I let my hand fall into his.
His fingers close around mine, strong and sure, and the edges of the world blur.
We turn, and Scottie hoists our joined hands in the air like a victory.
The DJ starts playing something soft and bright. People stand. Irina is crying openly at my side as she hands me back my bouquet to walk back down the aisle, pressing a handkerchief to her face. Flash photography from the photographer Juliet hired snaps wildly, but I can’t quite figure out where she’s taking them from. Luka looks somewhere between satisfied and deeply, deeply distressed from that kiss. The guys are grinning, nudging each other. The WAGs are glowing, eyes shiny with wide smiles.
We take our first step down the aisle together.
The soft fabric of my skirt slides over the white runner as Scottie walks me down the short aisle. The breeze lifts my veil, tugging it lightly behind me. The sun catches on the three and a half carat diamond on my finger, scattering light across the bouquet of tulips I’m still clutching, turning it into a spray of glittering sparks.
I can’t stop looking at the ring.
It pulls at me, heavy and insistent, a physical reminder of a choice I never expected him to make.
I wasn’t expecting a diamond at all. A band, maybe. Something discreet we could return to a jeweler or tuck into a drawer once this is over. Not this ridiculous, breathtaking thing that catches the light and announces itself from a hundred paces.
It’s expensive, over the top, meant to impress—something Maxim would probably have given me as a sign of control or to show off a press release for his run in office.
Except it doesn’t feel like a weapon in Scottie’s hands.
It feels like a gift. I hear his voice in my head, low and earnest at the arch:
I wanted you to have something nice. The one thing that’s real in this whole agreement.
I curl my fingers slightly, feeling the cool bite of the metal against my skin.
The camera at the end of the aisle records every step we take toward it. Evidence to send to my grandmother. Proof for the immigration officer. Something his mother will one day sit down and watch from a few hundred miles away and wonder what kind of woman her son has married and why she wasn’t there.
Guilt pinches low in my stomach. Luka tricked Scottie into this… in a way. A bet that Scottie never thought he’d actually have to pay.
Beside me, Scottie squeezes my hand, just once.
I glance up.
He’s watching the path in front of us, jaw set, a little muscle ticking there like the weight of what he’s doing has finally settled fully on his shoulders. But he feels my eyes and looks down, the tension softening.
“You okay?” he whispers, just for me.
No. Yes. Absolutely not. But… somehow I am.
“Yes,” I lie, because I don’t know how to explain that in this moment, with his hand wrapped around mine and thirty people cheering for us and the city stretching out in every direction, I feel more like myself than I have in years.
His thumb strokes over the back of my hand, light and unthinking. A simple touch sends a shiver up my arm.
“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “I’m glad it’s you.”
I swallow.
He couldn’t mean that. Not really. He barely knows me. But the way he says it, like it’s simply true. No embellishment and no angle—the way I’m starting to realize is just the kind of person Scottie is.
The kind of man who doesn’t go back on a bet to a friend, who won’t let my brother pay for the penthouse that we’ll be living in until this is all over, who said that if Luka had just told him the truth, he would have agreed anyway to help me. And when every single one of the women in the group has all told me some version of “Scottie’s a good guy”, I’m starting to believe that he’s even better than they say.
I hope this works, I hope my grandmother believes it, and I hope my father doesn’t find a way to break it. And I hope that I can help him in some small way, too. Pay him back for what he’s doing for me. This can’t be a one-way street. He needs me too… to scare away the perfect kindergarten teacher that his mother loves from his hometown… who is, honestly, probably a better pick as a wife for him than me. A Russian mob princess who doesn’t know the first thing about making sourdough bread.
I hate the little swell of jealousy that rises in me at the thought that she could be better for him than me. Maybe after all of this is over and he signs the divorce papers, he’ll see that. He’ll see that his mother was right to pick her for him.
We reach the end of the aisle. Someone throws white flower petals; one lands in my hair, another on the curve of Scottie’s shoulder. As we step past the guests, they envelop us in hugs and laughter and the kind of congratulations that don’t feel calculated.
