Chapter 35
Star
FOUR WEDDINGS AND A funeral.
The phrase won't leave my head. It loops and loops while the helicopters land one at a time on the upper deck, while Artem's hand holds mine through every introduction, while the most beautiful people I've ever seen step onto this ship and wrap me in hugs I haven't earned yet.
And now his family is here. And their love stories make mine look almost ordinary.
Luciano and his wife. He's all dark, sharp elegance, a man whose jawline could cut glass, and she'd been his student once, which should sound scandalous except the way he watches her cross a room makes it sound like the most inevitable thing in the world.
Like of course. Like what else could have happened.
Andrei and Ciana. He's the largest man I've ever seen, taller than Artem, broader, a scar running from his temple to his jaw.
And Ciana is golden and graceful, an effortless poise that comes from years of walking the aisle of a plane at thirty thousand feet.
He'd bought out her airline. The entire airline.
She tucks herself under his arm now like she was always meant to be there.
Evian and Katy. He's absurdly handsome in the careless way of a man who's never had to try, green-eyed, twenty-eight, a billionaire who carries his wealth like it weighs nothing.
And Katy, who'd once asked him to prom, only for him to show up with her older sister.
The two of them sit close now, her hand on his knee, his covering it, and whatever happened between prom and this deck is written in the inches between their shoulders.
Four love stories. Four couples who found each other through impossible, improbable roads.
And then there's me.
Star Thornton, Star Almazov now, married in a captain's office in my spa uniform because a man needed to put his name around me like a wall.
No arch. No petals. No vows written on expensive paper.
Just a desk and a pen and Artem's hand gripping mine so hard my knuckles went white, and Mr. Green standing witness with the posture of a man who considers even emergency weddings an occasion for perfect deportment.
Not the most romantic way to become a wife. But the ring on my finger came at a terribly high cost, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
My eyes sting. I blink the tears away fast, tilting my face toward the sea breeze so nobody notices, because I'm sitting on the upper deck surrounded by Bratva royalty and their wives and I will NOT be known as the only crybaby bride in Bratva history.
I blink again. The sting fades. The breeze helps.
And Artem's hand tightens around mine. Just a fraction. The way it always does when he feels something move in me that my face tries to hide and my body can't.
I squeeze back. I'm okay.
His thumb traces a circle on my knuckle. I know. But I'm here anyway.
Four weddings and a funeral. The funeral is the part that won't stop looping, because I still see Mila's face when I close my eyes, and sometimes, when the conversations lull, I catch Artem watching me with an expression that isn't the lopsided smile or the burning want.
It's the look of a man calculating the distance between the woman he loves and every possible threat in the room.
Death is forever. So hold your loved one close.
I lean into his side. His arm comes around me. Curtis is across the deck, practically glowing as he serves canapés to a roomful of billionaires, a twenty-one-year-old boy from Manchester who got promoted two days ago and hasn't stopped grinning since.
The Mediterranean stretches out below us, blue and infinite. Somewhere out there is the person who turned Mila into a weapon.
But not today. Today there's the ring. Today there's his hand.
Today is enough.