Chapter 14 Till Death Do Us Part #2
He lounged against a stone column like this was a fashion shoot, hands in his pockets, perfectly relaxed. Blond hair slicked back. Smile like a halo on a devil.
“Cousin,” he said, eyes sliding from Konstantin to me and back. “You never did learn to separate business from… distractions.”
He let the last word hang.
“Congratulations, by the way,” he added. “She is…unexpected.”
The pause before the compliment turned my stomach.
Baranov held up a hand, silencing him.
“You understand what this means,” the old man said to Konstantin. “No more games. You are Pakhan now in all but name. Your enemies will come for her first. Your men will look at her and see weakness.”
His gaze cut into me, measuring. “Prove them wrong.”
No pressure.
“I intend to,” Konstantin said.
There was something cold and lethal in his voice that made the hairs on my arms stand up.
Baranov watched him a second longer, then nodded once. “Then we go drink,” he said. “And see if your new bride can keep up.”
He turned and shuffled out, flanked by two other elders. The air shifted with their absence, slightly less heavy but no more safe.
Maksim lingered.
“You really surprised us this time,” he said lightly, switching back to English. “Whole Foods girl to church bride in three days. Tell me, Daniela—” his gaze ran over the dress, the veil, my bare skin “—is this what you dreamed of as a child?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I think the Barbie version had fewer guns.”
His mouth tugged. Not quite a smile. “Don’t worry. They are not for you. Unless Konstantin disappoints.”
The look he shot his cousin was all teeth.
“Enough,” Konstantin said, voice gone quiet. “We have guests.”
“Of course.” Maksim stepped aside, eyes gleaming. “Lead the way, Pakhan.”
The word wasn’t quite mocking.
But it wasn’t not, either.
The reception was held in the church’s “social hall,” which was a generous term for a long, echoing room with high ceilings and questionable paint.
Someone had tried to dress it up—white tablecloths, crystal, more evergreens.
It looked like a wedding Pinterest board had wandered into a mob summit by accident.
Champagne flowed. So did vodka. A string quartet in the corner tried to make “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sound like it wasn’t being played over the buzz of criminal gossip.
Konstantin’s hand never left me. Palm at my waist, fingers strong on my hip, occasional slide to the small of my back as if I might forget whose orbit I was in.
To everyone watching, it probably looked like devotion.
I knew better.
Chains. Just with nicer hardware.
“Konstantin.” A man with a square face stepped up, clapping him on the shoulder. “You did not say your bride was this lovely. Baranov almost smiled.”
“Krupin,” Konstantin said. “This is my wife, Daniela.”
Wife.
He said it casually, like it was settled fact and not the result of blackmail deeds and a nod that barely counted.
Krupin took my hand, bent over it in an old-world gesture that managed to be respectful and creepy at the same time. His ring scraped my knuckles.
“Welcome to the family,” he said. “I hope you like snow and blood.”
“Big fan of one of those,” I said before I could stop myself.
His brows lifted. Then he laughed, short and surprised.
“I like her,” he declared, looking at Konstantin. “She has teeth.”
“She bites,” Konstantin said mildly. “We are working on it.”
I bit my tongue on principle.
Introductions blurred after that. Names, faces, grips. Compliments that were tests. Jokes that were threats. Every man here had history with Konstantin. Every one of them watched us like they were cataloguing ways to use me.
“She is pretty,” one murmured in Russian near the buffet table. “Too pretty. Makes him soft.”
“Soft men do not shoot their own to keep a woman,” another replied.
I pretended not to understand, but their eyes flicked to me with new calculation.
At some point, there were toasts.
Baranov raised his glass with a hand that shook just enough to rattle the vodka.
“To Konstantin,” he said. “Who proves he is impulsive idiot like his father, but maybe smarter.” Weak chuckle. “And to his bride. May she make him cautious.”
Laughter rolled around the room.
“And if she does not,” someone muttered, “may she die quickly.”
My stomach turned.
Konstantin’s fingers tightened on my hip in a warning squeeze.
Don’t react.
I didn’t.
I smiled. Sipped champagne that tasted like regret and battery acid. Catalogued faces, alliances, accents. Little things.
Like the way two younger men in the corner kept checking the time on their phones. The way a third man lingered near a side door that led to a narrow corridor marked EXIT.
Like the almost-imperceptible nod Maksim gave them when he thought no one was looking.
The hair on my arms lifted.
“Bathroom,” I murmured to Konstantin, because pretending to be a good little bride was still part of my survival plan.
He bent, lips brushing my ear. “You have two minutes, moya zhena,” he said. “Do not make me come find you.”
My wife.
Possession, not romance.
I slipped away, heels clicking on worn tile, the dress swishing like it was laughing at me.
The “ladies room” was a narrow space with bad lighting and a mirror that had seen some things. I locked myself in a stall, counted to thirty, flushed for effect, washed my hands, and stalled another thirty seconds reapplying lipstick.
By the time I stepped back out into the hall, the hair on my neck was prickling again.
The corridor was empty.
Too empty. The music from the reception hall sounded muffled, like someone had shut a door.
I started back.
Halfway down the hall, voices drifted from behind the EXIT door.
Low. Urgent. Russian.
I froze.
I shouldn’t.
I did.
I edged closer, careful not to let my heels echo, and pressed my ear to the crack.
“…now,” a male voice hissed. “We have window. One shot and it is done.”
“Not until signal,” another snapped. “You want to die tonight, be my guest.”
“You saw him,” the first argued. “He is weak. Marrying this…girl. We end him now, we take what is ours.”
