Chapter 3
the truth hurts
LEXI
Igaped at Nico, and then I snapped my mouth shut with a clack of my teeth that echoed in my skull. “I didn’t think you were going to tell him that.”
Nicolai shrugged, wincing. “Kostya is my brother. He’s the only family I have left.”
Konstantin was staring at me. “Wait, she’s the clown who was standing outside on the sidewalk last night?”
“I am not a clown,” I told him. “I’m a living statue. It’s performance art. A clown is supposed to be buffoonish. I’m more like eerie and skilled.”
His upper lip, lush just like Nicolai’s, lifted in a sneer. “Does standing still take a lot of skill?”
“Yes. And clowns don’t put greasepaint on their arms.”
“Yeah. Whatever.” Konstantin looked between the two of us. “That’s it? That’s what happened?”
Nicolai nodded.
I followed suit, even though my nod was an awkward bob and felt so tawdry.
It was actually very tawdry, so I added, “When he proposed, there were a lot of people around us, and some of them were talking about how they wanted to take advantage of the drunk guy who was flashing a big wad of cash. I scraped Nicolai up off the sidewalk and threw him in my car to get him away from them.”
“And that’s why you married him?” Konstantin demanded. “He dropped at your feet, and then you stumbled over a legally binding marriage license and accidentally fell into a church with a priest, where the pen stuck up your ass just happened to scrawl your name on the license?”
Nicolai warned, “Kostya, enough.”
Asshole. I straightened, and my hands filled with tremors.
“Nicolai kept insisting on the whole wedding thing. I thought it was okay to humor him because the marriage wouldn’t be legal unless we signed the license, which we didn’t do until this morning.
I wouldn’t sign it, and I kept pens away from him so he couldn’t, either.
I thought we could just tear up the unsigned license, and it would mean nothing. ”
Konstantin stared at me, his blue eyes like lasers, like a gun’s blue laser sights, targeting me.
Nicolai had never stared at me like that, with accusation, with malice.
Konstantin asked, his question as pointed as a rifle, “You thought getting married in a church didn’t count?”
I sighed, hard. “It didn’t count because we didn’t sign and notarize the license. I’m right, legally. I just didn’t understand the importance to him of the ceremony being Russian Orthodox.”
Konstantin gripped the arms of the chair, and I wondered if his fingernails were actually digging into what looked like beautiful leather, leaving half-moon cuts. He demanded of Nico, “Did Volkov put something in the vodka last night? Were you roofied?”
Nicolai shrugged. “You were drinking from the same bottle, and so was Volkov.”
“I held my liquor. At least, I didn’t end up married to some—”
Beside me, the bed released as Nicolai stood.
“—actress,” Konstantin finished.
Nicolai tugged his trousers on his thighs and sat beside me again.
“Part of the problem was that I had started drinking earlier in the day. I’d had a few cocktails and then a bottle of wine with John over supper, and then more whiskey at the bar, so I was already a bit wobbly when Michel dragged us over to meet with Volkov. ”
Konstantin ducked his head and mumbled, “I knew I should’ve punched you in the jaw and knocked you out last night. Jesus.”
Nicolai chuffed a dry laugh. “You would’ve tried. I’m far too willing to brawl when I’m knackered.”
Kostya growled from behind gritted teeth. “Have you called a divorce attorney yet?”
Nicolai’s burst of a glance at me, again checking in, felt more like we were mired in a conspiracy rather than him picking me out of a line-up.
“When we woke up married this morning, I realized that my already being married to someone else threw a spanner in Volkov’s plan to marry me to his daughter.
Thus, Lexi and I are going to stay married for a bit. ”
“You are fucking insane,” Konstantin announced.
Nicolai’s self-satisfied smirk was so cute that my heart dipped. “Not the first time someone’s accused me of that.”
Konstantin pointed at me like he was trying to fling his finger across the room. “What if she’s crazy? What if she turns out to be some nutcase who embarrasses you in public at every turn?”
Sadly, that was more likely than not. I had no idea how to behave around Nicolai’s brother, let alone his friends, let alone in public. Cinderella had probably embarrassed the Handsome Prince all the time, curtsying to the wrong people and laughing too loudly.
