I sit and pour a drink. “Get to the point.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Marry Alena.”
I stop. Then I laugh once. “No.”
“You need a wife. You need public support. You need a family alliance strong enough to shut your father up. Alena solves all three.”
“Alena is poison.”
“Alena is useful.”
“She’s his solution, not mine.”
“She’s a solution,” he says. “That’s more than you’ve got right now.”
I drink.
He keeps going. “Your father made the will public. Investors are nervous. Your people are nervous. Men are leaving because they think you’re cornered and too distracted to fix it.”
I look at him. “Distracted.”
“Yes,” he says. “That.”
I know what he means.
Zatanna.
Eight months, and I still think about her every day. Not in a vague way. Not in a memory that fades. I think about her when I wake up. When I look at a report. When someone says marriage. When another woman sits across from me and says all the right things and I feel nothing.
That is the real problem.
Every woman since her has felt wrong.
Not bad. Not ugly. Not unqualified.
Just… wrong.
Ilya watches me for a second. “You haven’t moved on.”
I say nothing.
He nods once. “Right.” Then he says the part that irritates me more than the rest. “I saw her, Aleksei. She wasn’t extraordinary. Pretty enough, sure, but plain. Younger than you by a lot. You’ve had better.”
I put the glass down hard enough to crack the base.
His expression changes immediately. He saw that. Then he smiles. “Wow,” he says. “You really are that far gone.”
“Careful.”
“No,” he says. “You be careful. Because if your father sees even half of what I just saw, he’ll use it.”
“He already tried.”
“And you still haven’t accepted what that means.”
I get up and go to the window because if I stay too close to him, I may hit him just to shut him up.
He follows anyway. “Why not marry her, then?” he asks.
