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“I can, and I intend to.”

“This isn’t a business acquisition, Nikolai. I’m not a company you’re folding into your portfolio for tax purposes.”

“I’m aware of exactly who you are.” The words came out sharper than I’d intended, and I watched her flinch slightly at the heat in them.

“I don’t belong in your world,” she said, quieter now, the anger giving way to something closer to genuine fear. “Marrying you doesn’t protect me. It makes me a bigger target. Every enemy you’ve ever made becomes my problem the second I have your name.”

“You already have my problems. You’ve had them since the night you stood in my office.” I crossed the room slowly, giving her the space to retreat if she needed it, though she didn’t. “The difference now is whether you face them with my full protection or without it.”

“That’s not the real reason you’re asking, is it?” She asked the question carefully, watching my face the way I’d watched hers a hundred times over these past weeks, reading whatever I was trying not to show. “There’s something else.”

I hadn’t intended to say it. The admission sat in my chest for a long moment before I let it surface. It was an honesty I rarely permitted myself.

“I can’t lose you.” The words sounded strange in my own mouth. “Whatever this is between us, whatever mess we’ve made of each other, I am not prepared to watch Graham take you from me. That isn’t a strategy. That’s the truth.”

“Why?” she asked quietly. “Why do you care this much? After… everything.”

I found myself without an answer for the first time in longer than I could remember. Every explanation I reached for felt inadequate, too small for whatever had actually happened between us since the night she’d first lied to my face. I could have told her it was obsession. I could have told her it was the thrill of a woman who’d matched me at every turn instead of folding the way everyone else did. But neither felt right, and I refused to hand her half a truth simply because the whole of it unsettled me. The silence stretched long enough that I watched her notice it.

“It’s the smartest solution available,” I said instead, retreating into the practical framing I understood better than whatever the honest answer actually was. “Marriage protects you. It protects the family. It closes off Graham’s easiest angle of attack.”

She studied me for a long moment, and I watched her catch exactly what I’d done.

“The wedding happens,” I said, closing the space between us. “Soon. Publicly. I’m not giving Graham the luxury of time to plan around this.”

“Nikolai—”

“I am not asking you, Camila,” I said plainly, without cruelty. “I have watched too many things slip past my control in the last month, and I refuse to let you be one of them. Not to Graham. You are staying exactly where I can protect you, and if that requires my name, then you will have my name.”

She stared at me, something complicated moving behind her eyes—fear, anger, and underneath both, something that looked almost like the same helpless want I’d been fighting since the night she first walked into my office.

“This is insane,” she said again. But her tone was even quieter this time, sounding less like an argument and more like she was finally accepting what was already decided.

I didn’t answer. I simply watched her absorb the reality settling over her—that regardless of whatever protest she raised tonight, she was about to become Mrs. Nikolai Golovin.

I could also, at least, agree inwardly that some part of me had wanted this outcome longer than I’d been willing to admit to myself.

Chapter Seventeen

Camila

Val zipped the back of my dress with hands steadier than mine, humming something under her breath. I stood in front of the mirror, trying to reconcile the woman looking back at me with anything I understood about my life two weeks ago. Outside the suite, I could hear the faint murmur of the small crowd gathering, chairs being arranged, and someone testing a microphone and apologizing for the feedback.

The gown itself had been Val’s doing. It was simple ivory silk, with no beading and no train long enough to trip over. She had reportedly selected it from three options in an afternoon of frantic phone calls because we hadn’t had time for anything more elaborate. She’d sworn it would fit perfectly without a single alteration. And it did.

“You look beautiful,” she said, meeting my eyes in the reflection. “And absolutely terrified.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only to someone who’s been exactly where you’re standing.” She smoothed a stray hair off my shoulder, with that same warmth she’d shown me the very first week we’d met on the casino floor, back before any of this had started. “For what it’s worth, I’ve known Nikolai for a few years, and he’s never looked at anyone the way he looks at you.”

I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I said nothing.

Bianca arrived twenty minutes before the ceremony, mascara already smudged despite her best efforts, and pulled me into a hug tight enough to nearly wrinkle the dress Val had just finished smoothing.

“Two weeks, Cami.” Her voice cracked slightly. “Just two weeks ago you were asking me for the phone number of a sketchy betting ex, and now you’re marrying a man who owns half the Strip. I don’t even know what questions to ask anymore.”

“I know how it looks to everyone watching.”