Chapter 21
VIKTOR
By the time I reach the lower garden, I’m already angry enough that I don’t trust myself to speak first.
Voronin is standing near the stone path under the line of cypress trees, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass he has no business drinking at my son’s wedding. He looks exactly as he always does. Well-dressed. Relaxed. Too comfortable in places where he should feel unwelcome.
He sees me coming and doesn’t move.
I stop in front of him.
For a second neither of us speaks.
Then I say, “You have some nerve showing up here.”
His mouth shifts, almost amused. “Good morning, Viktor.”
“What the fuck are you doing at my son’s wedding?”
He lifts his glass slightly, as if I’ve asked why he’s standing in a hotel lobby and not on my land. “I was invited.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
He smiles at that.
I have known Mikhail Voronin for too long not to understand what that smile means.
He likes pressure. Likes the moment before something breaks.
He always has. Years ago, when he first started trying to attach himself to our business, I mistook that taste for confidence. Later I learned what it really was.
Hunger.
Not for money. Not even for power in the simple sense.
That was the problem with him from the beginning.
He was useful, for a while. He knew routes, names, quiet ways through noisy problems. Then the deal began to matter less to him than the feeling of testing me. He pushed where he shouldn’t.
I cut him out.
He has never forgiven me for that. And ever since, he’s always made any deal difficult for me, including the one that fell through in Spain.
Now he looks at me in my own garden and says, “If you already know I was invited, then what exactly is the question?”
I take one step closer. “The question,” I say, “is why you thought accepting was a good idea.”
Voronin sets his glass down on the low stone ledge beside him. “I thought,” he says, “that since your family asked so nicely, refusing would be rude.”
“Do not play with me.”
“I’m not.” He says it mildly, which is insult enough on its own.
I look at him and think of Yuri standing in front of me not ten minutes ago, uncomfortable for once in his life, saying your daughter-in-law invited him. I think of breakfast. Of the hedge line. Of the fact that someone in this wedding party has already tried once.
And now Voronin is here.
Maybe it’s coincidence. But things in my world rarely are.
“You’ve always had poor instincts around boundaries,” I say.
That gets a small laugh out of him. “And you’ve always confused territory with loyalty.”
“No,” I say. “I’ve always known the difference better than you.”
That wipes the smile from his face for a moment.
Good.
For a few seconds we just stand there, both of us remembering the same history from opposite sides.
He remembers being brought in. I remember allowing it.
He remembers feeling underestimated. I remember seeing too late that he mistook patience for weakness.
He remembers the deal falling apart. I remember the exact moment I decided not to let him sit at any table of mine again.
He says, “You could have taken the offer.”
“It was a bad offer.”
“It was a profitable one.”
“It was dishonest.”
Voronin spreads his hands slightly. “That’s always offended you more than it should.”
No. What offended me was sloppiness. Greed without discipline. A man trying to rise on ambition alone, without understanding that the structure he wanted to climb would crush him if he put weight in the wrong place.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Today?” He glances toward the chapel lawn beyond the trees. “A front-row seat, maybe. The food looks expensive.”
I say nothing.
He looks back at me and, because he is who he is, lets the silence stretch just long enough to make the next words matter more. “And to see whether you’re still as in control as everyone thinks.”
There it is.
Not the whole truth. Enough of it.
My voice drops. “You came here to test me.”
“No,” he says. “I came because I was invited. The fact that it irritates you this much is just a bonus.”
“Camille invited you.”
His brows draw, as if feigning innocence before he answers. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He smiles again, and I already dislike the answer before he gives it. “Ask her.”
I hold his gaze. He’s telling me something and enjoying the fact that he can do it without saying it plainly.
He looks at me for a second and says, “I’m not the only one you should be watching today.”
The words settle between us.
I don’t ask what he means. That would be giving him too much. He wants me to ask. Wants me looking inward while he stands here pretending to be only a guest with bad manners.
He won’t get that satisfaction.
So I say, “If this is your idea of a message, it’s a weak one.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “You don’t believe that.”
“No,” I say. “I just wanted to see if you’d defend yourself.”
If I throw him out now, I learn nothing.
He’ll leave smiling. Camille will deny whatever arrangement she made with him. Everyone else will spend the day pretending none of it happened. Whatever this is, whatever shape it’s taking around this wedding, disappears back into polite lies before I can get my hands around it.
No. Let him stay.
Let him think I’m angry enough to be reckless and not angry enough to be patient. Let him believe he has managed to unsettle me. Men like Mikhail do their best work when they think they’ve already gained the advantage. They start looking around instead of watching their own feet.
Good.
“I’ll see you inside then,” I say before walking away, catching the small frown that splits his brows.
I start back toward the lawn more slowly than I came. By the time I reach the edge of the garden, I already know what I need to do. Keep him close. Keep Camille visible. Keep Ethan contained.
And Sienna. Especially Sienna.
That thought comes with the same weight it always does now. Immediate. Uninvited. Entirely too central.
I spot Yuri near the side path and jerk my head once toward the terrace. He follows without comment. We stop just out of earshot of the nearest staff.
“Well?” he asks.
“He stays.”
Yuri looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “You’re joking.”
“No.”
His face hardens. “Viktor.”
“If I remove him now, we get nothing. If he stays and we even get a whiff of funny business…”
“Like trying to kill you?” Yuri prompts.
“You think he attacked me two nights ago?” I ask.
Yuri shrugs. “Wouldn’t put it past him. You’re the pakhan, and that leech wants power. Maybe he thinks you’ll be vulnerable at the wedding and thought to attack.”
“Well he’s wrong about it,” I say.
Yuri is quiet for a second.
Then, reluctantly, “All right.”
“Eyes on him at all times. Quietly. No heroics. No one touches him unless I say so.”
