Page 17 of Marrying the Pakhan

“That’s the reaction I was hoping for. Relief, not anger.”

“I’m still processing the anger part. Give it a minute.” But she’s still smiling, so I let myself believe her. “So if you’re not a dancer, what exactly are you? Because owning a club that pays that well for stage work isn’t exactly a small operation.”

“My family had money, going back a generation or two. I built the club myself, expanded from there into a few other business interests over the years.” I keep it vague, true in its outline without filling in the parts that would frighten her before she’s ready to hear them. “It’s a longer conversation than a park bench really allows. I promise you’ll get the fuller version eventually.”

“That’s fair.” She studies me a moment, weighing the vagueness, and apparently decides to let it go for now. “Thank you for telling me the dancer part, at least. That one was genuinely stressing me out.”

“You could have just asked.”

“I didn’t want to seem rude about your job. I was raised better than that.”

I laugh, real and unguarded, and for a moment the entire weight of the morning, Kazan, Dimitri’s warnings, the wedding looming three days out, all of it goes quiet under the simple fact of sitting on a park bench with a woman who’s relieved to learn I’m not a stripper and Ginger shrieking with joy on a swing a few feet away.

“Higher!” Ginger yells, and I get up to push her, because apparently that’s the job now, and I find I don’t mind it at all.

7

HARPER

I wake up thinking about the fact that my future husband isn’t a stripper, which is possibly the strangest sentence I’ve ever thought before my alarm’s even gone off.

I lie there a minute longer, turning it over. Viktor Markov, club owner, not club employee, a man whose family apparently had money going back a generation, who built something real out of that inheritance instead of just living off it. It changes the shape of everything I thought I understood about the man I’m marrying in two days.

I could spend the whole morning on that thought if I let myself. I don’t let myself.

Today’s a long day: Denise at eleven, work after, and there isn’t room in any of it for sitting in bed reprocessing a man’s entire financial history. That’s a problem for another morning, one where I don’t have three separate things demanding my attention before nine.

I get up, get dressed, and by the time I’m out the door I’ve mostly managed to file Viktor’s apparent wealth into the same drawer where I keep everything else about him I don’t fully understand yet, filed but not forgotten, waiting for a calmer day to actually examine.

Denise’s office smells the same as always: burnt coffee, the air freshener nobody’s replaced since spring, and she looks up from her desk with the particular focus she reserves for anything that isn’t a straightforward custody update.

“You said this was important,” she says. “Sit.”

I sit. “I have an actual date now. Thursday.”

Denise sets her pen down slowly, processing it with the same care she applies to everything. “To Viktor Markov.”

“To Viktor Markov.”

“You’re sure about this.”

“I’m sure about this,” I say it steadier than I actually feel, though the steadiness surprises me a little, how much I mean it despite everything I still don’t fully know about him. “I need your help making it official. The right way, not just a courthouse formality that falls apart the second anyone asks a real question.”

“Okay.” She pulls out a legal pad, all business now, the version of Denise I trust most. “Walk me through what you two have actually discussed.”

I tell her the plan as far as it exists. The wedding Thursday. Ginger and I moving into Viktor’s house afterward. A year, we’d agreed, roughly, though nothing’s been written down yet, just a shared understanding that this needs long enough to actually help the custody case without either of us being stuck in it forever.

“A year’s reasonable,” Denise says. “Long enough to look genuine to a judge, short enough that neither of you is trapped if it stops working. I’d want it in writing regardless. Verbal agreements between people who are also sleeping together tend to get complicated fast.”

“We’re not.” I stop myself, because we did kiss, and Denise raises an eyebrow like she already knew that before I opened my mouth.

“I’m your lawyer, Harper, not your mother. I don’t need details. I need terms.” She starts writing. “One year minimum, renewable by mutual agreement, dissolution requires thirty days’ written notice from either party, custody arrangement remains Harper’s regardless of marital status changes. Anything about finances I should know?”

“He said he’d cover the household. I wasn’t going to ask for anything beyond that.”

“You should ask for something beyond that. Not because you don’t trust him, because contracts exist for exactly the situations where trust turns out to be complicated later.” She keeps writing. “I’ll draft something reasonable.”

I let her handle it, because this is exactly why I hired her in the first place, and by the time we’re done, there’s an actual document taking shape, terms neither Viktor nor I had thought all the way through on our own.