Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
ALEKSANDR
Her look of astonishment is replaced immediately by confusion.
“What are you doing here?”
I can barely follow her question because my brain is going haywire, looking at her for the first time in so long. She’s more beautiful than ever.
“Ms. Volkova.” Tom’s voice fills the space, but Petra’s eyes never leave my face. “My client, Alex Ivanov, recently discovered some legal documents that concern you. We thought it best to inform you in person.”
“You tricked me into coming here?” she asks, looking straight at me. She waits a beat, then says, “I don’t care what documents you’ve found, at this point I want nothing to do with you.”
It’s not what I expected her to say, but it’s not a surprise either. Fourteen years without any contact. Of course she’s pissed. She starts to turn, and I’m afraid she’s going to walk out that door and I’ll never see her again.
“Petra.” Her name comes out harsher than I intended, but succeeds in getting her to stop. I say the one thing I hope will get her to stay. “We’re married.”
That tight blue knee-length dress she’s wearing skims across her body as she staggers forward a few steps in her heels.
I want to get up, go to her, hold her, and tell her we’ll figure this out together. But I can’t. My end goal is unfortunately more important than her feelings. More important than mine too.
“I can see this is quite the shock,” Tom says, his voice all polished finesse that couldn’t sound more different from the man I’ve gotten to know on the squash court. He is the only person in the world who I would actually call a friend.
Petra’s eyes flit to Tom as she turns to face us, and the look on her face asks why he’s even speaking. Then she levels those bright blue eyes right back at me. “What. The. Hell?”
Tom and I agreed it would be better if he were the one to explain things to her. There’s too much at stake for me to stick my foot in my mouth and piss her off. But I can’t sit by silently and ignore her like I have for the past fourteen years. She has always deserved better than that.
“Alex,” Tom draws my name out as a warning, like he knows I’m about to go rogue and is reminding me what we’d agreed to.
I ignore him and turn my attention to Petra. Nothing has changed—the attraction I didn’t want to feel then and don’t want to feel now is still there.
“When my father gave yours the money for your boarding school, that wasn’t an agreement for an exchange of funds. That was a marriage contract.”
Her eyes widen. “Did you know that’s what it was when we both signed it?”
I’m relieved she still trusts me enough to ask this question. “Of course not.”
“Even if we signed a marriage contract, that doesn’t mean we’re actually married,” she insists.
“I went back to Austria for my cousin Natasha’s wedding a few years ago.
And I distinctly remember her and Mathéo having to go to the vital statistics office in person to apply for their marriage license, and then return there for the civil ceremony.
And since we didn’t appear in person to apply for a marriage license, nor did we return to get married there, we can’t be married. ”
My lips turn down at the corners before I say, “I consulted with a lawyer in Austria already, but the paper trail is airtight. Every single thing points to us having applied for a marriage license and taken part in a civil ceremony, both in person. And even though we know that we didn’t, the lawyer insisted that no judge is going to believe us fourteen years after the fact. ”
“You did all of that before even telling me?” Is that hurt I see in the way she narrows her eyes at me?
“How long have you known?” She sets her bag on the chair and rests both her hands on the back of it.
She’s not sitting, and with the way she’s braced herself on those nude stilettos with the gold studs along the straps, she seems poised to leave if she decides she doesn’t like my answer.
“That’s hardly relevant to the issue—” Tom starts.
“Like hell it’s not,” Petra interrupts him, never taking her eyes off me. “How long have you known, Sasha?”
“Who the hell is Sasha?” Tom mumbles, more to himself than to either of us. I’ll have to explain how Russian nicknames work later.
“I found out about three months ago when my father died.”
I see her expression change when I mention his death, like she’s internally at war with what she wants to say next. “I hope it was a good death?”
“It was,” I tell her, but it’s a lie. My father died of a heart attack, alone in his mansion after he’d ostracized everyone who ever cared about him.
In Russian culture, we’d call that a ‘bad death.’ But I don’t want her to feel sorry for the man who gave her father money in exchange for wedding vows, especially since that wasn’t even the worst thing he did to her or her family.