He nods once.
After Yuri leaves, I sigh and turn around to go back to the house. That’s when I stop short.
She’s coming towards me from the other side of the garden.
The planner’s clipboard is still in her hand, her hair still pinned up with the same practical care, but now she’s wearing a dress that makes every other detail around her disappear for a second.
Soft, fitted where it should be, loose where she wants it loose, elegant without trying too hard.
She looks exactly like the sort of woman a man notices once and keeps noticing against his will.
I stop without meaning to.
She looks up almost at once, finds me across the grass, and I know from the shift in her face that she’s made the same decision I have. She’s coming toward me.
So I do the only thing that feels sensible and turn to walk the other way.
Not because I don’t want her near me. Because I do. Too much. Because the minute we are close again, all the things I told myself this morning about distance and judgment and timing become harder to defend.
I make it three steps.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see her falter.
Just a slight stumble, a hand going instinctively lower, her body catching itself a second late.
I’m moving before I think. By the time I reach her, I’m already down in front of her, one knee in the grass, one hand at her elbow, the other hovering just short of her waist as if I can keep her upright by force of will alone.
“Are you okay?”
She looks down at me, startled more than frightened, and says, “Yes.”
I search her face. Her color is a little off. Not enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps. Enough for me.
“Sienna.”
“I’m fine,” she says, but more gently this time, as if she knows that answer has stopped meaning much to me.
I stay where I am.
The world around us keeps moving. Guests arriving. Musicians adjusting stands. Voices drifting over the chairs. And here I am, on my knees in the grass in front of her, not caring in the least who sees it. That’s how far gone I am.
She shifts her weight and one hand goes to her stomach again.
I look at it. Then back at her face. “What happened?”
She hesitates, just for a second. “The baby’s kicking harder than usual.”
“When was your last appointment?” I ask.
She blinks at me, clearly not expecting that to be my first question. “A couple of weeks ago.”
“And when are you due?”
That gets a different look from her. Softer. More guarded at the same time. “I know you don’t want to get into that.”
I look up at her and say, quietly, “That isn’t true.”
Before she can answer, the baby moves again. I see it in her face first. The quick intake of breath. The way her hand presses more firmly over the curve of her dress.
Without thinking, I cover her hand with mine.
The movement stills both of us.
Then I let my palm slide a little lower, broader over her belly, and feel it. A strong, unmistakable kick against my hand.
For a moment, I forget where we are. There is only her standing over me, my hand on her stomach, and the sudden impossible tenderness of feeling that small life move under my palm.
She watches my face carefully, as if she isn’t sure what she’ll find there.
I don’t know what she finds. All I know is that my chest feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with something much worse.
“It’s all right,” I murmur, though I’m not sure whether I’m speaking to her or the child. “Easy.”
The baby shifts again, less obvious this time, and I keep my hand there, moving it once in a slow, soothing pass over the fabric.
Sienna’s shoulders ease by half an inch.
“That helps?” I ask.
She nods. “A little.”
I stay kneeling in front of her, hand still on her belly, looking up at a woman I have no right to care for this much and can no longer pretend I care for any less.
“When are you due?” I ask again, softer now.
Her eyes hold mine for a moment, and this time when she answers there is less defense in it. “Soon.”
That is not a date, but it is more than refusal.
I accept it. For now.
Another kick presses into my palm, smaller this time, almost a roll, and I smooth my hand over the spot again on instinct. Sienna lets out a breath, and for a second her face loses all its strain. She looks tired. Beautiful. Vulnerable in a way I know she hates being.
I would destroy anyone who used that against her.
The thought comes so quickly and so naturally that I don’t even bother being alarmed by it anymore.
She glances down at my hand, then back at me, and says quietly, “You really shouldn’t do this if you don’t mean it.”
“I mean all of it.”
The air between us changes a little after that.
I’m just getting to my feet when a shout cuts across the lawn.
I turn.
Camille is coming toward us from the chapel side, skirts gathered in one hand, veil forgotten behind her, face stripped of every last trace of bridal poise. There is nothing polished about her now. Nothing careful. She looks wild.
And she isn’t looking at me. She’s looking at Sienna.
That hits me a second before the words do.
“I’m going to kill you, bitch.”
The lawn seems to stop around us.
Voices drop away. A chair scrapes somewhere in the distance. One of the bridesmaids gasps. I feel Sienna go still beside me, and then all of my attention narrows to Camille crossing the grass with murder written plainly across her face.
I step in front of Sienna without thinking.
“Camille.”
She doesn’t slow. Her eyes stay locked on Sienna, burning with a hatred too naked to mistake for anything else. Not wedding nerves. Not jealousy dressed up as outrage. This is something worse. Something that has finally slipped its leash in public.
Behind me, I hear Sienna draw a quick breath.
Camille gets close enough now that I can see she’s shaking.
Not with fear. With rage.
“She did this,” Camille says, voice breaking under the force of it. “She’s been doing this from the beginning.”
I don’t take my eyes off her. “Stop where you are.”
For the first time, she looks at me.
Only for a second. Then her gaze slides past my shoulder to Sienna, and I understand immediately that whatever is happening in Camille’s head right now has gone beyond reason.
“I said stop.”
That reaches her a little. Not enough to calm her. Enough to make her hesitate.
People are noticing now. Of course they are. Guests turning. Staff freezing. The wedding finally losing the last of its pretty illusion all at once.
Camille lifts a shaking hand and points around me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I say.
“With me?” she scoffs.
“I didn’t do anything,” Sienna says.
This makes things worse and Camille practically lunges at her. I block her again, shoving her away physically this time.
“He told me he couldn’t do it,” Camille says. “He told me he couldn’t go through with the wedding because he still loves you.”