I smile appreciatively, but after the way I submitted myself so wholly to the stranger last night- the stranger that would no doubt tease my dreams for eternity- I wonder if that is true. Because whoever this man I’m marrying is, I doubt he will ever be able to please me the way my mystery man did.
Chapter Six
Kirill
Two Months Later
“Would you stop?” I snap.
My younger brother by five years, Pyotr, shoots me a glare, but he drops his hands from the wreck of the bowtie, and lifts his sculpted chin. I reach out, untangle the mess Pyotr has made around his neck, and form the fine black cloth into a perfect bow.
We’re standing together in the groom's room inside of the elegant and holy monument that is the Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral. In moments, we will walk into the worship hall and take our places on the stage, where he will marry, and I will be the best man. Not for love, but for an alliance.
“There,” I grumble, finishing off my work with a slap to my brother’s chest. “Don’t mess with it anymore. I don’t want to have to fix it again.”
Once more Pyotr sets his ice blue eyes into a glare toward me, but he shoves his hands into the pockets of his black tuxedo trousers at my warning.
“I hate you for this, you know,” Pyotr states. “This is not what I thought you had in mind when I was coming back to the family.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have been so taken off guard if you had chosen to stay with Papa and me instead of going with Mom,” I retort coldly.
Pyotr’s attempt to punch me was fast, but I'm faster, and catch my brother’s fist well before it gets close to my face.
“Don’t talk about her,” Pyotr snarls. “You and Papa abandoned her when she needed you the most. You don’t get to talk about her!”
I grit my teeth as I shove Pyotr’s fist back down.
“What she needed was real, professional help, Pyotr, not a young son she could manipulate,” I reply. “You’re mad, and I get that, but Papa and I aren’t the ones in the wrong here. You’re the one that made the wrong choice.”
I see the glaring hatred in Pyotr’s eyes, but instead of getting offended by it, I inhale sharply and let my temper cool. It wasn’t Pyotr’s fault that our mother lost her mind. It was gone long before either of us were born; she was just good at hiding it.
When she couldn’t play pretend anymore, though, and our father commanded her to the asylum, it was fourteen-year-old Pyotr that stopped the enrollment and instead begged our father to let him take care of her. After much shouting and threats, our father, Gregori, relented.
He bought a grand house for Pyotr and Ivanka in Cold Spring, gave them a monthly allowance, and even hired an assistant to get their groceries, drive them places, help clean the house. The only thing that Gregori wanted in return was a quiet divorce and to never be involved again.
At the time I suspected that Pyotr thought he’d been handed a great deal, but now that years have passed and our mother’s condition has worsened, I often wonder if Pyotr was truly mad at us, or if he faced some rather vicious horrors with our mother that to this day Pyotr refuses to talk about.
I only know about the “big incident” eighteen months ago. The one that left Pyotr stabbed and our mother being legally confined to the Adirondacks Mental Institution and Hospital, where she still lives. No longer able to care for our mother, and with our father lost to a heart attack just two months before Ivanka’s confinement, Pyotr had returned to me, looking to be brought back not just into our family, but “the family.”
Though we didn’t know each other anymore, I felt as if I had no choice but to allow my brother back into the fold, and did everything I could to make the transition smooth. The problem was, Pyotr had a raging chip on his shoulder, and quickly became known to cause more problems than he solved.
Which was why, when Yulian Fillipovich Shabalin, the head of one of the New York families, came to me for an alliance three months ago, I commanded Pyotr to accept. It was my hope that marriage and having a solid duty to the Pavlovich and Shabalin clans would temper my brother’s rage, and that he’d find peace.
Now though, as I help my brother prepare for the wedding that will align the families, I worry that I’ve made a terrible mistake.
“You’re right,” I answer calmly, holding my hands up in surrender. “I don’t. But today isn’t about Mom. It’s about you, and the allegiance you’re showing to me and the family by going through with this wedding. You wanted to prove you were able to take on more responsibility? This is how you do it, Pyotr.”
Pyotr’s scowl deepens, but he nods.
“Have you seen this daughter anyway?” he then asked, turning to inspect himself once more in the mirror.
I let out a breath of relief, grateful that my brother has changed the subject, and shake my head.
“No, I haven’t,” I reply. “But it doesn’t matter what she looks like. What matters is the alliance the two of you represent.”
“So you say,” Pyotr grunts, running a hand over his freshly shaven cheeks, “You’re not the one that has to sleep with her. God, I hope she isn’t ugly.”
I feel the chastising words well up in my throat, but I stop them by pressing my lips tightly together, and give him a terse nod. There are some things I can teach Pyotr. But there are many more that I can’t. Not after what he went through with our mother. Manners, sadly, was one of the many lessons I had not been able to force upon my little brother.
