"You'll learn to be comfortable with this arrangement," Anton said, and the confidence in his voice was worse than threats would have been. He believed it. Actually believed that I'd accept this, that time and proximity would wear down my resistance until marrying my half-brother seemed reasonable. "It's not uncommon in our world. Bloodline matters more than American sensibilities about genetics. You'll see."
I wanted to scream. Wanted to fight. But now wasn’t the time.
"The dress will be custom," Anton continued, standing and returning to his fabric swatches like we'd just had a pleasant conversation instead of him touching me without permission. "White, of course. Traditional. We'll invite the families. Make it official. Show them that Belyaev blood is united."
Then he moved faster than I expected. One moment he was three feet away discussing wedding plans. The next his hand was in my hair—gripping, tilting my head back—and his mouth was on mine.
The kiss was cold. Possessive. His lips pressed against mine with confidence that said he had every right, that my mouth belonged to him now through genetics and power and whatever brutal calculus made this seem acceptable in his mind. His tongue forced entry, pushing past my lips, tasting like coffee and something sharper. Claiming.
I bit down. Hard.
The copper taste of blood flooded my mouth—his blood, because I'd caught his tongue between my teeth and wasn'tletting go until he jerked back. Anton stumbled, his hand releasing my hair, and for one beautiful second his confident mask cracked into surprise.
Then he laughed.
Actually laughed, pressing his hand to his mouth where blood was welling between his fingers. The sound was genuine amusement, like I'd done something entertaining instead of violent. Like I was a child throwing a tantrum rather than a woman fighting for autonomy.
"Spirited," he said, examining the blood on his palm with something close to admiration. "Father always did like women with fight in them. Said it made the eventual submission more satisfying."
The casual reference to Konstantin—to our shared father, to the man whose genetics had created both of us through different mothers—made nausea crash through me in waves. I tasted Anton's blood in my mouth, metallic and wrong, and couldn't swallow past the tightness in my throat.
"You'll need to break that habit before the wedding," Anton continued, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to press against his bleeding tongue. "I don't mind spirit, Sophie. But there are limits to acceptable resistance."
His phone rang before I could formulate a response. The sound was jarring—a normal ringtone in an abnormal situation, technology interrupting horror. Anton pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and his expression shifted.
Confusion first. Then calculation. Then something that might have been concern carefully hidden behind bratva poker face.
"A Five Families Council?" he said into the phone, his Russian sharp and fast. "On what grounds?"
I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation. But I watched Anton's knuckles go white around his phone, watched his ice-blue eyes narrow with thoughts I couldn't read.
His expression shifted as he listened—confusion bleeding into calculation, then something that might have been concern carefully hidden behind the mask all bratva men wore when processing threats. I watched every micro-expression, my photographic memory cataloging details I might need later. The slight widening of his eyes. The way his jaw clenched. The tension entering his shoulders that hadn't been there when he'd been confidently planning our wedding like I had any choice in the matter.
"That protocol is almost never invoked," Anton said into the phone, his Russian sharp enough to cut. "The old codes are—"
He stopped. Listened. His knuckles went white around the phone.
I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation. But I could extrapolate from Anton's reactions, from the words he was using, from the sudden shift in his body language that said whatever was happening was significant.
"Fine," Anton said finally, his voice tight with control. "We'll be there. Neutral ground, full protocols. Yes, I'll bring them both."
Them both. Mikhail and me. Had to be. The hostages Anton was holding as leverage.
Anton ended the call and stood motionless for a long moment. I watched him think through implications I couldn't see, watched the calculation happening behind those ice-blue eyes that were horrifyingly like mine. When he finally looked at me, there was something new in his expression. Not quite respect. But close. Assessment that said I'd become more complicated than the simple prize he'd been treating me as.
"Your Nikolai is smarter than I gave him credit for," Anton said slowly, like he was tasting the words. Testing their truth. "Or more desperate. Hard to tell which."
My heart kicked against my ribs. Nikolai had done something. Something big enough to shift the entire situation. Something that made Anton recalculate whatever strategy he'd been pursuing.
Anton moved to the sidebar, poured himself vodka from a crystal decanter that probably cost more than my father's funeral. He didn't offer me any. Just drank, composed himself, and turned back with his confident mask mostly reconstructed.
"Do you know what a Five Families Council is?" he asked.
I shook my head. My knowledge of bratva protocols was limited to what I'd absorbed through proximity to my father and Nikolai, through overheard conversations and explanations given during chess games. But this—this was something older. Something I hadn't encountered yet.
"It's sacred," Anton said, and the way he used that word—sacred, like he actually meant it despite being a man who kidnapped people and planned incestuous marriages—told me how serious this was. "More holy than The Settling. More binding than any agreement between families. It's invoked only for matters of succession or bloodline disputes. When questions arise that affect the fundamental structure of bratva hierarchy."
He paused, letting the weight of that sink in.
