Chapter 6 - Anton
My temples throb. Amazingly, smoke isn’t literally coming out of my ears. On the other end of the line, Viktor snaps, “Isn’t the whole point of being fucking banished that you don’t get to summon me anymore?”
I clench my jaw so hard that my teeth ache. “No.”
“I’m fucking busy. The least you can do is tell me why.”
“Last time I checked, I don’t answer to you.” I scowl at the vacant spot on my ceiling that’s been bearing the brunt of my wrath for the past ten minutes.
“I don’t answer to you, either.”
“Oh yes, you fucking do. Don’t you ever forget the only goddamn reason you’re still breathing, Viktor,” I say, every word daring him to defy me. Give me a reason, I think. One more reason to put you in the ground.
He sighs heavily down the phone line. I’ve seen him expel versions of it in-person too many times not to know this is him holding his tongue, all the way in New York. He should’ve started five minutes ago—but I’ll fucking take it. I’ll have to.
I have more to ask of him, and this, I know, he’ll fight me on.
“And bring your wife.”
“Wh—” he starts.
I interject, “Didn’t we just establish you don’t get to ask fucking ‘why’?
Because I said so. Because you have no choice in the matter.
And if that wounds your ego, cry about it to your woman.
I don’t have time for this. Rest assured, you aren’t being summoned for the pleasure of your fucking company.
” But I don’t add, Because I need her for this, because I’ve already asked her brothers to be there—because it’ll matter to Darya.
Because I’ll be damned if that woman says anything but ‘Yes’ to being mine.
In the wake of a growled exhale from the other end, the line goes dead. That’s just as well. I was done with this fucking call before I made it. I drop my phone on the desk with a clatter and sag in my seat.
What a day.
Six phone calls, back-to-back—and this was the seventh.
I’ve earned a goddamned drink.
As if I shouted the idea out loud, Boris batters his fist against the door in the process of walking through it. I’d never correct my uncle about the right way to knock. This doesn’t mean I don’t itch to. It’s smarter to just pour two vodka doubles and hold one out to him wordlessly.
That’s all the prompting he typically needs, if any at all.
Like clockwork: “Your brother?” he grunts.
“Yes. Viktor.”
“You’re calling him to Boston?” he asks, looking irked at the thought.
I don’t comment on his giving away that he was listening in on the call. It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell him what’s happening tomorrow as soon as he’s done with his drink.
I nod and watch him sip at it, sinking into a seat on the other side of my desk. I follow, leaning against the edge of it, making a pointed choice not to put the barrier between us. There’ll be enough of a hurdle here as is.
“Uncle.”
“Anton?”
“I know what the next action to take is,” I try.
His head cants up to look at me, his brows furrowing. “To the mole problem?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I agree. “To stabilize the alliance while the mole is hunted down and the threat eliminated.”
“Stabilize? Anton. Two of our men were picked up at the port last night,” Boris says, setting down his glass hard. “Trifon’s contact already vanished. Now ours? This isn’t the time for—”
“Uncle, let me finish, please,” I interrupt gently, every syllable somber. He’s going to fucking hate this. I realize that. But it’s too fucking bad. I’m not changing my mind.
He fixes me with a stony glare. But he allows, “Go on.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. I square my shoulders.
“I’ve asked Darya Yuri for her hand in marriage,” I say, filling my voice with finality.
“I’m telling you this as my uncle—the closest thing I have to a father—” Mine isn’t dead, but Sergei may as well be, for all the role he has in my life. “—not as my advisor.”
There is utter, pin-drop silence.
Then, “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Possibly.” I down half my glass, liquor burning its way down my throat like I’ve swallowed a sword.
“But I’ve asked her. It is an ongoing conversation for now.
Tomorrow, I am making a formal proposal.
You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.
I’d like you to. Galina will. Your daughter will.
Maxim and Viktor will. Each of the Yuris will be there. And she will give me her answer.”
A dark, disbelieving bark of laughter bursts from Boris. “She hasn’t even given you an answer? Anton.”
“It is a political marriage that will uproot her life, which is an extremely full and independent one. She’s allowed a minute.” Or a week. “But she has no real choice. Her brothers will see that. Either the alliance will be broken, or it will be tied even tighter.”
He’s mulling it over, I can tell. Logic is the way forward, and logic is what I’ve given him. Still, he sourly mutters, “Giving a woman an upper hand from the beginning isn’t the smart way to play this.”
She’s not just any woman. And I didn’t ‘give’ her fucking anything.
Exhausted, I chuckle into my drink. “Probably not.”
***
Darya may never marry a man who wasn’t man enough to risk a bullet in the head for her. But I doubt she’d marry one who let her lead him around with his balls in a vice either. I’m not a man to be bullied—not even by her. I’m not as easy to intimidate as she seems to believe I am.
I’ll have to rid her of that false impression.
Why here? Several pairs of eyes are burrowing the question into the side of my head. I don’t answer a single one. The person this production is for only has eyes for the church we’re standing in. I’d suspected that might be the case.
I could say I chose this nineteenth-century stone cathedral in the Back Bay because it’s neutral territory.
I could say it’s because I know it’s secure, since the priest here owes me more than he’ll be able to repay in this lifetime.
I could say it’s a place even the most trigger-happy of men would have to think twice before firing.
But the truth is that she hadn’t been wrong that night at her townhouse.
I’d had time to myself in Darya’s cocoon.
I never missed anything about the look on her face, and thus hadn’t missed the stung look on her face as I’d accused her of romanticism.
