Chapter 10 Roman
ROMAN
It’s not the morning’s coffee that makes my heart stutter. Nor is it my blood pressure medication. Vitaly may brave a showing today, but my entire security team is here, we’ve made many upgrades to the grounds, and he will not get far if he acts so irrationally.
None of that is making my heart skip in my chest.
Every time I think of Mina and me saying our vows, something inside of me lifts.
Odd, to be nervous. The feeling amuses me. I don’t remember the last time my hands bothered themselves over anything that wasn’t a weapon. Not a fight, not a shipment, not an ambush. Today I can feel my pulse in my throat and I know exactly why. Not the guest list. Not the security plan.
Her.
There is something about Mina Harbor that vexes me. She is heat and sex and muted grace all at once. There is a fire in that woman, and I want to stoke it. I want to see what she could become with the right tools. And when she smiles, something goes tight in my chest.
That shouldn’t be. We are practically strangers. But even the night we met, when she was so bold as to approach me on my throne, there was no fear in her eyes. Only seduction.
How does someone from such a normal background become the person she was that night? I’m lost in thoughts of her when my houseman, Sergei, steps into the doorway and waits until I look up. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Perimeter is set. Street teams in position. Gate screening running. Caterers are ready. Tanner wants to know if you want the north lot closed early.”
“Close it now and make the cars use the south entrance. Less line of sight from the park.”
“Copy.” He doesn’t write it down. He won’t forget. “Fyodor asked if you’ll walk the floor before the ceremony.”
“I will.” I check the time. The ceremony is public because it has to be. The legal part happened last night with a judge who came through the service entrance. Today we dress the decision in a way men like to see it. The aisle, rings, music, witnesses who will enjoy the spectacle.
The house changes faces when it hosts. Staff have moved furniture since dawn. The winter garden is a hall now, with other rooms rearranged and prepared to host guests. Today is one of the few times I have an excuse to be pretentious enough to have a ballroom. It’s been set up for the reception.
I walk the path she will walk. The aisle is long by design. The men who came to be seen will have time to look. I want them to finish their looking before the vows. If they keep looking at her after the wedding, they’ll lose an eye.
Among pakhans there is a rule older than our oaths. Wives are off-limits. You can appreciate their beauty, but there is a difference between appreciation and making plans. You greet, you nod, you move on. A man who forgets that earns enemies faster than money can fix.
The truth under that rule is uglier. In my world, wives are often treated like property that happens to breathe. Displayed. Moved. Traded in exchange for peace. My father believed in that. He called it order. My mother was a product of that environment.
He called her ornamental, and she became ornamentation.
And she gritted her teeth every time he complimented her dress. She resented her role, and that resentment ate away at her as much as the alcohol did. When it stopped working to numb her resentment, she turned to pills. My father didn’t care, so long as she was still pretty. And quiet.
That will not be our life together.
Mina will be my wife, in full. The situation is not ideal, but it need not remain that way. I will treat her better than my father treated my mother. I will give her keys, not cages.
She will be a partner, not a pretty decoration.
In the small glass gazebo off the garden, the clerk arranges the book for signatures. Fyodor is with him, hat in his hands, watching the door. He looks me over the way he used to when I was a boy and had scraped both knees on the same day. “You slept?”
“Enough.”
He lifts a brow. “Today is the loud part.”
“It is.”
“It paints a target,” he says, because he will not stop saying the thing no one else will say to me.
“The target was painted a long time ago.”
He doesn’t smile. “You were born for sentences like that.”
“I was born for my father to have an heir. Nothing more.”
“This situation is unusual. A big production like this invites tests.”
“The tests were coming either way.”
“And you,” he says, “are nervous.”
“Yes.” I don’t lie to him. “Not about them. About her.”
He sits with that for a moment, then nods as if the answer satisfies a rule he keeps. “Good. It will keep your attention where it belongs.”
The guest list is a map of the city’s power. Captains and their wives. Rivals who want to see if they made a mistake staying rivals. Old men who remember when I was young and expected me to become my father. New men who think they are the future and will learn otherwise.
The invitation did not include babies. We will announce the twins, not parade them in front of these people. Not until Vitaly has been dealt with.
My suit is dark. My tie is one shade from black, unlike the very formal tuxedo I wore during my first wedding. That one was not for love.
This wedding is for…love of family, perhaps.
This marriage is a plan. It protects Mina. It shields our sons. It steadies the organization when others are watching for weakness. Practical, dry reasons to marry a stranger.
Romance later, if it comes at all. Considering how all of this came together, I doubt it ever will.
