“You too.” Her smile softens. “I’m consulting for the Ignatovs now. Cybersecurity expansion.”
The irony isn’t lost on either of us; my old life brushing up against the new, like two parallel worlds colliding.
“Come see me soon,” I tell her. “After all this… spectacle. Really. I want to talk.”
“I will,” she promises, squeezing my arm before drifting back into the crowd.
The moment lingers like a hand on my shoulder long after she’s gone.
Hours pass in a blur of clinking glasses, shallow toasts, muted conversations threaded with coded meaning. Sera stays with me as long as she can, but even she is eventually pulled into a debate between two oligarchs arguing over import tariffs.
By the time the mansion begins to quiet, exhaustion drapes itself over me like an ill-fitting coat.
I slip away, seeking oxygen, space. The corridor leading to the balcony is dim, lit only by sconces casting pale amber halos along the walls. My footsteps echo on the marble tile.
The balcony doors are slightly open.
Cold air rolls in, crisp and clean. I step outside.
Snow blankets the gardens, smoothing every sharp edge into soft white silence. Lanterns along the stone path glow faintly, halos suspended in frost. The sky above is a tapestry of frozen stars—so sharp they look like they could cut skin.
I wrap my arms around myself, letting the cold sting my lungs.
A minute passes. I feel him before I hear him.
Damian’s presence is a gravitational shift—the air tightening, recalibrating. When he steps onto the balcony, the temperature feels heavier. More real.
He stands beside me silently, hands in his pockets, gaze fixed on the snow-covered garden. The silence between us is not empty; it thrums with things neither of us knows how to name.
I wait for him to say something. An explanation, a reassurance, anything.
He doesn’t. Neither does he leave.
The quiet stretches, pulling nerves taut, threading us together in a way vows never could. The distance between us is inches, but it feels like a negotiation happening in the space we’re both too afraid to cross.
My breath clouds the air in front of me, as does his. Two ghostlike wisps drifting, mingling, dissolving.
When his fingers brush mine, it is the smallest possible contact, but it sends a current spiraling up my arm.
For whatever reason, I don’t pull away.
We stand side by side beneath the frozen stars, bound in law, suspended in uncertainty. Two silhouettes framed against the glittering edges of Moscow. Two people navigating the fault line between resentment and something tender that refuses to die.
Married in name.
Strangers in trust.
Chapter 7 - Damian
Publicly, the marriage accomplishes what it was engineered to do.
The rumors stop. Whispers of liability cease the moment Harper stands beside me at the long marble table, my ring on her finger, her posture straight and unshakable under the weight of a room built on hierarchies sharpened to blades.
A wife is untouchable. A wife is protected. A wife ismine.
And the council understands that language better than any vow.
To them, it’s finished. But to me, it’s only begun.
