Chapter 4 - Mikhail
Weddings, to me, always seemed like an obvious performance.
People have their sappy vows because truth is usually too sharp to say aloud. They dream about devotion and destiny and love as if commitment has anything to do with those things.
I have spent too much of my life watching men swear loyalty with warm smiles only to sell information the moment fear or greed came into play. Love, loyalty, marriage, blood—none of these things mean anything unless backed by action.
Papers matter, and so do signatures, names, and legal recognition. Everything else can be traded.
The private hall where today’s ceremony will take place sits above one of our secured properties in Manhattan, intentionally discreet, not ostentatiously expensive, but sterile.
Dark wood paneling runs along the walls, broken by floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the city in steel and glass.
Morning light spills across polished floors in long geometric bands.
Anton lounges near the bar carelessly, tie loosened despite explicit instructions from Nikolai to stop dressing like he’s going to start a fistfight at every formal gathering.
His bruised knuckles wrap around a glass of whiskey, and even sitting as still as he can, he radiates a dangerous recklessness, the kind of volatile energy that makes other men instinctively calculate exit routes.
Nikolai’s lean build stands near the windows, immaculate as always, not a single strand of hair out of place. His suit tailored to perfection, sharp features taking in the people like a sniper. Where Anton breaks bones with impact, Nikolai destroys systems with spreadsheets.
Sergei is the balance between them, as usual. At forty-one, he has mastered stoicism in a way few men ever do. Standing in silence for minutes, he somehow dominates a room without trying. Diplomats trust him, politicians underestimate him, and both mistakes tend to cost the other parties a lot.
As I approach, Anton studies me over the rim of his glass.
“I never thought I would witness this,” he says in lieu of a greeting.
I adjust my cuff without looking at him.
“You have seen far worse.”
“None nearly this entertaining,” he quips, smiling.
Nikolai has made his way over silently, greeting me with a nod. Looking at Anton, he says, “Your definition of entertaining remains deeply concerning.”
Anton ignores him, eyes fixed on me.
“This is real.” He doesn’t even bother disguising it and I don’t bother answering him. Anton exhales through his nose. “That is exactly what worries me.”
A faint smirk traces the curve of my lips. I’m far too comfortable with these men; family is rarely gentle in our world. Concern isn’t soft or careful. It looks like obsessive scrutiny because that is what keeps people like us alive. Answering their questions is a responsibility.
“Why her?” Nikolai bites first, which I didn’t expect him to do.
Anton’s fingers come up to fiddle with his tie, much to Nikolai’s displeasure.
“Yes,” he echoes, ignoring Nikolai’s begrudging glare. “Why her, and why this?”
My cousins already know Zara matters, but they can’t understand why.
Zara Khan operates like a knife, moving through systems built on secrecy to somehow keep finding the Achilles heel everyone else misses.
She is reckless, though she would call it determined.
She trusts the truth more than safety, believing that information, if exposed correctly, can force justice from corrupt structures.
This thought of hers is wrong often enough to concern me. She is right often enough to terrify everyone else; she possesses no instinct for her own safety, which is her greatest strength and her greatest liability.
I don’t give them this though.
“No one else can protect her the way I can,” is all I can muster.
Anton’s expression doesn’t shift into mockery, like I expected it would.
“That’s not an explanation, is it? More like a verdict.”
“It is both.”
Nikolai studies me with those unnerving serious eyes of his.
“This is not emotional.”
You know emotion clouds judgment, creates weakness, and can compromise us? I know that’s what he’s asking me.
“Of course not. It is not emotional.”
“All the while, it cannot be changed,” Sergei adds, eyes narrowing at me.
Anton drains his glass, and says, “You are terrifying when you decide something.”
“You say that often,” I reply flatly.
“’Cause it’s the truth.”
There’s a shift in the air as murmurs increase and then dissolve into an awed hush. Even before I move my head to see what’s up, I can sense her.
Zara enters, wearing an ivory dress, its ends trailing behind her on the floor. It’s simple, with the barest lace detailing but her curvaceous figure and bronze skin makes it look elegant. If I was one of those romantic men, I’d compare her to a goddess or the moon.
Her squared jaw and tense shoulders, hands balled into fists, are nothing like that of a bride. Resistance remains alive in every inch of her, alive in the rigid line of her spine.
She stands beside Alina, who offers silent support. Alina understands something most people do not: support is not always comfort. Sometimes support means simply letting things be.