I was a romantic once. I thought being pakhan would mean I could marry for love and bend the world to make room for it. My first marriage taught me how wrong that was. Power does not buy freedom. It only buys better illusions.
If life had taken a gentler road, I would not have chosen Mina now. Not like this. Not with danger at the door and a clock ticking. I choose her because she carried my sons. That is the truth, and I do not dress it up.
But another truth sits beside it. I look at her and feel something open that I thought was shut for good. Respect. Heat. A stubborn hope that refuses to die. Maybe love can be built. Brick by brick.
Maybe after everything, I am still a romantic.
It doesn’t matter now. Whatever comes of this, I do it for my sons and the hope of a better future. Romance has been off the table for me for a very long time.
I stroll through my home toward the garden where the ceremony will be held in a few minutes. Heads turn the way heads do when they expect to be seen turning. I greet who I must greet. I nod at men who mistake proximity for friendship. I hold back enough that they remember the line.
The noise dimples and then smooths. The music begins, not loud, not sentimental. Tanner gives me a small nod from the back. He has eyes on the doors and a voice in his ear. Fyodor is at my right shoulder.
When she steps through the French doors at the entry to the garden, all thought evaporates.
She is simple and exact in ivory, a square neck, shoulders bare, hair pulled back. No veil. She doesn’t look intimidated or worried. She looks at ease. Gorgeous, in fact. That is the part that surprises me. Entering a space filled by criminals and bosses, she shines instead of shrinking.
My chest does a thing it hasn’t done since I was young and allowed myself certain fantasies.
I’m being ridiculous, and I know it, but somehow, I cannot stop the electric thrill I get when she walks toward me.
I can count the guards and the exits and still let my heart beat too fast because my bride is here and I want her to reach me soon.
I sound like a hormone-riddled teenager in my head, and yet, I cannot slow my heart down.
She stops at my side, and all I want to do is stare at her. But we face the man who will say the words to make today complete. I take her hand. It is warm. It doesn’t shake. I allow myself to look at her for a breath longer than is polite.
I am not polite today. I don’t have to be.
The official says a few sentences about intention and law and the meaning of love. I’ve heard these words for other men and watched them nod like they were performing. Half of those men had their dicks in other women before their honeymoon. That will not be me.
Our marriage might be a sham, but I take my vows seriously.
The rings come from a tray. I slide one onto her finger. It sits there like it belongs. She slides mine on and looks up into my face while she does it.
The kiss is brief by necessity. It is not performative. It is not hungry. It seals the vows. A handful of claps begin and swell because people want to be part of our big day.
It’s almost the wedding I once imagined when I allowed myself the stupidity of believing life could be good.
When I was young I thought a wedding meant the rest would be easy.
That a wedding portrait means the people in it were happy forever, and nothing bad ever happened to them.
That’s how all the movies end, isn’t it?
With a big wedding, and the happy couple departs while people clap.
Real life, in my experience, is rarely like the movies. I knew better than that—I had grown up under my parents’ marriage, and yet I allowed myself the fantasy of a Hollywood ending. Being a romantic is the perfect way to set yourself up for failure.
My first wedding portrait lives in an old photo album, warped and worn at the corners. Everything bad that can happen happened to the people in that picture. I refuse to let that be the story of my second wedding portrait.
We walk into the house, while the guests wait outside. Her ring catches the light. She smiles, but it is not a smile for others. It is for me only. An acknowledgment that we did the hard part. I feel something like relief move across my shoulders and settle.
“Are you all right?” I ask, low, for her and no one else.
“Yes,” she says. “Are you?”
“More than I expected to be.” I still feel the small tremor of that first sight of her at the door. Good. It reminds me I have something to lose. Men who forget that think they are gods and die like animals.
We enter the ballroom and take our places at the head table. “My father hated this room. Said it was too formal. But my mother loved it. She’s responsible for the décor.”
“She had good taste. Very classic,” Mina notes.
“Good taste in décor. Not in men.”
She smirks at that, but says nothing.
Our guests enter the ballroom. I can tell who wants to break protocol and speak with me.
But they find their tables or the bar, knowing now is not the time.
I am certain many of them want to ask about my eldest. Even now, it’s strange to think of marrying without Vitaly here.
Psychotic or not, disinherited or not, he’s still my son.
The day is not done. We have to be seen, again and again, until the room is satisfied. We have to survive the toast a rival’s wife will try to give even though no one asked her to speak. We have to say good night to the handful who matter and send the rest home with full stomachs and full mouths.
But the ceremony is over. He didn’t come. No shots. No sprinting. No blood on white cloth. I let myself be grateful. I hold the feeling in place and promise myself not to mistake luck for strategy.
Now to survive the reception.