Had I bitten off more than I could chew for the first time in my entire life? As much as I wanted Brooke, craved her so that oxygen barely seemed important, I hadn’t expected to be thrown for such a loop.

Even after making her shout my name, she was still clinging to that anger that seemed to drive her passion. I hated seeing what looked very close to hatred underneath her desire, but the thought of turning her loose now was untenable. Unbearable.

“Damn,” I said, once I was far down the hall, beyond her hearing, behind my bedroom door. The sound of whatever she’d tossed at me as I left still rang in my ears, and I shook my head.

Brooke had me rattled, and that was new. Her fire, her spirit, everything about her was different from anything I’d experienced. I thought I was smitten before? Now it was bone deep, and yeah, realizing it had me off kilter.

Outside, the hot night air did nothing to cool me off, so I stripped off the robe and dove into my pool. After a dozen grueling laps, my mind was somewhat cleared, though my body still urged me to go up the stairs and slide into bed with her again. Instead, I settled into my office to check in with the security team I’d tasked with keeping my eyes on Luca.

Brooke was mine now; there was no fighting that, so I’d be keeping her here regardless. However, I was still concerned about Luca’s compulsive obsession with her. Leaning back in my chair as I perused the security footage on the screens in front of me, I laughed ruefully to myself.

Was I so different from him?

The answer came swiftly, not a breath of hesitation. Of course, I was. As soon as the situation was resolved and there was no question about Brooke’s safety, I’d…

What would I do? Let her choose to leave me? Out of the question.

It wasn’t something I had to think too hard about because I knew Luca well enough by now that it would be a long time before that asshole shook off his fixation, or replaced it with another woman.

The fact that there might be another woman out there that could compare to Brooke had me laughing again.

Fuck, I was in deep.

I needed a distraction to keep me from going back upstairs. I’d put on a big show to prove I could walk away from her, and I needed to stick to it. For now. After grabbing a snack that didn’t interest me one bit, I snapped open my laptop to continue some research I’d started before the hurricane that was Brooke blew into my life.

Setting up new businesses for my family always came with headaches. My brothers and I were all hardheaded and thought we knew what was best, so trying to get us to agree on anything took weeks, even months, and then opportunities might have passed us by.

After being faced with a few prospects that wouldn’t make it past a first meeting, I stared past my screen and out the window at the small lights illuminating the garden path. What I needed was a few more laps in the pool. What I wanted to do was go to bed. My bed. But if I did that, I would wake up Brooke for a second round, and she needed rest after all she’d been through in the last forty-eight hours.

In fact, I was going to have our family doctor come in the morning to check her over and take a blood sample, to make sure whatever that creep had dosed her with was completely out of her system and hadn’t done any harm.

As much as I needed to know she was okay, calling in our private physician was a surefire way for my family to find out about Brooke’s and my little situation. Dr. Andreyev couldn’t keep his mouth shut no matter what oath he took or who threatened him. I meant for this marriage to be forever, which meant getting Brooke fully on board so she’d stop trying to scale the walls. That might take some time based on her current mood, and if word got back to Katie, it was going to get back to Jenna, who’d throw a fit to Lev, and that would be game over.

As much as I loved my family, they were a giant pain in the ass sometimes. Okay, most of the time, especially if they got so much as a whiff of one of us keeping secrets. It was a minor miracle that Lev and Jenna, and even Katie and Aleks, had managed to keep their marriages from the rest of us so long.

I needed a little bit of distance, along with time, and I began to think about a plan to advance our territory down south that my younger brother Dimitry and I had discussed recently. I wasn’t too keen on the idea since the diner was raking in the money, and I already had a full plate with whatever Aleks assigned to me. But Dima was champing at the bit and wanting to break free to forge his own path.

We’d done a bit of research and made a few visits and there were a lot of opportunities down there. The San Diego area was ripe for expansion. So many places were crying out for protection from the scattered leadership of the half-assed organizations that weren’t very organized at all. The more I thought about it, the more I decided Dima was right. It could be incredibly lucrative to branch out right about now.

And the gorgeous beaches would make for a lovely honeymoon spot, too. Nice and private and out of the way of prying eyes. My younger brother Dima could be trusted if he happened upon our little secret, or his arm could be twisted to keep his mouth shut if it came to it. I was okay with either, it was totally up to him.

Turning my focus back to my laptop, I began to check out the real estate options down there. Pleased with this new plan, I fell asleep on the couch in my office with my laptop resting on my chest and a smile on my face.