8. LeeLee
CHAPTER 8
LEELEE
“ Y ou should smile, Amaliya. Zinovy will make a fine husband to you. He is a proud man. Avtorityet for your father since he was almost just a boy,” Mother simpers, her excitement over the wedding, which Father insists take place before the month is done, overtaking logic.
She, of anyone, knows how bitter resignation tastes. Before Dedushka, my grandfather, arranged her marriage to my father, my mother was a cellist of national renown. All of Russia knew of her. My father, of course, most of all. As powerful men around the world are wont to do, he petitioned her father for her hand, so he could cage her talent and hoard it.
“Yes, Mama. I will smile.” I bare my teeth. In the mirror over the dressmaker’s shoulder, I see myself. Swathed in white satin and beadwork, my smile is very clearly a snarl. Mama pretends not to notice.
Irina Balakin has long made peace with her lot. To hear her tell it now, it was always her desire to be a wife and mother. Whatever. Maybe, it was. I don’t judge. But I know, with bone deep certainty, I’ll never be happy with life as an incubator for the next generation of soldiers.
Zinovy is not a bad choice , I remind myself. He’s far better than Bogdan or Gregor, the two I’d assumed he’d choose between. My father controls many, for want of a better word, cells of loyal groups. Each led by a trusted Avtorityet , which for anybody who ever watched that mafia series on cable television, is like the Russian version of a Caporegime . A lieutenant, for all intents and purposes.
Gregor and Bogdan are my father’s age. They came up alongside him, emigrating from Russia to the United States as young men. As my father rose, they knelt at his feet and served him. As many times as the pakhan praised Bogdan’s ability to sire strong sons, I’d thought he was priming me for an arrangement with the guy.
When he proposed marrying Zinovy, who is barely thirty-five, it seemed like a boon I’d be a fool to reject. Do I want to marry him? No. Am I willing to pass up the chance to marry a man I can tolerate and risk the pakhan choosing a man whom I cannot? Also no.
“Stand still, Ama. You fidget so much, and she’ll fit you into a lopsided gown,” Irina chides.
My lack of care is the elephant in the room we all ignore. I should count my blessings that, aside from this fitting, nearly all the wedding planning can be handled by my mother on her own. I never spent time playing bride and groom as a little girl. Even from that tender age I’d known I’d dread the day of my nuptials.
“Yes, Mama.” I force myself to stop fidgeting. “Is all this really necessary?”
The instant the words pass through my lips I know it’s a silly question. Mother rounds on me, horror giving her wide eyes a cartoonish oversized look.
“You would embarrass your father with a meager celebration?” Irina Balakin exists to bring honor to the pakhan. The thought of one day becoming such a caricature of myself wrenches a defeated sigh from my chest.
“Of course, you’re right.” My agreement prompts a satisfied hum from my mother. The dressmaker she has selected silently continues fitting the heavy gown over my curves. Beyond her skill as a seamstress, I’m sure she was chosen partly for her loyalty to the family. Loyalty and discretion.
Born of fear. I never realized there could be different motivations for loyalty before I met the Ghost Born crew. I’m sure some of my father’s men belong to him for reasons other than fear, but there can’t be many.
“I’m done, ma’am,” Cece, the seamstress mother prefers, says quietly.
“Very well. I can—we can—expect the dress to be ready by the end of the week?” The slip of her tongue is a reminder of how invested my mother is in this wedding.
I might as well be a spinster with the way she’s so overjoyed to plan this wedding. As if she’s had to wait years and years for the day to come. I follow her from the dress shop to the car, both of us riding quietly while one of Father’s interchangeably nameless men drives us home. Another of his men sits in the passenger seat, head on a swivel.
The pakhan swears he’s resolved everything that led to my abduction, but he’s also unwilling to relax security until I’m, his words, safely wedded and no longer a soft target. Being less stealable once I’m someone’s wife is not the comfort he thinks it is. Women shouldn’t need the shelter of marriage to be safe, but this is the world we live in, and so we do.
A jacked-up truck is dead center of the circular drive in front of our home, blocking any other vehicles from entering or leaving the property. Since I’ve been home, the pakhan has kept all business away from the house, insisting on limiting the number of men who are in and out of the place to only his most trustworthy Sovietniks and Avtorityets .
However, lately, I have seen Feliks the Obshchak stalking in and out of Father’s study with his arms full of ledgers and his glasses askew plenty of times. So there must be at least some business being conducted here at the house. There’s no way fussy Feliks Rykov drives a lifted pickup like the one our car is currently easing onto the lawn to drive around. Even if, by some inexplicable chance, it is his truck, there’s no way a bratva bookkeeper would show such disrespect for his pakhan.
Call me sheltered, but the only people I’ve ever been around, who drive hulked-out trucks, are the bikers I stayed with after Jax and Blakely rescued me. The Ghost Born men. Shaw.
Just thinking his name makes my chest go tight with misery. He left more than a week ago, like a thief in the night. The day I eavesdropped on him accepting a mission was only a few days before he left. When everyone woke up one morning, he was gone. Then a day or two later, my father arrived to collect me, promising the safety under his roof would be ironclad.
Grey, Blu, Blakely, and Abbie have reached out a few times over since I left to check up on me, but I’m ashamed to admit I’ve been dodging their calls. Forming friendships with all of them over the past months meant the world to me, but there’s no way we can be friends in the long run. Their lives are tied up with their men and the club, and mine?
I think of the dress we left at the seamstress shop. Pristine white and heavy with crystal beadwork. Then I look down at the weighty diamond glittering on my finger. The one Zinovy couriered over to my father to present to me two days ago.
Yeah, my life is tied up, too.