“Did you get roofied?”
“Sadly, I’m quite sure this injury is self-inflicted. I’ll call you back.”
I edged out of the bathroom and let Lexi in, then sat on the side of the bed and ruminated on my sorry condition.
Idiot-idiot-idiotchanted in my alcohol-sodden brain.
I couldn’t call John back. Overhearing my rant might hurt Lexi’s feelings, and she seemed like a nice woman. This situation wasn’t her fault.
It was solidly mine.
And she was more than a nice woman. I’d been a mess the night before. She’d saved me from myself in a myriad of ways.
Lexi was a good woman. She was kind.
I was the idiot.
She’d even tried to prevent the ceremony and mitigate the damage. I remembered her begging me to find John or other friends to talk with about my irrational, catastrophic, self-destructive decision. This wasallon me.
She emerged, grinning sheepishly, and I went back in to take a damned shower.
The shower stall took up half the floor space of the small, one-sink bathroom, and I tucked my elbows while I showered to avoid bashing them into the walls. How I wishedmy wifehad used more of my petty cash or fished my credit card out of my wallet and procured us a decent suite for our so-called wedding night.
While I washed my hair using the hotel’s microscopic vials of shampoo that smelled like petroleum-doused flowers, a few more memories solidified.
Demyan Volkov’s attempt to arrange a forced marriage to his daughter still raised a cold sweat to the surface of my skin that the hot water rinsed away as it formed.
At least I’d married some rando on the street and not Volkov’s daughter, whoever she was. Knowing Volkov’s reputation, he might’ve had the girl waiting in the wings for after he’d gotten me polluted and staged a ceremony last night.
I rinsed the alcoholic sludge from my skin.
Arranging an annulment from a Russian mafioso’s kid would have been orders of magnitude more difficult than from this anonymous plebeian American woman.
Paying her off and extricating myself should be relatively simple.
Annulments were frowned upon and severely limited in the Orthodox church, far more rare than in the Roman Catholic church with their selling of indulgences and annulments to divorcés these days.
Indeed, annulments were difficult. There would be hearings. An investigation. Interviews. A request for evidence of the failed sacrament.
Later, I would watch the rest of the video and figure out how to get an annulment from the Russian Orthodox churchas soon as possible.
Even though my erstwhile confessor, every bishop, and the Patriarch of Moscow himself would fight me tooth and nail on it.
For anyone, obtaining an annulment in the Orthodox church was difficult.
Granting an annulment to the namesake and heir of the Tsar-Martyr Nicolai II would be a scandal that would rock the church.
I’d probably had to pull the “My great-grand uncle and namesake is a holy martyr of the Church” card last night to force the priest to baptize and chrismate Lexi and then marry us.
I needed to find more reasons that the marriage was invalid.
However, as the heir to an actual saint, I could probably arrange for the process within a few weeks, considering that I had not been of sound mind in the slightest, Lexi had not understood the seriousness of the rite, her chrism hadn’t actually dried yet,andthe marriage had not been consummated.
I at least hada chanceof getting annulment.
If all else failed, I could ask her to desert me. This woman who didn’t even know me would probably run for the hills if given half a chance.
If she did know me, she’d probably desert me even faster.
