Chapter 2
Vera
Ishould be crying.
Good daughters cry at their fathers' funerals. They sob into tissues and accept condolences with trembling lips and red-rimmed eyes. They wear their grief like a shroud, publicly mourning the man who raised them.
I feel nothing.
Well… that's not entirely true. I feel guilty about feeling nothing.
Guilty that when Aunt Sofia called three days ago with the news, my first thought was finally.
Guilty that standing here beside this mahogany casket in a dress I panic-bought yesterday, I'm thinking about whether I remembered to submit my psychology paper more than I'm thinking about my father.
Does guilt count as grief? Can I claim partial credit?
Another stranger approaches. Middle-aged man, expensive suit, cold eyes. "Sorry for your loss."
"Thank you." The words come automatically now. I've said them maybe fifty times today.
"He was a good man."
Was he? I barely knew him. Boarding schools from age six onward. Expensive presents at Christmas that proved he remembered I existed. Brief, awkward visits where we sat across restaurant tables like strangers performing a script. Because that's what we were. Strangers who happened to share DNA.
When I turned eighteen, that changed. Suddenly he wanted me at events—these Bratva parties full of dangerous men with dead eyes and women who looked at me like I was already a corpse. He'd grip my arm too tight and parade me around, telling me to smile, be polite, don't embarrass him.
I never understood why. Never asked. Just endured it until I could escape back to my dorm room and pretend it hadn't happened.
And now he's dead and I can't even manufacture tears.
"Vera."
I turn. My Aunt Sofia stands in the doorway of the viewing room, her face pale. She's been crying enough for both of us, her eyes swollen and red. At least someone loved him.
"What is it?" I ask quietly.
"Someone's here for you." Her voice shakes. "You need to come. Now."
"I can't leave."
"Now, Vera."
My stomach drops.
I follow her through the funeral home's maze of beige hallways, my heels clicking too loudly on the tile. She leads me to a private room at the back, the kind they use for difficult family conversations. The door is closed.
"Who is it?" I whisper.
Sofia's hand trembles as she reaches for the doorknob. "Pyotr Maksimov."
The name means nothing to me. Should it?
Then, a flash of memory. Age eighteen. Spring. Sitting at the kitchen table doing calculus homework. My father bringing me tea that tasted off, too sweet, wrong. The room going fuzzy at the edges. Papers in front of me that wouldn't stay in focus.
"Just sign here, Verochka. For your university fund."
My hand moving like it belonged to someone else. My signature on documents I couldn't read.
Pyotr Maksimov.
Oh God.
Sofia opens the door.
The man inside stands with his back to us, silhouetted against the window. Tall. Broad shoulders straining an expensive black suit. Dark hair threaded with silver catches the afternoon light.
He turns.
Oh.
Oh.
This is what apex predators must look like when they walk among sheep. Sharp cheekbones that could cut glass. Strong jaw shadowed with stubble. Ice-blue eyes.
And tattoos. God, the tattoos. They crawl up from his collar, dark ink stark against his throat. A wolf that seems poised to strike. More ink covers his hands, intricate patterns weaving across his knuckles and fingers.
This man has killed people. I know this the way you know fire burns. It's written in every movement, every breath.
And he's looking at me like I'm already his.
"Vera." His voice is deep, dark honey with gravel underneath. Command in every syllable. "Come in. Close the door."
I don't move. Every survival instinct I possess screams run.
My feet betray me. They carry me forward into the room, and I hear the door click shut behind me. Sofia's footsteps retreat down the hall.
She left me. Actually left me alone with him.
"Sit." He gestures to one of the chairs.
The word lands on my shoulders like a physical weight. I open my mouth to refuse, to demand answers, to assert some kind of control over this situation, but my knees are already bending. I sink into the chair before the thought to resist fully forms.
What the hell?
He smiles, slow and satisfied. "Good girl."
Heat blooms in my chest at those two words.
Warm and liquid and completely unwelcome.
I shove it down hard, burying it under layers of confusion and anger because no.
I don't like this. Don't like how my muscles unknotted the second he gave me an order.
Don't like how some traitorous part of my brain whispered finally when he told me what to do.
"Who are you?"
"Pyotr Maksimov." He moves closer. Each step deliberate. Each step erasing more of the safe distance between us. "A kapitan of the Volkov Bratva." He stops directly in front of my chair, towering over me. "Your husband."
The word bounces around my skull without landing anywhere that makes sense. "What?"
