Page 31 of Marrying the Savage

I noticed.

I notice everything when I want to.

I have thought of the way Sokolov said my fiancée, as if the words themselves had already chained her. I have thought of Sergei Antonov stepping in front of her, not like a guardian, but like a man protecting property he intends to spend.

Most of all, I have thought of the invitation. Someone placed my name on that envelope knowing exactly what it would do inside this church.

The driver opens my door.

Mikhail exhales once, then follows me out.

The church rises ahead of us in pale stone and stained glass, old and beautiful in the way powerful families prefer their lies to look. Bells ring overhead. Guests continue to slip inside, their faces carefully arranged, their jewels flashing, their guards lingering near the entrance.

Several men recognize me before I reach the doors. Their conversations stop. One of them takes a step back. Another reaches slowly for the phone inside his coat and freezes when Mikhail looks at him.

Good. Let them carry the news ahead of me.

By the time I enter, the ceremony is already in progress.

The inside of the church is full. Antonovs on one side. Sokolovs on the other. Allied families scattered like witnesses to a treaty. Soldiers stand along the walls with their hands folded in front of them, trying to appear ceremonial and failing. White flowers spill over the pews. Candles burn in long gold holders. The air smells of roses, incense, expensive perfume, and tension that has not yet learned it’s about to become fear.

At the front of the church, Dmitri Sokolov stands beside the bride.

Sofia.

The sight of her does something unpleasantly direct to my blood.

She is in white. Not the soft blue of the restaurant. Not the black dress I imagined her choosing if anyone had allowed her to dress like a woman with teeth. White silk, lace sleeves, a veil floating around her shoulders. The dress is beautiful because money has a talent for making captivity look sacred.

But she doesn’t look like Dmitri’s bride. She looks like a woman placed at the edge of a cliff and told to smile for the photograph.

Then she turns, and our eyes meet across the length of the aisle. Everything else narrows.

I expect fear. Perhaps surprise. Perhaps that quick flare of anger I saw in the restaurant. Instead, for one suspended second, Sofia Antonova looks relieved.

Not enough for anyone else to name it. But I see it.

The slight parting of her lips. The looseness that enters her shoulders for half a breath before she catches herself. The way her eyes fix on mine as if the church doors have opened and air has finally entered a room where she has been suffocating.

Relief.

That answers one question.

Not all of them. But enough.

The minister stops speaking. The silence spreads from the back of the church to the altar, row by row, like ink through water. Guests turn. Women stiffen. Men reach inside jackets. Someone whispers my name, and then another person repeats it, softer, as if saying it too loudly might draw my attention.

Sokolov’s face changes first. The pleasure drains from it, replaced by disbelief, then rage, then something closer to fear that his pride immediately tries to hide.

Sergei Antonov rises from the front pew. For the first time since I have known him, he doesn’t look controlled. He looks furious. His face goes dark, then red, the old veins standing out near his temple as he turns fully toward me.

“Volodin,” he roars, his voice tearing through the church. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Several women flinch at the sound. One gasps.

The soldiers along the walls move at once. Antonov men shift into the aisle, three of them stepping in front of Sofia and blocking her from my view. More rise near Sergei, hands beneath jackets, shoulders squared. Sokolov’s guards surge forward from the opposite side, not united with the Antonovs by trust, but by the simple instinct to stop the common enemy from reaching the altar.

Behind me, my own men enter the church. Mikhail comes to my right. Nikolai and Lev step to my left. The rest fan out behind us with quiet precision, black suits against old stone, hands ready but not yet drawn.