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The ceremony had barely concluded before the nave filled with noise. People surged forward—the Bratva contingent first, as they always were, moving with the enthusiasm of men who had been standing still and silent for too long. My brother got to me before anyone else and pulled me into an embrace that had more force behind it than was strictly necessary for the occasion.
“Get off me,” I said.
He didn’t immediately. Neither did the three men behind him.
I extracted myself with less patience than I might otherwise have shown and turned to find the rest of them forming a disorganised queue of congratulation—bear hugs, back slaps, remarks I didn’t dignify. The cathedral, which had been cold and ceremonial thirty minutes ago, was now loud and warm with bodies and the smell of melting candle wax and men who had been drinking since this morning.
It was her parents who cleared the noise without meaning to.
Leonid and Vera moved forward carrying the ceremonial bread and salt—the traditional blessing, the welcome into the family, the performance of warmth that the occasion required. Vera was smiling. Leonid was squared up with pride. Behind them, someone had produced the glasses for the final element of the rite.
Iskra took both glasses before anyone had extended them to her.
And smashed them. Not one—both. On the stone floor, at her parents’feet, in the echo of a cathedral that had very good acoustics for that sort of thing. The sound rang out across the nave and the noise dropped and every head turned and Leonid and Vera stood in the settling fragments with their expressions suspended somewhere between shock and the beginning of understanding.
Iskra looked at them with complete composure.
The silence lasted several seconds.
“Weren’t you supposed to break one of those?” Valentin murmured beside me.
He had appeared from somewhere in the middle of the gathering—Valentin rarely attended events of this nature, his time being valuable enough that he selected his appearances with care. He was watching the scene with the measured attention he brought to financial irregularities.
“Hm,” I said.
“Get her out of here,” my father said, appearing at my other side, his voice low and tight with the specific displeasure of a man whose performance has been disrupted. He was already turning away, already moving toward Leonid to begin whatever management that situation required.“And keep a close eye on her,” he added, directed at me without looking back.
Valentin watched him go.
“What was all that about?” he asked.
“No idea,” I said.
Iskra had stepped forward and was grinding the heel of her shoe into what remained of the glasses with a thoroughness that suggested she wanted to be certain.
I watched her for a moment.
Psychotic. Entirely mine. And apparently determined to make that fact as complicated as possible from the first minute of the marriage.
I didn’t need my father’s advice on how to manage my own wife. I had been handling difficult situations since before he decided to make this one my problem.
“Time to go,” I said, and moved to collect her before she found something else to destroy in a house of God.
Chapter 8
Iskra
My anger kept the heartbreak at bay. The moment I felt the sadness begin to creep up on me I latched onto the fury—years of it, accumulated and reliable, the only currency I had left. A simple glance at Galina’s smug face across the cathedral was enough to keep the tears from coming. She had wanted this for me. Not the marriage—the humiliation of it. The proof that Papa’s favouritism had delivered me somewhere worse than where it had delivered her.
I was mid-thought about exactly what I wanted to do about that when Vadim’s hand closed around my forearm.
He frogmarched me toward the door with the brisk efficiency of a man removing an inconvenience. I grabbed the front of my dress with my free hand and hauled it up before it took my feet out from under me. Beneath us, the remaining glass shards cracked and scattered—a sound that was still, even now, deeply satisfying.
The cold hit my face as we came through the doors.
“Have you finished with your temper tantrum?” he asked.
