Alber Savitsky stops at the front row. He places Tanya's hand in mine, and the contact is a live wire. Her fingers are cool against my palm. Steady. She doesn't tremble. She doesn't hesitate.
But when I close my hand around hers, I feel the faintest twitch of her pulse against my finger. Fast. Faster than her composure would suggest.
She's not as calm as she wants me to believe.
I lean in, just close enough that only she can hear me.
"You look beautiful, Tanya."
Her chin lifts a fraction. She doesn't look at me. Her voice is barely a murmur, cool and controlled and almost perfect.
"Don't."
I hold her hand a little tighter, and I don't let go.
Tanya
I survive the wedding by doing what I've always done. I perform.
I say the vows in a voice that doesn't waver. I hold Aidan's hand without flinching when the officiant tells us we're bound in matrimony. I stand beside him for photographs on the lawn with my chin raised and my spine straight and a smile that looks real enough to fool everyone except possibly me.
And possibly him.
He doesn't push. That's the thing about Aidan that unsettles me more than anything else. A different man would have gloated. Would have leaned into the power of the moment, used the ceremony to remind me who holds the cards now. But Aidan just stands beside me, steady and quiet, his hand warm against the small of my back when we turn for the camera, and he doesn't say a single word that isn't necessary.
He doesn't need to. The way he looks at me says everything.
I catch it once, during the reception, when I'm standing at the edge of the ballroom with a glass of champagne I haven't sipped. He's across the room talking to his brother, his jacket unbuttoned, his posture relaxed in that deceptive way of his that makes people think he's at ease when he's actually tracking everything. His gaze finds mine over Liam's shoulder, and it holds. He looks at me like he's looking at something he's been waiting to see and now that it's here, he's in no rush.
I look away first.
The reception blurs after that. Toasts I don't remember. Conversations I navigate on autopilot. My father shakes Aidan's hand and says something about honor and legacy, and I stand beside them and think about how two years ago this man called me a whore. Part of me enjoys the fact that my father will never know he has married me to the very man who ruined me.
A woman approaches me with a smile and an easy confidence that that makes me suspicious. Her dark auburn hair is pulled in a chignon, greying at the temples. She is wearing a deep green dress and the most delicate diamonds in her ears. And I am wholly unprepared for the way she looks at me.
Like I'm a whole person.
"Tanya," she says, and my name sounds different in her mouth. Softer. "Welcome to the family, sweetheart. I'm Saoirse." She takes both my hands in hers and squeezes them. "You must be exhausted. Weddings are beautiful and completely draining, I just wanted to introduce myself and say hello."
I open my mouth and nothing comes out.
This isn't what I prepared for. I prepared for scrutiny. For the cool assessment of a Bratva matriarch evaluating whether the new bride meets her standards. I prepared to be measured and found adequate, or less than, the way my own mother measured everyone and everything.
I certainly didn’t prepare for the wordsweetheartdelivered like it costs nothing to give in a warm, Irish-tinged, accent.
"Thank you," I manage. My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
Saoirse smiles and pats my arm like we've known each other for years. She talks about Iris and how happy she is since Liamand Killian got married, as she no longer feels out numbered. Then she says the thing that kicks me straight in the gut.
“I’m so grateful to have you join our family.” She delivers this after taking my hands in hers, looking me right in the eye and smiling in such a way that the corners of hers are crinkled. Then another woman, who I assume to be Aidan’s sister, appears and breaks the moment with a tongue in cheek comment about one of the men on the catering staff. Saoirse rolls her eyes good naturedly, dropping my hands and pulling Iris away, back into the crowd.
By the time we leave, the sun is low and the champagne has gone. My face aches from smiling.
A black car is waiting on the gravel drive. Aidan opens the door for me without being asked, and I gather the ridiculous volume of my skirt and slide inside. The leather is cool against my bare shoulders. He gets in beside me, and the door closes, and suddenly the noise of the reception is gone and it's just the two of us in the quiet dark of the back seat.
The driver pulls away. Gravel crunches beneath the tires and then smooths into asphalt, and the estate shrinks in the rear window until the iron gates swallow it whole.
I don't look back. There's nothing to look back at. That house was never a home. It was a stage, and I've just finished my final act.
