We move together along the line of tables, pushing the stroller along with us as if it was the plan all along. We accept congratulations. We thank people for their gifts. We speak about the courtyard and the band and a dessert that has not come yet. I do not look back at the tray. I do not look at the door to the corridor. I do not look at the wall behind which the room sits with a body on a rug.
Roman squeezes my fingers once more as we pass the arch. It could be for show. I know it’s for me. I breathe in. I breathe out. I stay pretty. I whisper nothing more until he asks. I keep us upright while the evening rewrites itself around a cup no one will touch.
I have pretended to be normal more times than I can count. Today is just another time, I tell myself. Ignore the shaking hands. The heart palpitations. The sweat trickling down my spine. None of that matters.
The show must go on.
12
ROMAN
I don’t letthe room see it. I smile for a man who wants to tell me an old story about my father. I lift a glass of water. I let a captain’s wife kiss my cheek. Inside, my hands want to choke the life out of Vitaly.
Right now, I think I could actually do it.
Mina stands close. Her face is perfect for this moment. Calm. Bright. She looks like the bride everyone wants to see. Sunshine and happiness personified.
Even though she just told me the goblet is poisoned. And that Fyodor met with my son to murder my wife. I don’t know how long he has been betraying me to Vitaly, but there’s no way my son entered our grounds without the old man’s help. Which means Fyodor has likely been working in secret with Vitaly ever since I disinherited him.
Fyodor was my closest, most trusted advisor. A second father to me. The pain of this betrayal is searing, and I must force it down to continue the charade of this wedding day, or the guests will know something is wrong.
Somethingiswrong. Fyodor is dead. Mina, my new bride who has already been through too much for one lifetime, found him after overhearing his plans to murder her. She should have never had to know about any of that, let alone hear it firsthand while she was alone and vulnerable with our infant sons.
And Vitaly is here somewhere.
Fuck.
I do the one thing I can do without breaking the illusion I built. I raise my glass again. “To absent friends.” The crowd salutes to that and drinks. The band starts another song, and the crowd moves to follow it.
I lean to Mina’s ear. “Walk with me.”
My hand covers hers on the stroller handle for one beat. I do not take my eyes off the room. I turn us like any couple who wants air. Marcus steps into the current and opens a path. Tanner closes the space behind us so no one drifts the wrong way. Two more of my men split off and cover the far corners. Sergei attends invitees.
Guests’ guards watch and pretend they are not watching. They keep their distance. They also count my steps. Let them count.
We reach the corridor, and the noise falls away. That is when I allow the first breath that feels like breathing. I take us past the service door. We stop at the room Mina mentioned. A man I trust stands by the stroller now. He gives me a nod and keeps his eyes on my sons.
“Marcus, Vitaly is here. Get eyes?—”
“On it,” he says before texting the eyes I have on our cameras.
Inside the room is a light. A couch. A lamp still on. A hat on a chair. A body on the rug.
Fyodor is on his back with his head turned a little to the left, like he started to listen to something and then forgot to finish. There is a small hole next to his sternum. The blood is not everywhere. It has soaked into the wool rug and darkened a circle under him. Close range. Suppressed. Clean. He did not have time to stand. He did not expect the shot from the man he thought he could trust.
The old man never listened to a damn word I said about Vitaly, and it got him killed, just as I feared it would.
No one should experience their worst fears coming true, particularly on their wedding day. If we make it to our first anniversary, I hope to forget the next few minutes and focus on how beautiful my bride is, how nice it is that everyone came out to see us on our special day.
I hope I do not recall Fyodor’s bullet hole.
I cross the room and kneel. I touch his wrist out of habit even though I know. No pulse. I take his hat from the chair and set it by his head. He liked his hat.
For one long second my vision narrows. It is not grief alone. It is the sensation of a foundation you trusted turning out to be made of spiderwebs.
He was with me since I was tall enough to sit in a meeting and not be told to go to bed. He taught me how to read a room. He stepped between me and my father when that was the only way to keep us from tearing each other apart. He kept my secrets when I was nineteen and too sure of myself. He told me when I was wrong and he was right about half of those times.
He was also a believer in the old order. Our family’s traditions. Firstborn son. Title by blood. He wanted a world where I die and Vitaly takes the chair because it is his birthright. He could not imagine that tradition can be a weapon in the wrong hands. He could not stand the thought that I would name anyone but my eldest son as heir even after everything.
