Two city clerks slip in, trailing the scent of stale coffee. They sign with bored efficiency, the kind you only get from midnight bureaucracy in a country that has seen too much to care. Then the judge turns back to us, clearing his throat as though bracing for impact.
He asks for rings, and before I have a chance to say anything, Oksana reaches up, fingers brushing her collarbone, and unhooks a thin gold chain I’d noticed earlier—glimpses of metal against her throat when I was too busy driving into her to ask what it meant.
Two narrow bands slide free. One gold. One black tungsten.
Rings.
Our rings.
She presses the gold one into my palm. It’s warm from her skin, and something in my chest goes tight. The pen is suddenly in my hand. Her eyes are on my mouth. My pulse does something reckless. Because she’s not just marrying me. She’s choosing myname.Choosing to bind herself to a family drowning in blood and betrayal—because she wants me. I sign in clean block strokes: Stephano Allessio Conti.
She signs like she’s writing the names of dead men she’s sworn vengeance on, Oksana Arsenyev Conti.
And it still feels like she’s mine.
"Congratulations," Judge Molina says gently, as if we were ordinary people. Then he straightens and adds in perfect Italian, "May your enemies die young and in pain."
Outside, the night feels different. Not softer, never that. But clearer. The Suburban hums to life; the radios crackle; Oksana’s men check in with the bored cadenceof people who are ready to kill again. She opens the red velvet box and stares at the huge five-carat diamond, "Ah, Marito, you shouldn't have."
I war against the rising anger that I didn't even have a chance to buy her a ring, realizing that it has no room here. Oksana is the most independent woman I've ever met, and I’d better get used to it. "I'll get you a proper ring once we're back in New York."
"I like this one." She pouts.
"I like for you to wear oneIactually bought for you, Mrs. Conti."
She looks like she wants to object, then shakes her head. "As you wish, Marito."
"Now I'm scared," I mutter. Her being agreeable is not something I can stomach easily.
"The bank won't open until the morning. I made hotel reservations."
"Of course you did," I smirk. Pleased with what we just did. And pleased that she took the initiative. Oksana is not a woman wooed by grand gestures. She had to take this step, I realize that. But we're still going to have a large wedding back in New York, an Italian wedding. Maybe Italian-Russian, my mouth turns into a small line.
"What are you pouting over?" She demands, already knowing me all too well.
"I was thinking about our wedding and contemplating how we'll get the mafia and the Bratva into one room without them killing each other." I fill her in.
"What do you mean? We just got married," for a top assassin, she seems a bit slow when it comes to me.
"Oh, Zhena, you married an Italian. We'll have to have a big wedding, or my mamma will turn in her grave. And think of Nico, being deprived of being my best man and your brother of walking you down the aisle." I dangle the bait.
She narrows her eyes, "You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?"
"I plead the fifth."
"The fifth doesn't exist in Russia."
"We are in the United States."
"Technically, we're in Mexico," she contradicts, making me laugh.
I pull her over, closer to me, and kiss her until her objections turn to smoke.
"Big wedding?"
"Is that a question or a demand?"
I chuckle, "As if I could ever demand anything of you."
