Something flickers in his eyes. “How much time?”
“I don’t know.” Forever sounds more accurate but impossible to ask for.
“We’ll see,” he says. Which is not agreement but not refusal either.
It’s the best I’m going to get.
I nod slowly, feeling the weight of it settle into my bones. This is happening. This is real.
I’m going to marry Aleksandr Sharov.
Chapter Fourteen - Aleksandr
The meeting with Walter Lawrence happens on the second day of preparations.
He arrives at a neutral location, a restaurant I own, closed to the public, guarded at every entrance. He comes alone despite my invitation to bring counsel. Either he’s too broke to afford good lawyers or too broken to care about legal protection.
Probably both.
I’m already seated when he enters, nursing coffee I haven’t touched. He looks smaller than I expected. Diminished. The kind of defeat that settles into a man’s bones when power bleeds away and leaves only the shell of who he used to be.
“Mr. Sharov.” He extends his hand. I don’t take it.
“Sit.”
He does, movements stiff. Uncomfortable in his own skin.
I study him while he settles. This is the man who betrayed the Bratva, who cooperated with authorities, who thought he could walk away clean from the kind of associations that don’t allow clean exits.
This is Elena’s father. The man who kept her at arm’s length, who treated her like an embarrassment rather than an asset, who’s about to sell her to his enemy without a fight.
“You know why you’re here,” I say.
“Yes.” His voice is rough. “My daughter. The… marriage.”
“Your daughter broke into my facility, stole operational data, and put herself completely at my mercy. Marriage is how I’m choosing to resolve that situation.”
“I understand.”
Does he?I wonder. Does he understand what he’s handing over? What I’m taking?
“The terms are simple,” I continue. “Elena becomes my wife. In exchange, I stabilize what remains of the Lawrence holdings. Not destroy them, not absorb them completely, but bring them under my authority. You maintain nominal control, answer to me on major decisions, and your businesses survive.”
He nods slowly. “What will you do if I refuse?”
“Then I continue the current trajectory. Complete financial collapse within weeks. Your family name becomes a cautionary tale. Your assets are carved up and distributed among people who won’t be as generous as I’m being now.”
“Generous.” He laughs, bitter and hollow. “You’re forcing my daughter into marriage and calling it generous.”
“I’m offering her protection. Offering your family survival. Generous might be the wrong word, but it’s accurate compared to your alternatives.”
Silence stretches between us. He stares at the table, processing, calculating whether resistance gains him anything.
It doesn’t. We both know it doesn’t.
“She’s always been difficult,” he says finally. “Elena is too stubborn. Too smart for her own good. I tried to… guide her, but she never listened.”
“She shouldn’t have had to be guided. She should have been valued.”
