"I see you, Stefania Orlova."
She goes still. Completely, absolutely still. The kind of stillness that isn't calm but is the half-second before a decision is made. Fight or flight or something in between.
Then her shoulders drop. Just slightly. Just enough that I feel the tension leave her body like a breath she's been holding since she walked through the doors.
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to.
I pull back and look at her face. Her expression hasn't changed. The composure is intact, the mask is perfect, and no one watching would notice anything different.
But her eyes have shifted. Something behind them that wasn't there thirty seconds ago.
She sees me too.
She just doesn't know what to do about it yet.
I take her hand. Her fingers are cold and her grip is light and I fold my hand around hers and hold it the way you hold something valuable. Firm enough that she knows I'm not letting go.
We turn to face the chapel. The housekeeper is crying quietly into her tissue. The brothers are standing because apparently that's what you do when your sister gets married off for political gain. Artem catches my eye and gives me a look that tells me to stay in line.
The woman at the end of the last pew, the one I don't recognize, is watching Stefania with an expression I can't quite read.
Jess Calloway. The trainer. She came to the wedding.
That tells me something too. Stefania has at least one person in her life who cares about her as a person and not as a chess piece. One person who sees past the name and the family and the role.
Two, now.
I tighten my grip on my wife's hand and walk her down the aisle.
Stefania
I see you.
Three words that have been sitting in my chest like a splinter for the last two hours.
The reception is small. A dining room in the main house on the Orlov estate, a long table, white flowers someone picked from the gardens, which I find oddly endearing. I sit at Yevgeny's right and I eat food I can't taste and I smile when people speak to me and the whole time those words are running on a loop behind my eyes.
I see you, Stefania Orlova.
What does he think he sees? Because there are layers to that sentence and every one of them terrifies me in a different way. If he means it the way most men mean it, as a compliment, a possessive little claim wrapped in charm, then it's nothing. A line. Something he rehearsed on his way to the chapel.
But the way he said it. Low and deliberately just for me...his mouth against my ear like he was telling me a secret he'd been carrying for weeks. That wasn't a line. That was a statement of fact. And the part of me that has spent six years hiding in plain sight heard it for exactly what it was.
A warning. Or an invitation.
"You're quiet."
I look up. The woman to my left is smiling at me. Warm face, kind eyes, dark hair pulled back in a loose twist. Lena. Yevgeny's younger sister. She's been trying to talk to me since we sat down and I've been giving her just enough to be polite without giving her anything real.
"It's been a long day," I say.
"It has." She reaches for her wine glass. "For what it's worth, Yevgeny is a good man. I know that doesn't mean much coming from his sister, but it's true. He's quiet. Private. But he's steady. He won't hurt you."
I almost laugh. She thinks I'm afraid of being hurt. She thinks the tight set of my jaw and the careful distance I'm keeping from her brother are the signs of a nervous bride worried about her wedding night.
She's not entirely wrong. But the thing I'm afraid of isn't pain.
"Thank you," I say. "That means a lot."