Despite her barbed words in response at the moment, Darya craved more than a ring from a proposal, whether she’d accept one or not.
She had, as far as I knew her, a primordial soul of sorts.
I can only guess what would appeal to it.
This church, in the presence of the people who matter most to her, and some witnesses of my own, is my guess.
It appears I’ve finally gotten—maybe for the first time since that accursed ball she threw back in May—something right with her.
I’m ready for a second time.
“Darya and I have some news to share,” I announce.
I draw in a breath and hold my hand out to her.
It’s a win in itself that, grudgingly, she slips hers into it.
Not one person is relaxed enough to sit the fuck down.
So, it’s on their feet that they watch me lead her down the aisle, all the way to the end of it.
In front of the many candles, some lit and some not, I pull out the small velvet box from my pocket.
The world shrinks to the look on her face: her eyes narrowed, her mouth pursed. There’s no satisfaction greater than seeing her startle when I turn towards her and pop open the box, angling my body to keep the reveal for her eyes only.
“So,” I murmur, thumb stroking along the side of the box, “which announcement am I making?”
Her lips are in a tight line, unmoving, for nearly a minute. In that span, time slows to a merciless trickle, drawing out every second that passes. That’s fine. It is. I’m a patient man. If that’s how she thinks she’ll get me to lose my cool, she’ll be waiting longer than she can handle.
I let her take the time.
Besides, it’s certainly something to watch all the faces around us and their distinct spectrum of expressions.
My mother looks like she’s going to pass out, as do more than one of her brothers.
A couple looks confused. A couple looks furious, as is justified.
Her sister, however, is grinning, her eyes bright.
Now, that concerns me, albeit not as much as it does when my brother joins her in her apparent glee.
Yet they all cease to exist when Darya’s voice wrenches my attention back to her. “Anton has asked me to marry him,” she finally announces.
She rips the ring out of the box viciously—then holds it like it’s made of water, like it’ll slip through her fingers if she isn’t careful.
I know that it won’t.
This ring has survived for decades. And it took me every day of the week she gave me to find it for her. Her jewelry has never been yellow gold. A regular old diamond wouldn’t do for a woman like her. Modernity wanted nothing to do with her any more than Darya wanted anything to do with it.
When she slips the ring onto her finger herself, her eyes soften over it. Her touch is reverent as it grazes over the white gold band and the marquise-cut black diamond. She looks besotted, her eyes shining brighter than the much smaller white diamonds around the center stone.
I bite back a grin, certain my eyes still gleam with satisfaction.
Haven’t I earned it? I drove myself half-mad picking what would be right for her. It was no small feat. A worthwhile one, nonetheless.
“What the fuck,” Leonid Yuri curses.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Maxim howls.
Valentin shouts, “You fucking Zakharovs!”
A gun clicks—and others follow. In the millisecond that passes, I turn to find several guns aimed at me.
By the next second, there’s an eruption of high-pitched giggles beside me.
Bemusement floods me as I stare at Darya, almost distracted by the ring-embellished hand she raises to her mouth.
Her eyes dance like waves of a sunlit ocean.
Fuck, she’s magnificent. She’s also, by the looks of it, genuinely fucking amused by the dark turn things have swiftly taken.
Of course she is.
Wholly unfazed, she drawls, “I can shoot him myself if I want to, thank you.” With that same ring-clad hand, she waves at her brothers to stow their guns.
Her sister, too, is aiming one—but she doesn’t seem to care either way, because I see her shrug, pretending to shoot Viktor in the crotch, before she chortles and tucks it out of sight.
Great. Insanity probably runs in their family.
Trifon’s gun remains aimed at my skull. As does Anastasia’s at his.
“How long has this been going on?” he demands.
“I asked Darya for her hand last week,” I share, pitching my voice and letting it echo throughout the church.
The acoustics become another reason to have chosen the setting.
“As I did, I laid out the reasons to her—it’s to strengthen the alliance, which is being questioned and threatened by external factors.
I asked her because she will be an incredible partner. ”
“And also,” Darya adds, “maybe because none of you are gay?”
“I mean, Leo’s a little gay!” Miron Yuri perks up, then grunts, after likely getting elbowed in the side.
Viktor roars with laughter in the background.
“Darya. Not funny.” Trifon glares.
“Factual,” she counters coolly. “But I’d also do anything for the Yuri legacy, regardless of whether you boys are capable of letting Nadya and me do anything. And political marriages happen all the time. After all, not all of us can kidnap our spouses.”
I choke on air and have to fight to hold my breath and steady my nerves. That, I didn’t expect her to say. I know she fights dirty firsthand, but I’d never expect her to land a blow against her brothers. Her words are a jab at just about everyone in the room. She sounds cheerful when delivering it.
There’s no tamping down the heavy sense of foreboding when Darya waves her newly bejeweled hand in the air and preens, “This wedding will be one to beat. Especially with the Zakharovs bankrolling it. Obviously, the company line will be that he’s swept me off my feet, and the event will demonstrate precisely how.
” Her gaze cuts to me, malice glittering in those bewitching blue eyes.
“Isn’t that right, Anton? Like we discussed? ”
It takes effort to refrain from laughing. God only knows how much hysteria would color it. How quickly and effortlessly she steals my control. This wicked, vicious woman—who has me in a fucking chokehold, like I’m not the one who spun this web to begin with.
Another talent to add to that list.
Now, I suspect, is where I should steal back that upper hand. I should be daunted, at least.
Yet all I feel, mortifyingly, is a disturbing flutter in my belly.