Congratulations reach my ears, but they’re not aimed at the marriage itself. Everybody here sees this as a power move, and they all know the worst is yet to come to the traitors sitting in the pews who, by the way, don’t get up to see us off like the rest.
It doesn’t even matter, though this is probably their last chance to see Victoria ever again.
We’re almost out when suddenly, my wife’s hand goes taut, and I feel her tripping behind me. One of our men grips her arm and pulls her up forcefully.
“Get the fuck up, bitch. Keep walking.”
Anger shoots through me like fucking lava. Clenching my jaw, I make brief eye contact with my father. He shakes his head at me, anticipating my thoughts. I’m about to kill a man in a holy place.
The room falls silent.
Victoria snatches her arm free of the man’s grip and steps beside me, avoiding my gaze, looking distressed.
The red marks on her skin will probably form a bruise. So I pull out my gun from beneath my jacket and bring the man into me by his collar before firing at his head.
Blood splatters on my face, the metallic scent instantly filling the air. Women’s gasps echo all around, and the priest’s dark figure dashes behind the altar.
I push the corpse off me. It falls to the floor with a thud.
“Let this be your only warning,” I say, tucking my gun back in. “I don’t care who the fuck you are or how important you think you are. If anyone,ever, touches my wife, or disrespects her, I will kill you. You will die at my hand. Do. You. Understand?”
I pin them all with my gaze, looking for any sign of disagreement on their faces. There’s none.
“What my son means to say,” Father’s voice rings from the other side of the church. “Is that an attack onanyRykov is an attack on the Bratva. You all know very well how we deal with traitors, and unless I give an explicit order, no one interferes with our ways.” He looks at Victoria’s family. “I took Nikolai’s daughter.And I’m about to take so much more. Now, if you don’t want to be next in line, I suggest you keep your mouths shut and enjoy the rest of your fucking day.”
I don’t react to Father’s statement, but I know I’ll never hear the end of what I just did. He chimed in to salvage the situation, and he succeeded, but he shouldn’t have had to do it in the first place.
My eyes slide over to Ekaterina, all pampered and dressed in black, as if she dressed for a funeral, not a wedding. She’s the only figure smirking in the crowd. Of course she’s going to take this as a fucking win.
Still, I stand by what I did.
No one touches my wife but me.
13
VICTORIA
He killed for me. Standing here, in the middle of his room, with the wedding dress still on, it’s all I can think about. The blood that splattered on his face. The sound of metal cracking bone. The stench, the looks we got from everyone in the church, including my family.
I’ve never seen it happen in real life, and I admit, it rattled me a little, which is another mistake on my part. Because in a world like Wolfgang’s I don’t get to feel rattled. If I let it, the ugliness will break me, and I can’t allow that.
Still, he… defended me. And I wish he hadn’t, because now I’m confused.
Why did he do it?
I follow my husband with my eyes as he comes out of the en-suite bathroom with a clean face and new clothes. Business casual, the kind you’d wear if you were going out instead of staying in with your wife.
Except… it’s our wedding night, and I expected him to…
I suck in a breath, killing the thought, as I take in the room.
It's larger than the one I’ve been locked in, and the styling gives it a masculine vibe. A four-poster king-sized bed sits in the middle against a black wall, with silk sheets of a dark charcoal color. The ceiling holds a crystal chandelier above it, catching lights from the sunset through the tall windows.
“What am I doing here?” I ask, exhaustion dripping from my every word.
He picks up the phone, texting someone as he answers. “This is where you’ll be sleeping from now.”
“If you’realsosleeping here, the answer is no.”
