Page 9 of Marrying the Savage

I take the last bite of my dessert, letting the chocolate melt on my tongue while I stare at the invitation card.

Damir Volodin. At my wedding.

Dmitri would lose his mind.

My uncle might lose whatever remains of his patience.

And for the first time all afternoon, the wedding doesn’t feel like a funeral.

It feels like an opportunity.

3

DAMIR

Sergei Antonov looks older than the last time I saw him.

Not weak. Never that. Men like Sergei don’t age into weakness; they age into something harder, something dried out and preserved by spite. His hair has gone nearly silver at the sides, his face leaner than it used to be, but the hatred in his eyes is exactly as I remember it.

I button my glove as I walk out of the restaurant, feeling the weight of the room follow me until the doors close behind us and the winter air cuts through the polished warmth of the entrance hall. My men fall into formation around me without instruction.

I was also surprised to see Dmitri there; I had no idea Sergei was associating with his family. The boy has all the restraint of a match near gasoline. His family is no better.

Outside, the city is gray beneath a low afternoon sky. Cars slide past the curb. A woman in a fur-trimmed coat hurries across the pavement with her phone tucked beneath her chin, laughing at something that has nothing to do with bloodlines, territory, or old vendettas.

Lucky woman.

My driver opens the rear door of the Bentley, but I don’t get in at once. I stand beside the car, looking through the restaurant windows, though from here I can no longer see the private room.

I should be thinking about Sergei. About the insult of seeing him seated comfortably at lunch, alive and expensive and smug after everything his family helped burn down. I should be thinking about Dmitri Sokolov too, about his cheap arrogance and the way he speaks like a boy who has never paid personally for any of his own threats.

Instead, I am thinking about the girl. Sofia.

Sokolov said her name with the careless possession of a man naming something already purchased. My fiancée.

I dislike the sound of it.

That reaction is inconvenient, so I set it aside. Not because it’s gone, but because I have survived this long by understanding which thoughts deserve attention and which ones must be locked behind a door until they become useful.

Still, the image remains. The girl in the pale blue dress, sitting between Sergei Antonov and Dmitri Sokolov like a prisoner placed carefully between two guards. Young. Too young for that table. Too young for Sokolov’s smug hand closing over her future. She can’t be more than twenty-four. Perhaps twenty-five.

There is softness in her face, but not weakness. That’s what holds my attention longer than beauty. Beauty is common enough in rooms where men trade women like symbols. But her expression is not common. She watches too much. Feels too much. Shows more than she should, then catches herself half a second too late.

Anger sits in her like a flame under glass. And when Sokolov speaks, she looks as if she is imagining several ways to bury him with the dessert spoon.

A foolish girl, perhaps. Or simply one who has reached the end of her patience.

“Boss.” Mikhail’s voice comes from my right.

I glance at him. “What?”

He studies me with the caution of a man who has known me long enough to recognize when I’m no longer looking at what is in front of me. Mikhail Lebedev is my second because he knows when to speak, when to stay silent, and when to offer information before I ask for it.

“So it’s not just a rumor,” he says simply.

For the past month, there have been whispers about Sergei Antonov moving pieces quietly. Meetings at private clubs. Sokolov men seen near Antonov warehouses. Money shifting through old channels that went cold years ago. Nothing confirmed. Nothing clean enough to act on.

In our world, rumors are usually either bait or smoke. Sometimes both.