"I'm going to give you everything," I tell her stomach. Tell the tiny life growing inside her. "Both of you. Everything you've ever wanted. Everything I never knew I needed."
Lily pulls me close. Kisses me softly.
"You already have," she says.
We stay on the bathroom floor, holding each other, crying and laughing and planning a future neither of us ever dared to dream about.
For thirty-eight years, I believed love was destruction.
I was wrong.
Love is this. Love isher.
And I'm never letting go.
7
Lily
The dress is white silk.
I stare at myself in the mirror, barely recognizing the woman looking back. Four months ago, I was standing on an auction block in a slip dress, waiting to be sold. Now I'm standing in a penthouse bedroom in a wedding gown, waiting to marry the man who saved me.
The dress is simple—Leonid offered to buy me anything I wanted, flew in designers from New York and Paris, but I chose this. A soft A-line that skims my body, delicate lace at the neckline, a subtle empire waist that accommodates the small swell of my stomach.
I'm twelve weeks pregnant. Just starting to show.
My hand drifts to the bump, the way it does a hundred times a day now. There's a baby in there.Ourbaby. A tiny heartbeat we heard for the first time last week, fast and strong, filling the ultrasound room with the sound of our future.
Leonid cried. Tried to hide it, failed completely. I have the ultrasound photo tucked into my bouquet.
"You ready?"
I turn. Dimitri Volkov stands in the doorway—the Pakhan himself, here to walk me down the aisle because I have no one else. When Leonid asked him, I'd expected him to refuse. Instead, he'd looked at me for a long moment, then nodded.
"She makes you soft," he'd told Leonid. "But soft isn't always weak. Sometimes it's what keeps us human."
Now he offers me his arm, and I take it.
"Thank you," I say quietly. "For doing this."
"Leonid is my brother in all the ways that matter." His voice is formal, but not unkind. "His happiness is important to me. And you—" He pauses. "You've given him something I never thought he'd have."
"What's that?"
"Hope."
***
The ceremony is on the rooftop terrace.
Leonid wanted something private. No grand cathedral, no hundreds of guests. Just us, a handful of Bratva witnesses, and the Severny Harbor skyline spread out behind us like a promise.
The sun is setting as Dimitri leads me through the glass doors. The sky is painted in shades of gold and pink, and for a moment I can't breathe—not because of the view, but because of the man waiting for me at the end of the aisle.
Leonid.
He's wearing a dark suit, perfectly tailored, his silver hair swept back from his face. His ice-blue eyes find mine the moment I step outside, and something in his expression cracks open. Raw. Vulnerable.Wrecked.
