Chapter 17 #2
The food helps. Greta has made lamb, roasted until the outside is dark and crisp and the inside pulls apart with a fork.
There are potatoes with rosemary, salad with a sharp and citrusy dressing, bread that's still warm.
Volody serves himself twice before the plates have completed a full rotation around the table.
Liv pokes him in the ribs and tells him to let other people eat, and Volody looks at her with the naked delight of a man who has found someone willing to poke him, literally and figuratively.
I eat. I watch.
The women are finding each other. It happens in stages, like water finding its level.
First the surface courtesies, the compliments and introductions and safe questions.
Where are you from? What did you do before?
Then the layer underneath, the careful admissions, the shared experiences spoken in half-sentences that the other women finish.
"I didn't know what an auction dinner was until three weeks before," Amelia says to Liv, quietly, while Dayan is deep in conversation with Serik about something logistical.
"Neither did I," Liv says. "I thought it was a charity gala. I showed up thinking I was raising money for something."
Katriona smiles at that. "I knew exactly what it was. My family arranged my attendance. I was an offering, essentially. Package deal with a shipping alliance."
"And you went anyway," Juliette says.
"I went because saying no wasn't an option I was offered.
Saying yes to Akyl was the option I gave myself.
" She glances at Akyl, and something private and complex passes between them that I recognize because I see it between myself and Claudia.
The look of two people who understand each other's darkness and have chosen proximity anyway.
Claudia refills Katriona's wine glass. "We all ended up here the same way," she says. "Different doors, same room."
"A very expensive room," Juliette adds, gesturing at the chandelier.
"With very dangerous men in it," Liv says, and there's a tremor in her voice, not fear exactly, but the echo of fear, the memory of a feeling that hasn't fully resolved itself into something else.
Claudia reaches across the table and touches Liv's wrist. A brief, deliberate contact. "Dangerous men who want us to stay," she says. "That's the part that matters."
The table goes quiet for a moment.
Volody breaks the silence by knocking over the salt shaker with his elbow. The moment dissolves into motion and laughter, and Greta appears from nowhere to sweep up the mess, and the dinner continues.
Akyl leans toward me during dessert. Greta has made a chocolate cake with fresh cream that has rendered Volody speechless, which is itself a minor miracle.
"The weddings," he says. "We should discuss."
I nod. This is the other reason for tonight. To hammer out the details of what happens next.
I tap my knife against my glass.
The table quiets. Ten faces turn toward me, and I feel the weight of their attention like a physical thing. My brothers know this gesture. They've seen it in boardrooms and back rooms and the kinds of places where decisions are made that shape other people's lives. The women are learning it.
"We're getting married," I say. "All of us."
"Not all at once, I hope," Serik says.
"Sequentially. And soon." I look at Claudia. "Ours will be first."
She doesn't blink. She holds my gaze and I see in her face the same certainty that drove her to walk across to me at the auction and sit beside me. The woman who chose me hasn't stopped choosing me for a single day since.
Claudia's hand finds my thigh under the table. Her fingers press into the muscle, firm and grounding, and I cover her hand with mine and hold it there.
"After Rovin," Akyl says, and he's looking at Katriona now, not at me, "we follow. Within the month. I don't want a long engagement."
Katriona returns his gaze with an expression that is part challenge, part acceptance. "You haven't formally asked me."
"I outbid six men for you. Consider it implied."
"I don't accept implications."
The corner of Akyl's mouth lifts. "Then I'll ask you properly. Tonight. When we're alone."
Katriona's composure doesn't crack, but color rises in her throat. She picks up her wine glass and takes a deliberate sip, and Akyl watches her drink with the focused intensity of a man who has found something he intends to keep and is enjoying the anticipation of securing it.
"We should do them close together," Serik says. He has his arm across the back of Juliette's chair, his fingers resting against her shoulder in a contact so casual it could be unconscious. It isn't. Nothing Serik does is unconscious. "One after the other. It sends a message."
"What message?" Juliette asks.
"That the Mostovoi family isn't just expanding. It's establishing. Five brothers. Five wives. That's not a family. That's a dynasty."
I look at my brother with pride I don’t bother concealing. He understands. He has always understood, of all of them, the long game, the slow build, the structural importance of permanence.
"Dayan," I say. "Thoughts?"
Dayan is looking at Amelia. His expression is his usual mask, controlled and unreadable, but his hand is resting on the table next to hers, their smallest fingers almost touching. A distance that is almost contact.
"I'll follow Akyl," he says. "Two weeks after."
Amelia's eyes widen slightly. She turns to look at him, and whatever she finds in his face makes her press her lips together and nod once.
"Volody," I say.
My youngest brother leans back in his chair and looks at the ceiling. Then at Liv. Then at me.
"I don't need a month. I don't need two weeks. I’ll marry her as soon as I can."
"It's not a race," Serik says.
"Everything's a race. I'm just the only one honest enough to say so.
" Volody pulls Liv closer, his arm around her shoulders, and she leans into him with the instinct of someone who has found a warm place and has no intention of moving.
"Ten days. Then we're married and I can stop pretending I'm patient. "
"You've never pretended to be patient," Akyl says.
"Exactly. Why start now?"
Liv looks up at Volody with an expression that is simultaneously exasperated and adoring. "You could have warned me we were discussing this tonight."
"Where's the fun in that?"
"The fun is in me not having a panic attack at the dinner table."
Volody's expression shifts, softening, and he presses his lips against her temple. "No panic," he murmurs, low enough that it's meant for her but close enough that I hear it. "Just me. Just us. Same as always."
She leans into the kiss, and for a moment, the youngest Mostovoi, the loudest, the most reckless, the one who treats life like a dare he's determined to win, looks like something I never expected to see.
Content.
Claudia squeezes my hand under the table. I turn to her and she is looking at me with an expression that takes me apart, quietly and completely. She is proud. Proud to be a part of what’s unfolding in front of us.
"Then I suppose we need dresses," she says, turning back to the table.
A murmur of agreement circulates the table.
She smiles, and the warmth of it reaches into my chest and settles beside my heart, and I let it stay.
The dinner goes late. Greta clears the dessert plates and brings coffee and then disappears, and my brothers and their women spread through to the living room.
Volody stretches across the sofa with Liv tucked against his side.
Serik and Juliette stand at the windows, talking quietly, her hand on his arm.
Akyl and Katriona remain at the table, speaking in low voices, their heads inclined toward each other at an angle that excludes the rest of the world.
“You need to decorate this place,” Serik comments. “It’s been kept in the past too long. Imagine the absolute field day kids would have with the antiques in here and a set of markers.”
“Who is giving my kids markers?” Claudia asks, causing a thrill to run through me. She said it like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I’ll be that uncle, Claudia, we all know it. Glitter and markers for Christmases and birthdays.”
“And you, Serik, will be the one cleaning it up,” Claudia counters with an eyebrow raised in challenge.
The night draws to a close and they leave in pairs. Volody hugs Claudia at the door, lifting her off her feet despite my pointed look. Akyl kisses her hand with an old-world formality that is either genuine or designed to irritate me, and based on the look he gives me over her knuckles, it's both.
Serik and Juliette nod their goodbyes with matching efficiency. Dayan simply raises a hand from the doorway, and Amelia waves, a small, genuine gesture that Claudia returns with a warmth I know she doesn't manufacture.
The door closes. The house goes quiet.
Claudia stands in the hallway, in the green dress I’m sure she wore just to remind me of her fantasy.
She takes my hand and leads me upstairs.