The words come out sharper than I intend. My father pauses.
"The council proposed the match…" my father says slowly, eyeing me over the rim of his glasses.
That's not the same thing, and we both know it, but I don't press. I can't press, because pressing means admitting that the distinction matters, and it doesn't. It can't.
Except my hands are shaking beneath the desk where he can't see them.
Aidan requested me. Which means this isn't a political convenience for him. This isn't the council placing chess pieces on a board. This is a man collecting something he decided was his two years ago, and using the mandate as his justification.
Fury swells in my chest. But beneath the fury, in the place where I keep the things I refuse to look at, something else stirs. Something warm and unwanted that feels exactly like the way his hands felt on my skin in a dark hotel room when I thought I was the one in control.
I wasn't. I see that now. I walked into that bar thinking I was using him, and he let me believe it. He gave me exactly what I came for and then some, and he did it with the patience of a man who already knew we'd end up here.
I hate him for that.
I hate that he was right.
"Fine," I say, and my voice is ice. "I'll sign."
My father nods, satisfied, and reaches for his whiskey.
I stand, smooth my dress, and walk out of his study with my spine straight and my chin raised, and I don't let my composure crack until I'm behind my own locked door. Then I press my back against it, close my eyes, and let out a breath that shakes all the way through me.
Aidan Orlov.
The man I chose to ruin myself with is the man I'm going to marry.
The worst part is how a small, treacherous part of me isn't surprised at all. It’s hopeful.
Aidan
Friday morning, and the sky is the kind of pale, washed-out blue that makes everything look like a photograph.
I stand at the window of the guest suite the Savitsky’s assigned me and adjust my cufflinks. The estate stretches out below in manicured green, the gardens trimmed to razor precision, the gravel driveway lined with black cars that arrived before dawn. Family only, but in the Bratva, family is a loose and political word.
This is her world. The one she wants to leave.
Alber Savitsky insisted on hosting. Tradition, he said. The bride's family provides the venue, the ceremony, the reception. It's an old custom, one the council will lap up, and Alber leaned into with the kind of enthusiasm that told me this was never about tradition. It was about control. About proving to everyone in attendance that the Savitsky’s are still powerful enough to give a daughter away on their own terms, even when the match was made by someone else's hand.
I let him have it. The venue doesn't matter to me. The guest list doesn't matter. The flowers and the music and the crystal glasses lined up on white-clothed tables in a ballroom I walked through an hour ago…none of it matters. What matters is the woman who's somewhere in this house right now, getting ready to walk toward me and say words she thinks are just a formality.
They're not. Not for me.
I turn from the window and check my reflection. Dark suit. White shirt. The tie Katya told me to wear because apparently it makes my eyes lookfriendlier.Whatever that means. I think I look the same as I always do. Contained. The kind of man people underestimate because quiet gets mistaken for passive, and still gets mistaken for empty.
I’m neither of those things. I’ve never been either of those things. I am simply a man who learned early that the loudest person in the room is rarely the most dangerous one.
Prague taught me that.
Or rather, Prague confirmed what I already knew.
Two years ago. The Dubovich summit. Three days of meetings and dinners and the kind of careful political theatre that keeps the Bratva running without tearing itself apart. I'd seen Tanya at a dozen events before that one. Watched her move through rooms like she was made of glass and steel, beautiful and untouchable and so perfectly composed that most men didn't even bother trying.
I wasn't most men. I was the man who noticed the way her composure slipped, just barely, when she thought no one was looking. A breath held too long. A jaw clenched a fraction too tight. The way her gaze would drift to the nearest exit and linger there like she was calculating the distance.
She wanted out. I could see it. And instead of making me lose interest, it made me want to be the reason she stayed.
But I didn't approach her. Not once in all those years of shared rooms and crossed paths and the low, constant pull of her presence at the edge of my awareness. I waited. Because Tanya Savitskaya is not a woman you chase. She's a woman youlet come to you, and if she never does, you learn to live with the ache.
