Tanya
My father calls me into his study at seven in the evening, which means its bad news.
Good news comes over dinner. Neutral news comes in passing, a sentence dropped between rooms like it barely matters. But the study, with its heavy door and the smell of old leather and whiskey, is where Alber Savitsky delivers the things he knows I won't want to hear.
I smooth my hands down the front of my dress before I knock. A habit I've never been able to break. Ice on the outside, my mother always said. Whatever you feel, you keep it beneath the surface where no one can use it against you.
She was wrong about a lot of things, but she wasn't wrong about that.
"Sit," my father says when I enter.
He's behind his desk. There's a glass of whiskey at his elbow, half empty. A document sits in front of him, turned face down. I note all of this quickly and quietly, without letting my expression shift.
I sit.
"The council has made their decision," he says.
My stomach drops, but my face doesn't move. I've been expecting this. Every Orlov wife in the last three months has been matched through the council's mandate, and I've watched it happen the way you watch a tide coming in. Creeping closer every day.
I just didn't think it would reach me this soon.
"Who?" I ask. My voice is level. My hands are folded in my lap.
My father turns the document over and slides it across the desk toward me.
I read the name, and the floor tilts beneath my chair.
Aidan Orlov.
For exactly two seconds, I lose control of my face. I feel it happen. A fracture in the mask, thin as a hairline crack in glass, but enough. Enough that my father sees it.
"You know him," he says. It's not a question.
"I know of him. The Irish branch of the family. They were in Prague." I keep my voice steady, but I can feel my pulse in my throat, hammering against the careful composure I've spent twenty-four years building. "I didn't realise the council was matching across family lines like that."
"The council is matching wherever it sees strategic value. The Orlovs need stability. We need positioning. This does both."
I stare at the name on the paper. Black ink on cream. Formal. Final.
Aidan Orlov.
The last time I saw him was six months ago, at a dinner in London.
He was across the room in a dark suit, standing with his back to the wall the way he always does.
Watching. He's always watching. Most people don't notice because he's quiet about it.
He doesn't stare. He doesn't make it obvious.
But I've felt his attention on me for years, a low hum at the edge of every room we've shared, and I've trained myself to ignore it.
I trained myself to ignore it because of Prague.
Two years ago. The Dubovich summit. A hotel bar after midnight and a decision I made with my eyes wide open.
I chose Aidan Orlov that night for one reason: to destroy my own value.
Virgin daughter of Alber Savitsky. A commodity.
A bargaining chip wrapped in couture and good breeding, waiting to be placed on the table in exactly this kind of negotiation.
I looked at my future, and I saw a cage, and I decided to pick the lock before anyone could turn the key.
Aidan was the tool. That's what I told myself.
He was convenient. Present. Attractive in that quiet, steady way that made him safe enough to approach and dangerous enough to be effective.
One night with him and I wouldn't be pristine anymore.
I wouldn't be the untouched Savitsky daughter.
I'd be damaged goods in the eyes of every traditional family in the Bratva, and the council would pass me over.
That was the plan.
The plan did not account for how it would actually feel.
I don't let myself think about Prague. Or the way Aidan touched me, like he'd been thinking about it long before I walked up to that bar.
The way he said my name against my neck with a voice so low it vibrated through my ribs.
The careful, devastating way he took his time when I expected him to selfishly rush.
I don't think about any of that. I left before dawn specifically so I wouldn't have to.
And now his name is on a piece of paper in my father's study, and my body remembers every single thing my mind has spent two years refusing to.
"Tanya." My father's voice pulls me back. "This isn't a discussion."
"I know." He was furious when I told him I was no longer a virgin. He called me all kinds of disgusting words. Threatened to kill every man he knew I’d had contact with…And after everything, I’m still being forced into a marriage I never wanted.
He studies me, and I can see him trying to read what's behind my composure. He won't find anything. I've made sure of that.
"You're not going to fight this?" he asks.
I want to laugh. I want to stand up and throw his whiskey glass against the wall and tell him that I already fought this.
I fought it two years ago in a hotel room in Prague when I gave away the only thing this world has ever valued me for, and it didn't make a single bit of difference.
The council doesn't care. The families don't care.
They've matched me anyway, and they've matched me with him.
The one man who knows exactly what I did and why.
"No," I say instead. "I won't fight it."
"Good. The Orlovs are expecting cooperation. You must have made an impression on the man, it seems he requested—"
"He requested me?"
The words come out sharper than I intend. My father pauses.
"The council proposed the match…" my father says slowly, eyeing me over the rim of his glasses.
That's not the same thing, and we both know it, but I don't press. I can't press, because pressing means admitting that the distinction matters, and it doesn't. It can't.
Except my hands are shaking beneath the desk where he can't see them.
Aidan requested me. Which means this isn't a political convenience for him. This isn't the council placing chess pieces on a board. This is a man collecting something he decided was his two years ago, and using the mandate as his justification.
Fury swells in my chest. But beneath the fury, in the place where I keep the things I refuse to look at, something else stirs. Something warm and unwanted that feels exactly like the way his hands felt on my skin in a dark hotel room when I thought I was the one in control.
I wasn't. I see that now. I walked into that bar thinking I was using him, and he let me believe it. He gave me exactly what I came for and then some, and he did it with the patience of a man who already knew we'd end up here.
I hate him for that.
I hate that he was right.
"Fine," I say, and my voice is ice. "I'll sign."
My father nods, satisfied, and reaches for his whiskey.
I stand, smooth my dress, and walk out of his study with my spine straight and my chin raised, and I don't let my composure crack until I'm behind my own locked door. Then I press my back against it, close my eyes, and let out a breath that shakes all the way through me.
Aidan Orlov.
The man I chose to ruin myself with is the man I'm going to marry.
The worst part is how a small, treacherous part of me isn't surprised at all. It’s hopeful.