Bride of the Bratva Twin

1. Vera

VERA

The rain is a cold, steady drum against the black umbrella. It turns the grass to mud, and each step makes a soft, sucking sound.

Below, the polished wood of Dmitri’s coffin disappears into the earth.

The priest’s voice drones, talking about dust and sin, or whatever.

I watch the brass handles vanish, and my mind is quiet. Empty. There’s no grief here. Only the steady percussion of the rain against my umbrella.

Dad shifts beside me, his wool coat scratching against my sleeve. He clears his throat.

I keep my eyes fixed on the hole in the ground. It’s almost finished. Soon, this will be over. I can go back to the house, take off this dress, and breathe.

Movement catches my eye. I turn my head, my gaze cutting across the clustered heads of black umbrellas.

There’s a man I don’t recognize staring straight at me.

He stands apart, near the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. His face is in shadow, but even from here I can see how he holds himself utterly still.

“Who is that?” I murmur to Dad. I don’t look at him when I speak.

He follows my line of sight, his brow furrowing. “Who? I don’t... oh. I don’t know, Vera. One of Dmitri’s people, probably. From out of town.” He turns back to the grave, his attention already drifting.

Maybe Dad doesn’t see how unnervingly calm this man is. Or maybe he just doesn’t care; it’s hard to tell with him sometimes.

The man is still there, a fixed point in my periphery as the priest continues.

A cold knot forms in my stomach, tight and unfamiliar. Dmitri had people, yes. They were loud and brash, and they drank too much. None of them were quiet and still like the man by the gate.

The priest makes the sign of the cross. “Amen.”

It’s over. The mourners begin to move. They’ll be coming toward me now, offering false platitudes.

“I need some air,” I say to my father. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just... away.”

I turn and walk away from the grave, my heels sinking into the wet earth with each step. I head for the line of gnarled oak trees at the edge of the cemetery, and I’m glad Dad doesn’t try to follow.

The rain hammers down. The umbrella sways in the breeze and misty rainwater dampens the side of my head before I can fix it.

I don’t have to look back to know he’s following me. For a moment, I consider going back to Dad. Pretending to mourn is better than the unease settling deep in my gut.

I stop under the dripping branches of an oak, turning to face him. There’s a split second where I clock how close he is, then glance behind to see how quickly I could dart back to the group.

Dad’s watching us. There’s that, at least.

The man is closer now, his umbrella casting a wide circle of drier ground around him. He stops just outside my personal space.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I say.

I’m in mourning. I’m supposed to be left alone. Who’s he to follow me?

A faint smile touches his mouth, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Neither should you, really.”

I blink. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He takes a small step closer, and I can see his face more clearly in the dappled light. My breath catches in my throat. There’s familiarity in his hazel eyes and the sharp cut of his jaw.

“You look just like him,” I whisper, the words catching in my throat. “Dmitri.”

The smile finally reaches his eyes, but it’s not a kind smile.

“I’m his brother,” he says in a low rumble. “Roman.”

Brother.

Except Dmitri didn’t have a brother. He was an only child, raised alone by his father because his mother died young. At least, that’s what he told me.

“I didn’t know he had a brother,” I manage to say, but my voice is thin.

“There’s a lot you didn’t know about him,” Roman says, his gaze flicking to my mouth before returning to my eyes. “He was good at keeping secrets.”

Somewhere behind us a car engine rumbles, and it jolts me back to reality.

The mourners are drifting toward the parking lot, their umbrellas bobbing through the gray.

My borrowed time is up. I need to get away from this man and his sharp smile that looks too much like Dmitri’s.

“I have to go,” I say.

When I turn to leave, his hand clamps around my wrist. I snatch it back, but his grip is firm enough I can’t even stumble backward.

“Wait,” he says.

I look back at him, then past him. Dad is still standing by the grave, and he’s watching us. He’s too far to hear anything, but he’s close enough. If I pulled away and shouted, he’d come running. He’d put himself between me and this stranger like he’s done a hundred times before.

“Let go of me,” I say. It comes out flat, even as my pulse kicks up.

Roman doesn’t let go. Instead, he leans in, close enough that I can smell rain and leather.

“Five minutes. Walk with me.”

I know I should yank my arm free and march back to my father. Roman can go back to whatever hole he crawled out of.

I’m tired of lies. I’m tired of finding out my husband was a stranger.

Except... I want to know what he has to say. What else will he tell me?

“Fine.” I pull my arm from his grip. “Five minutes.”

Roman doesn’t offer me his arm, but he stays close enough that I can smell the leather and sandalwood of his cologne which is even stronger now.

I cast a glance over my shoulder. My father is still by the grave, watching.

I raise my hand and wave, a small, reassuring gesture.

I’m fine. Everything is fine. He raises his own hand in response, hesitant, and turns back toward the waiting cars.

I don’t know if he’s convinced. I don’t know if I’m convinced.

We walk in silence for a minute. The rain has eased to a thin drizzle, barely more than mist. The cemetery stretches out around us, rows of headstones and monuments. Wet gravel crunches with each step.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“The family mausoleum.”

I look at him. “Dmitri isn’t entombed there.”

“No.”

“Why didn’t he want to be buried with his family?”

Roman says nothing. He keeps walking, and I quicken my pace to keep up. The gravel shifts under my heels.

“Why?” I repeat. “Why would he do that?”

Roman is quiet for a moment. We turn onto a narrower path lined with older graves. Here, some of the headstones are almost entirely covered with moss.

A large oak spreads its branches overhead, and the light filters through in pale, watery patches.

“Dmitri was the favorite,” he says. His voice is flat, like he’s reading from a list. “Our father’s golden child. He could do no wrong.” He pauses. “Dmitri still hated the man.”

I don’t know what to make of that. Dmitri never talked about his father. He never talked about any family, actually. I’d assumed they were dead and gone a long time ago, buried in some unmarked grave in a country he’d fled.

I’d assumed a lot of things.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “If he was the favorite?—”

“It doesn’t have to make sense.” Roman cuts me off. “He hated him enough to want to rot in a separate plot for eternity rather than share a wall with him.”

We round a bend in the path, and I see the mausoleum. It’s a large stone structure with columns and a heavy iron door. The name Volkonsky is carved into the stone above the entrance.

Roman stops a few feet from the door. He turns to face me, and the gray light catches his face. The resemblance to Dmitri is there in the line of his jaw, mostly, and the shape of his nose. There’s a scar through his left eyebrow that I didn’t notice before.

He fills out his suit in a way that makes me suddenly, painfully aware of the damp fabric clinging to my curves. He looks so perfectly put together.

I become aware of how close he’s standing. My breath catches, and I take a half-step back. My heel skids on the wet gravel.

“You’re afraid of me,” he says bluntly.

“I don’t know you.” The words spill out too quickly. “You’re a stranger who showed up at my husband’s funeral unannounced, claiming to be his brother. Excuse me if I’m not relaxed.”

A ghost of a smile. “That’s fair.”

He reaches past me and pushes the iron door open. It groans on its hinges, and I flinch. The air that escapes is cold and damp and smells of old stone. Inside, I can see the faint gleam of brass plaques on the walls.

“After you,” he says.

I look at the dark interior. Then at him. Every instinct I have is screaming at me not to go in there. I need to walk back to Dad and the safety of the crowd, where this man can’t touch me.

Except I’m tired of safe. Safe got me three years of lies.

I step inside.