Konstantin lowered his voice. “What if she uses you and your position? She’s a street performer. Is she just one of those notorious fame-chasing influencers who will do anything outrageous for the clicks?”
That was . . . not a bad idea, actually.
Influencer was one of the few job titles I might be qualified for, now that I’d somehow been swept up into a rich and infamous lifestyle of the sorta-royalty and definitely wealthy, since I was going to have trouble finding a job without a reference from my ex’s parents’ construction company.
They would definitely be petty if someone called them for a reference for me.
Kostya kept interrogating Nico. “Did she livestream the wedding on her living-statue social media channel for the notoriety?”
“No,” I told him. “I don’t even have social media accounts for my act.
The church I used to belong to thought social media was sinful.
And I hadn’t had time to think through the whole busking thing.
I probably should have social media accounts for publicity for my living statue routine. I just don’t.”
Nicolai didn’t actually roll his eyes, but his side-eye was in the same ballpark. “She’s not crazy, Kostya, and we’re not ones to talk about mental illness. Mad King George of England is literally one of our several-greats grandfather, and I could go on.”
“What?” I couldn’t help myself. “I thought you said you were supposed to be the ruler of Russia, not the king of England.”
Nicolai lifted one hand and shrugged, a gesture of abject helplessness. “Royal families are all related to each other and horribly inbred. Anyone who is in line for one throne is probably in the lines of succession for four more, if you go far enough down the list.”
Konstantin was shaking his head, but he sank into the chair. “This is crazy. This is impossible. Why did you have a church wedding? That’s the horrifying part. Were there no Elvises available?”
“I should never have let you do it,” I said to Nico. “I should’ve torn up the license before the priest signed it or absolutely refused to sign it this morning, no matter how persuasive you were.”
Or how much I needed the money he’d promised me.
Yeah, now I figured out how to derail it.
Last night had been too hectic, and I’d literally been trying to keep Nicolai from tumbling into traffic.
That one time he’d stepped off the curb to hail a cab and nearly been mowed down by a lifted black pickup with a blazing rack of deer-hunting lights still haunted me.
He would’ve been splattered right at my feet.
Nicolai sighed. “It really is for the best, Kostya. It’ll get me out of that horror show Michel was trying to set up.”
He pressed his hand over my fingers. When his eyes touched mine, his lips lifted in a soft smile that expanded and surrounded me.
My heart fluttered around my whole chest, battering my breath.
God, this man was blindingly beautiful when he smiled, when it was a real smile instead of that sarcastic tilt of his mouth. He was smiling, glowingly and truly, right then, at me.
And he said, looking right at me, “And this year will be a nice interlude in my life.”
An interlude.
I was an interlude.
My fluttering heart crushed into a paper ball inside my chest and dropped.
I needed to remember that I was a temporary interlude.
Konstantin hung his head in his hands, his shoulders weaving back and forth. “So, that’s it? You’re married to this woman now? This—this—stranger?”
“Yes, and the official story is that we met two years ago in Verona, Italy. Lexi was backpacking through Europe during a gap year in college. We met at a museum and then ran into each other again at a violin concert in a park that night. We’ve been secretly dating ever since and are madly in love.”
“That’s specific,” I muttered. “What was my major?”
“What do you want your major to be?” he asked me.
Yeah, I went with the only thing I could think of. “Theatre?”
Konstantin snorted.
“Theatre, it is.” Nicolai swiveled back to Kostya.
“And then, when John announced his party week in Las Vegas, I called her to meet me here and tie the knot because I am utterly besotted. And by that, I mean I am embarrassingly besotted. You will stick to that story, and that will be the only story, to absolutely everyone. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Konstantin said. “Sure. You married some commoner off the street—”
Nicolai stood, sliding his hand off mine. “Kostya, that’s enough.”
“—and I’m supposed to behave like everything’s perfectly respectable, definitely on the up-and-up.”
“You will treat her with respect, and you will stick to the official story. I mean it.”
His low tone was rich with menace.
If Nicolai had spoken to me like that, I would’ve nodded vigorously and done anything he told me to while I sweated through my clothes, and not in a good way.
Where was a table I could crawl under?
Konstantin scrubbed his face with his palms and raised his head. “Are you taking her to John’s bachelor party tonight?”