“Here, come inside,” she gently pulls me through the door, shutting it. “I know, it’s horrible and gauche.”
The monstrosity has a train that runs halfway across the room, the bodice is covered in what I suspect are diamonds and the whole lurid thing must weigh five hundred pounds.
“I can’t- I can’t do this-” I’m shaking my head, trying to back away.
Her little hands grip my arms, hard. “Listen to me,” she whispers. “I’ve sewn two pockets under the skirt. I added slits in the surface of the dress so you can slip your hands into the underskirt and pull out what you need from the hidden pockets.”
“What do I need, Mama?”
It’s easy to forget that my mother was the daughter of one of the most brutal Pakhans in Moscow, she’s so sweet and delicate. But her eyes are hard now. Holding up a white switchblade, she says, “This is porcelain. Just as sharp as a regular blade, and it can’t be picked up on a metal detector.”
All the strength leaves my legs and I sit down abruptly.
“This is a fast-acting poison.” She holds up a vial with a little clear liquid. “It’s odorless and tasteless. You’re not going to have time for subtle. This will incapacitate him within sixty seconds, and kill him within three minutes. You might have better luck with this than the blade.”Mat'slower lip trembles before she straightens her spine.
“This is going to happen, isn’t it?” I ask bleakly.
“Your baby has to be protected,” she says. “If Dmitri finds out…”
“I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him first.” I take the vial and the knife from her, hiding them in one of the bags going with me to the church tomorrow. “If they do something to me…” My head is swimming. I know what happens to traitors. “You’ll take care of my baby,right? They’ll let me live long enough for that. To give birth to a Turgenev.”
Tears are streaming down her face, but I’m not sure if she knows that.
“Of course.” She sits back on the bed, putting a pillow on her lap and patting it gently.
"I remember this," I say, "when I was a little girl, you would put my head on your lap and stroke my hair while we listened to music."
She chuckles softly, "All my favorites; Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, the Cure."
Curling up by her side, I feel her hand stroke my hair and we stare at the horrible wedding dress in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In which this is not the wedding of anyone’s dreams.
Lucya…
When I was little, my parents used to take us to the beach in some decidedly warmer locale than St. Petersburg. I’d spend hours in the tidepools, fascinated by the swirl of the water and the little creatures caught up in its current.
I’m one of those little creatures now, caught up in a current I can’t control, and the women swirl around me and chatter as they arrange my hair, layer on enough makeup to make me unrecognizable, and then haul the enormous dress Dmitri insisted on over my head. The gown’s bodice is indeed encrusted with diamonds and laces up so tightly that drawing a full breath is impossible. The train stretches back five feet. I’m choking under the weight of an enormous ruby and diamond necklace that makes my skin look sallow and the heavy matching earrings feels like they’re going to tear off my earlobes.
I look ridiculous.
“You look beautiful!” Irina says, with an encouraging tone in her voice and a smile that keeps slipping from her face, as if she just can’t make it stick. Alexi’s sister is as beautiful as she is kind, butthere’s no mistaking that even she knows this is a funeral, not a wedding.
Conspicuously absent is my sister, which is a gift from my mother. She made it clear to Inessa that she would drag her from the dressing room by her hair if she attempted to get within fifty feet of me, and for that, I’m grateful. I’ll never understand why Inessa would have forced me to attend that horrifying “party.” My sister has turned into someone unrecognizable to me.
Or, maybe I saw what I wanted to see when it came to Inessa.
We’re in an elaborately decorated antechamber in the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, the most magnificent church in St. Petersburg, of course. The Pakhan of the Turgenev Bratvamusthave only the flashiest possible church to highlight his power.
That said, this is such a beautiful church, the oldest one in St. Petersburg. The yellow stone of the cathedral rises over the city, with golden spires and elaborate towers of steel and copper. It’s built inside a fortress on Hare Island along the Neva River. Dmitri’s insistence on holding the wedding here couldn’t be clearer. I could never escape from this place. Dmitri wants me to know I will never escapehim.
But I can kill him.
Excusing myself to go to the bathroom, I’m unsettled to find two of the Turgenev “cousins,” both very tall and strong-looking women trying to follow me in.
Stopping dead in my tracks, I’m bitterly amused when one of them nearly falls on top of me.