“Good.” Her face softens a bit as she looks at me like she’s trying to determine how I feel about my father’s passing. It was no secret that we had a contentious relationship at best.
“I went through the same thought processes you’re going through when I found the marriage license and the marriage certificate among my father’s papers,” I say before she can ask any more questions about my father. “So whoever our fathers had to pay off to make this happen, they did.”
An acerbic laugh breaks through her pursed lips. “As if my father had enough money to pay someone off to fake marry me to his employer’s son.”
“Petra—”
She hears the pity in my voice and interrupts me before I can say more. “So why? Why would they do this?”
I shrug. I have no answer I can share with her.
“So if you found out about this months ago, why are you just telling me now?”
“I was hoping I could figure a way out of this for us.”
“Oh, you were going to figure a way out for us?” Her voice is rising—no longer low and raspy—she doesn’t even sound like herself. “You can’t just go around making decisions on my behalf without consulting me! Especially not after all these years.”
“Petra.” Her name rolls off my tongue like a caress. “Of course I was going to consult you—once I had more details. Which is now.”
We look at each other in silence for a moment before Tom clears his throat, trying to move this conversation along. We haven’t even gotten to the reason we’re here. We both look at him, which he seems to take as an indication that he should take over from here.
Now that I’ve seen her again, I really wish I’d set this up differently. It should be just the two of us having this conversation.
“Given this new information, my client would like to propose a solution that we think will be amenable to both parties.”
“Oh, I’m all ears.” That raspy voice of hers escapes through tight lips, sarcasm dripping from each word.
“My client needs US citizenship. You have your Austrian citizenship via your birth, but given that your mother was a US citizen, you’ve also retained your citizenship here.”
Petra raises her eyebrows. “Yes, I understand my own citizenship status.”
“And given that you have legally been married to my client for the past fourteen years,” Tom continues, “and you have both resided here in the United States for at least the past three years, that would qualify him to apply for citizenship.”
“What does any of this have to do with me, then?” she asks.
“Well, there is a hiccup. US Immigration requires that you must have been living in marital union with your spouse for at least three years before the application for naturalization is submitted.”
“We obviously haven’t done that,” Petra says.
“And besides, what makes you think I’d want to help Alex here?
” She spits out my name like it’s a lie, and I guess in her world it is.
Never in my life was I called Alex until I made the NHL and my agent decided a more Americanized name would be easier for fans to remember.
Before that, I was always Sasha. And why would she want to help me after the way we left things?
“Alex is prepared to make this endeavor worth your while,” Tom responds. “After he receives his citizenship, he’ll grant you a divorce with enough alimony that you’ll never need to work again.”
“Oh, he’ll grant me a divorce, will he?” Though her words are for Tom, her eyes are back on mine.
Behind those blue irises, a Petra-level storm is brewing, and I’m almost looking forward to watching it break.
Tom has no idea what he’s in for as she turns toward him.
“Unfortunately for him, I like working. I love the company I’ve built and I’m proud of the work I do.
And no man is going to walk into my life and act like he’s granting me some sort of salvation, when really what he needs is my blessing and my assistance. ”
Tom sputters, clearly not expecting that reaction. A typical lawyer, he thinks everything can be solved with enough paperwork and money.
“How do I even know that marriage was legal?” she asks me. “I was a minor.”
“You were sixteen,” I tell her, “which is the age of consent for marriage in Austria, as long as a parent signs off on the union. Which your father did. And as long as the other party is over eighteen, which I was.”
As the realization that her own father betrayed her seeps in, the small crack in her armor shows me just how much this hurts her.
“And so now you’re trying to buy me off?
Use me to get what you want, then send me on my way with a divorce and money.
How quintessentially Ivanov is that?” Her low, rumbling laugh is bitter.
“You’re right about my family.” That is exactly how my father handled problems—throw enough money at it and the problem goes away. “But that’s also not what I’m trying to do here.”
“Oh? Then what the actual hell are you trying to do here?” The color rises in her cheeks, a flood of red-hot anger she can’t hide.
“I need US citizenship, and I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to get it.”
“Why the sudden need? You’ve legally been living and working in New York for . . . how many years now?”
“Eight.”