Anton straightens, which is rare for a careless man like him to do.
Interesting.
Nikolai’s gaze sharpens almost imperceptibly as Sergei watches her thoughtfully. Men accustomed to power recognize dangerous intelligence quickly.
Zara’s brown eyes land on me, fearless and calm, even with the residual anger behind it all. She stops in front of me.
“You look disturbingly calm,” she murmurs, low enough for only me to hear.
“You’re here.”
The corner of her mouth tightens.
“Like I can be anywhere else…?”
Anton makes a strangled noise that suspiciously resembles laughter and Alina elbows him without looking.
Zara does not react at all, eyes fixed on me flatly.
The ceremony begins with the officiant clearing his throat.
Legal language fills the room, each sentence reducing something as complex as marriage into enforceable clauses and witnessed declarations. Most people need romance to tolerate how transactional this shit truly is. I am not one of them.
My eyes remain fixed on Zara, how she does not soften at all.
When the officiant asks whether she understands the legal implications of marriage, her eyes flash with something sharp and incendiary.
“I understand them perfectly,” she answers in a voice that’s iron covered in velvet.
When he asks whether she consents, the air pressure drops. Zara inhales slowly, calculative brown eyes meeting mine.
There can be entire conversations held with just the eyes when both people understand observation as warfare. I can see her fury, the resistance that lives and breathes inside her. I know she is already thinking beyond this moment, already searching for exits.
“Yes,” she states flatly.
The officiant turns to me, visibly more nervous now.
“Mikhail Korovin, do you take—”
“I do.”
He pauses, blinking.
Anton coughs into his fist to hide amusement. The speed with which I sign my name onto the document is unparalleled when compared to the hesitant and forceful way Zara holds her pen to sign, the tip pressing into the paper harder than what is necessary.
Her own cute way of rebellion, it seems. In the end, it is irreversible. Zara Khan becomes Zara Korovin in the eyes of every system that matters.
There is no celebratory cheer, no nothing, except the utter stillness to Zara’s frame, fury contained. When I find her eyes, cold fire burns there.
“This changes nothing.” She declares quietly enough that only I hear, but even then, her pulse beats fast beneath her throat.
She is my wife.
Something dark settles inside me.
My hand closes around hers.
Warm skin, rapid pulse, controlled fury.
I lean close enough that my voice belongs only to her.
“No,” I murmur, my gaze fixed on hers as the city glitters cold and endless beyond the glass. “You simply have fewer places left to run.”
“The ceremony is complete,” the officiant announces, clearing his throat, visibly eager to finish his role and disappear from this room. “There remains one final tradition. The couple may kiss.”
Zara stiffens.
“Oh, this should be entertaining,” I hear Anton snickering but my ears shut everything out that isn’t her.
I turn fully toward Zara as she lifts her chin.
She pretends to be brave and unaffected, but I can tell from her trembling and the little exhale that parts her lips that it’s nothing but a facade.
I can almost hear her thoughts moving behind those eyes, sharp and relentless, analyzing everything. She is likely calculating whether refusal would be better than compliance, whether denying serves any purpose at all.
That mind of hers never stops moving.
I step closer, her head leaning back to keep her eyes on me. Her eyes flicker in her skull, and the faintest red colors her cheeks.
There it is.
She fights it, pretends she doesn’t feel it, but I know it as well as she does. The same feeling presses low beneath my ribs.
Her faint scent of jasmine and clean fabric drifts up to my nostrils, clouding my senses.
“Do not mistake this for affection,” I murmur as I raise my palm to cup her face.
Something flashes across her face but I have already leaned down to press my lips against hers by then.
Our lips are dry as they brush against each other, but the lack of tenderness doesn’t mean I don’t feel the heat, not gradual like embers catching but violent like striking metal against stone and discovering sparks.
She goes rigid under my hold. Her body tells me before her mind can bury the response. She kisses me back like retaliation, her fingers fisting in the fabric of my jacket; the pressure of her mouth shifts fiercely, as though she refuses to allow even this moment to belong solely to me.
My hand slides from her jaw to the back of her neck, a warning and temptation alike.
She trembles, and I can feel that it’s not with fear.
She breaks the kiss first, her breathing no longer perfectly even. Mine remains steady, but internally, something has shifted.
Zara’s eyes are darker and wider than I’ve ever seen them.
“That changes nothing.”
No, Zara, that changes everything.