Weak.
Girl.
That would be me and my favorite murderer.
My heart jackhammered.
“Orders are orders,” a third voice cut in, cooler. “We wait. We do not fire until the toast.”
Footsteps. A scrape. My breath lodged in my throat.
I stepped back fast on instinct.
The heel of my shoe hit something—a box shoved against the wall for decoration. It tipped. Crashed.
The conversation on the other side of the door cut off.
Shit.
I bolted.
Back down the hall, toward the double doors to the reception. My brain spat useless options—play dumb, say you got lost, pretend you didn’t hear.
The doors swung open before I got there.
Konstantin filled the doorway, one hand on the frame, eyes ice-sharp.
“You are out of time,” he said, English clipped, his accent threading the words. “I told you two minutes.”
“I got lost,” I lied. My voice sounded breathless.
His gaze flicked over my shoulder, to the EXIT door, back to my face.
He didn’t believe me.
“Later,” he said under his breath, fingers closing around my elbow. “We talk later.”
We stepped back into the hall.
Baranov had his glass raised again. The quartet had shifted to some traditional Russian melody that made the hair on my arms stand up for entirely new reasons.
“To the bride,” he said. “May she give him many sons.”
The crowd lifted their glasses.
I thought of the word signal and the phrase one shot and wanted to scream.
Glass shattered.
The sound came from the far end of the room—a high, crystalline crack that silenced the music and stopped every conversation mid-word.
A back window had spiderwebbed, a hole punched dead center, glass tinkling onto the floor.
For one frozen heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then Konstantin had me on the ground, under him, his body covering mine, the breath knocked out of my lungs.
Shouts erupted. Russian, English, curses, orders. Several guns appeared in hands like magic.
“No one shoots,” Konstantin barked, voice snapping across the room.
His tone froze people faster than fear.
A second later, the distant echo of a single gunshot reached us from outside. Too late. Wrong angle. Whoever had fired either missed or hit the wrong glass.
Feet pounded down the hall. One of his men—Yakov, shouted something from the doorway.
“Roof,” he yelled. “Sniper. Gone.”
Of course. A warning. A test. Or a botched execution.
Baranov struggled to his feet, sputtering. “What is this?” he demanded. “On holy night? In church?”
All eyes went to Konstantin.
Still half-over me, he lifted his head, scanning the room, expression like ice over deep water.
“Someone forgets the rules,” he said. “They will remember soon.”
His gaze flicked to Maksim.
For a fraction of a second, just a flicker, I saw it—the tiniest twitch at the corner of his cousin’s mouth. Not quite a smile, not quite a flinch.
Interesting.
“Get up,” Konstantin murmured to me. “Slowly.”
My legs shook as he hauled me upright. His hands were steady. Mine were not.
“That,” he said, too low for anyone else to hear, “is why you do not wander, kotyonok.”
Not because he loved me.
Because I was a walking target with his name on it.
By the time we finally left, my cheeks hurt from fake smiles and my soul felt like someone had fed it through a paper shredder.
The ride back to the penthouse was a silence thicker than the falling snow. Christmas lights blurred past outside in streaks of white and gold. Somewhere, people were stumbling out of midnight mass, warm and tipsy, arguing about pie.
Up here, in the leather cocoon of the SUV, I could feel his gaze on me like a weight.
Now comes the real performance.
The wedding night.
We stepped into the penthouse foyer, the heavy door thudding shut behind us with a finality that felt less like home and more like a cell.
I barely had time to exhale before my back hit the door.
His hands landed on either side of my head, caging me in. The dress rustled between us like whispered applause.
“We’re married now,” he said. His voice was low, that faint Russian edge turning the words into something rougher. “No more pretending.”
“No more pretending what?” I shot back, anger finally clawing past exhaustion and fear. “That this isn’t just another business transaction? That you give a damn about anything besides how I look on your arm?”
His mouth curved. Not soft. Sharp.
“No more pretending you don’t want this,” he said. “That you don’t want me.”
Arrogant bastard.
“You want to know what I want?” I shoved at his chest. It was like pushing a wall. “I want to know what kroshka means. I want to know who you were talking to. I want to know how many women you’ve played this little game with before you plucked me out of a tree lot.”
His eyes darkened. Annoyance. Calculation. Maybe something that looked like hurt for half a second, but I didn’t trust my read on him anymore.
“You are my wife now, Dani,” he said. “That is all you need to know.”
Wife.
His possession. His thing.
“What happens now?” I demanded. The question came out sharper than I expected, stuffed full of all the fear and fury curdling in my chest. “What do you actually plan to do with me, Konstantin?”
He didn’t hesitate.
His hands slid from the door to my face, framing it again in a way that would look tender from a distance and felt like a collar up close. His fingers were warm, rough from guns and knives and God knew what else.
“Now,” he said, eyes on mine, voice soft and lethal, “we find out what kind of wife you are going to be.”
Like there were categories.
Like I was auditioning.
Behind him, forty floors below, the city hummed under a Christmas Eve sky. People walked home from church, from bars, from family dinners. They wrapped presents. Argued about cranberry sauce. Left cookies for a man in a red suit who didn’t exist.
Up here, I stood pinned against a door by a man who did.
Tonight, I belonged to him.
Tomorrow, I might belong to no one.
The realization slid through me like a blade and a promise.
Because I was starting to understand that belonging to Konstantin Zverev might very well be a death sentence.
And the most terrifying part?
I couldn’t tell if I wanted to escape it.
Or see how interesting a death it turned out to be.