Chapter 2
Akyl
The house where the dinner is being held is the same as last time. Same furniture, same lighting, same careful arrangement of crystal and candlelight designed to make an auction feel like a social event.
I despise these evenings.
"Stop looking like you're attending a funeral," Rovin says without turning his head.
"I'm attending something considerably less dignified,” I mutter, craning my neck slightly to see if it was Theo Nevolin who just walked by or if my eyes were playing tricks on me.
"It’s important for your future."
"My future involves sitting in a room while women are paraded past me like selections at a particularly upscale restaurant. Forgive me if I don't radiate enthusiasm."
Rovin's mouth twitches. He finds my discomfort entertaining, which is a quality I tolerate in him only because he is my brother and because he could kill me with relatively little effort.
"Choose someone," he says. "Tonight. I won't ask again. That goes for all of you.” His words are a warning to our three brothers standing just behind us. Serik rolls his eyes and Dayan looks bored. Volody wears the same grin he always does, like mischief is just around the corner waiting especially for him. You wouldn’t believe he has killed men twice his size.
"You'll ask again. You always ask again."
"Akyl." His voice drops, and the humor leaves it. "The family needs this. Stability. Wives. Children. The other families respect legacy. Without it, we're exposed."
He isn’t wrong. I know he isn’t wrong. The Bratva runs on bloodlines and permanence. A single man, however rich, however dangerous, is a loose end. A married man with heirs is something nobody can pull apart.
I understand the strategy. It’s the execution I find distasteful.
"I'll look," I say. "I'm not promising anything else."
We enter the reception room. It is arranged identically to the previous dinners, low lighting, heavy drapes, a fire burning in a marble fireplace to combat the gray, drizzly night outside. The hostess, Rita, materializes at Rovin's elbow with a stack of folders.
"Mr. Mostovoi. We have an excellent selection this evening. I have profiles prepared for your review."
Rovin nods, takes a portfolio from the woman and moves to the far side of the room.
Rita turns to me. “Would you also like a portfolio this evening?” she asks.
I hold out my hand with a sigh that’s as long-suffering as it is full of resignation.
“Better had," I mutter.
I have already decided that I’ll select the most suitable candidate based on three criteria: intelligence, composure, and the absence of visible terror. The last qualification has proven the most difficult to satisfy at previous events.
I move through the reception room as my brothers spread out with their own binders.
The women are arranged in small clusters, holding champagne flutes and speaking in the careful, modulated tones of people who know they are being evaluated.
Two blondes, a brunette, a redhead. All beautiful.
All polished. All radiating varying degrees of anxiety that they're attempting to conceal behind expensive makeup and designer dresses.
I feel nothing.
I haven’t felt anything close to real interest in a woman for years, and I’ve made my peace with that.
Whatever I once had for that sort of thing has worn down into something colder and more useful.
I don’t need to want the woman I marry. I need her to fit.
Wanting is a thing I can manage. Fitting is the part that actually matters.
Rovin has found a seat at the table as far away from anyone else as humanly possible, and I smirk in his direction just as he looks up.
I should join the reception. I should review the profiles.
I should begin the process of elimination that I have been employing, with disappointing results, at every previous dinner.
Instead, I hear a voice.
It's coming from the hallway, low and warm. I hold still and listen.
"Hey. Look at me. You're okay."
Another voice, smaller, wobbling. "I can't do this. I thought I could, but I can't. They're all, they're so..."
"Terrifying? Absolutely. That one with the jaw could cut glass with his cheekbones alone. But you know what? He puts his trousers on one leg at a time, same as anyone. Probably has someone iron them first, but the principle holds."
A wet, shaking laugh.
"Listen to me," the first voice continues with a steadiness and a warmth that has edges of iron underneath. "If we're going to be sold to terrifying billionaires tonight, at least let's do it with waterproof mascara. Here. Tilt your head back."
Silence. The sound of a tissue being pulled from a packet. A sniffle.
"There. You're gorgeous. Now. We're going to walk back into that room, and we're going to hold our heads up, and we're going to remember that those men need us more than we need them, because without wives, they're just men with guns and property portfolios, and that's not a dynasty.
That's a bachelor party that never ended. "
The smaller voice laughs again, stronger this time. "You're funny."
"I'm hysterical. It's my primary coping mechanism. Shall we?"
I hear movement. Footsteps approaching. I step to the side of the hallway entrance and wait.
Two women emerge. The first is young, early twenties, with red-rimmed eyes and a grateful, fragile expression. She's pretty in a conventional way, the kind of woman the broker would position near the top of his compatibility rankings.
The second woman is different.
She is dark-haired, pale-skinned, with cheekbones that catch the light and eyes that are an unusual shade of gray-green, the color of a winter sea.
She's wearing a midnight blue dress that covers her from neck to wrist, and she's standing with the careful posture of someone who is managing something the rest of the room can't see.
She is beautiful. But that isn't what stops me.
What stops me is the way she guides the younger woman back into the reception room with a gentle hand at her elbow, murmuring something reassuring, before straightening her own shoulders and walking to the sideboard to pour herself a glass of water.
She doesn't take champagne. She lifts the glass with a hand that is perfectly steady and takes a measured sip.
And as she lowers the glass, her left hand moves to her side, pressing briefly against her hip with a pressure that is too controlled to be casual.
The gesture lasts two seconds. Then her hand drops, and her expression smooths, and she scans the room with the composed attention of someone assessing a chess board.
She is in pain.
I know pain. I’ve caused it. I’ve watched it in men who’d sooner die than admit to it. I can spot it the way you catch a wrong note in a song, that one tiny thing that doesn’t sit right under everything that does.
This woman is faking being well the way everyone else in this room is faking being relaxed. And she’s better at it than anyone here would ever clock.
I turn to find Rita. "The woman in the blue dress. Who is she?" I flick through the portfolio at the same time, looking for her photograph.
Rita consults her tablet. "Katriona Bontoft. Twenty-six. No significant family connections. She came through Grace Orlova's referral. Her file is... somewhat unusual, but Lionel will have more information."
"Unusual how?"
She hesitates. "Her vetting materials include medical records. Quite extensive ones. It's irregular."
"Send me everything you have on her."
Rita nods and taps at her tablet. I look back across the room. Katriona Bontoft has found a position near the fireplace, where the warmth might ease whatever she's hiding, and she's watching the room with the same quiet calculation I use.
She hasn't seen me yet, but by the time the night is out, she will know exactly who I am.