"Your husband. The man you're going to marry. The man you belong to." He says it the way someone might say the sky is blue or water is wet. Simple fact. Inarguable truth.
"I don't—I'm not—" My brain has stopped forming complete sentences.
He pulls papers from his inside jacket pocket, unfolds them, and hands them to me. My fingers shake taking them.
A contract. Dense legal language that swims before my eyes. I force myself to focus, picking out words through the panic. My name. His name. Betrothal. Binding agreement. Consummation upon marriage.
And there, near the bottom: Vera Reznikova agrees to marry Pyotr Maksimov upon university completion OR the death of Mikhail Reznikov, whichever comes first.
The signature beside my name is mine, I recognize the loops of the V and the R, but it's wrong. Shaky. Uncertain. The letters waver like they were written by someone half-asleep.
Or drugged.
The memory crystallizes. Age eighteen. Spring semester.
Kitchen table covered in calculus homework.
My father brought me tea that tasted too sweet, coating my tongue wrong.
The room going soft at the edges, sounds muffled like I was underwater.
Papers appearing in front of me that wouldn't hold still long enough to read.
"Just sign here, Verochka. For your university fund."
My hand moving without my permission. Black ink on white paper. His voice sounded far away, reassuring. Safe.
He lied.
"I never agreed to this," I whisper.
"You signed it." He taps the paper with one tattooed finger. "Right there. Your signature. Legal and binding."
"My father drugged me. I didn't know what I was signing."
"Doesn't matter." His voice is absolutely calm. "It's legal. Bratva-enforced. You're mine, Vera. Have been for two years."
Two years. I've been engaged to this man for two years, and I didn't even know it.
"I'll fight this," I say, even though I'm shaking. "I'll go to the police!"
"You'll do nothing." He crouches down in front of my chair, bringing those ice-blue eyes level with mine. "Because if you run, if you fight, if you cause me any trouble at all, I'll make your aunt and cousins pay your father's debts. Slowly. Painfully. Do you understand?"
The threat is delivered in that same calm, reasonable tone. Like he's explaining a simple fact of life.
I look into his eyes and see no bluff. No hesitation. He means every word.
"Why?" My voice breaks. "Why me?"
Something flickers across his face. Something dark and possessive that makes my stomach flip. "Because I decided you were mine. Two years ago, I saw you and I decided. And I always get what I want."
His hand comes up to cup my face. I freeze. Every muscle locks up, caught between the urge to pull away and something else I don't want to name.
But I'm trapped by the intensity in his eyes and the warm weight of his palm against my cheek. His thumb strokes across my cheekbone, gentle in a way that contradicts everything else about him.
"You're going to be my wife," he says softly. "You're going to wear my ring and take my name and sleep in my bed. You're going to carry my children and give me everything I want. And you're going to stop fighting it, malyshka, because there is no escape. No choice. No out."
"I hate you," I whisper.
"I know." He leans in closer, his lips almost brushing mine. "You'll love me eventually."
Then he kisses me.
His mouth takes mine like he has every right to it, his hand sliding to the back of my neck to hold me in place. His tongue pushes past my lips and—
Oh God. I'm kissing him back.
My body betrays me completely, melting into the kiss like I've been starving for it. My mouth opens wider for him. My hands clutch at his suit jacket instead of pushing him away. Heat pools low in my belly, unfamiliar and terrifying.
When he finally pulls back, I'm gasping. Dizzy.
"There she is," he murmurs, eyes dark with satisfaction. "Good girl. Your body knows who it belongs to even if your mind doesn't yet."
I want to slap him. Want to run. But I also want to kiss him again, and I hate that I want that.
"The funeral," I manage.
"It's almost over." He straightens, pulling me up with him. "I've handled everything. Your father's buried tomorrow morning. You'll attend, say your goodbyes, and then you come home with me."
"Home?"
"My estate. Where you'll live until the wedding."
The wedding. Right. Because I'm getting married. To this man. This stranger who bought me from my father like property.
"When?" I ask dully.
"Three days."
My knees buckle. He catches me easily, his arm around my waist, holding me up. I can feel how solid he is beneath the expensive suit. How much stronger. How completely outmatched I am.
"Three days?" I repeat. "That's not enough time—"
"It's plenty of time." His hand spreads possessively across my lower back. "I've been planning. Everything's arranged. The church. The dress. The guests. All you have to do is show up and say 'I do.'"
"And if I don't?"