Page 27 of Marrying the Savage

I look like a dream.

I feel like a body being prepared for burial.

Anya stands behind me, unusually quiet. That worries me more than tears would.

“You look beautiful,” she says.

I meet her eyes in the mirror. “Don’t.”

Her mouth trembles, but she catches it. “Fine. You look expensive.”

“Better.”

“You look like you could still run if you took the heels off.”

That almost breaks me.

I grip the edge of the vanity. For one wild second, I imagine it. Tearing the veil out. Kicking off the shoes. Running down the service stairs, through the back garden, into one of the cars, out of the city, out of my name.

Then the door opens. My uncle enters, and the room straightens around him.

Sergei Antonov stops just inside the doorway and looks at me. For a moment, something moves across his face that might have been tenderness in another man. In him, it’s gone too quickly to trust.

“You look like your mother,” he says.

The words hurt more than I expect.

I stand slowly. “Did she look this happy on her wedding day?”

Anya’s eyes close.

My uncle’s expression hardens, but not completely. There is something tired in him today. Something almost human. “Sofia.”

“No,” I say softly. “Don’t say my name like that today.”

His jaw tightens. For once, he doesn’t scold me.

He only offers his arm.

I stare at it.

This is the man who raised me. The man who protected me. The man who chose this marriage. The man who has loved me, maybe, in whatever limited and twisted way men like him can love anything without trying to own it.

I take his arm.

Because the doors are already closing behind me.

The church is full. That’s the first thing I notice.

Every pew is packed with Bratva royalty, old money, new money, men with guarded eyes, women in jewels, soldiers pretending to be guests, guests pretending not to notice the soldiers. White flowers spill from the ends of the pews. Candles burn along the aisle. The air smells of roses, incense, and too many expensive perfumes fighting for dominance.

The music begins, and everyone turns.

For half a second, the attention hits me so hard I almost stop walking.

Then my uncle’s hand tightens slightly over mine.

Not comforting. A reminder.