Aidan
Friday morning, and the sky is the kind of pale, washed-out blue that makes everything look like a photograph.
I stand at the window of the guest suite the Savitsky’s assigned me and adjust my cufflinks.
The estate stretches out below in manicured green, the gardens trimmed to razor precision, the gravel driveway lined with black cars that arrived before dawn.
Family only, but in the Bratva, family is a loose and political word.
This is her world. The one she wants to leave.
Alber Savitsky insisted on hosting. Tradition, he said.
The bride's family provides the venue, the ceremony, the reception.
It's an old custom, one the council will lap up, and Alber leaned into with the kind of enthusiasm that told me this was never about tradition. It was about control. About proving to everyone in attendance that the Savitsky’s are still powerful enough to give a daughter away on their own terms, even when the match was made by someone else's hand.
I let him have it. The venue doesn't matter to me.
The guest list doesn't matter. The flowers and the music and the crystal glasses lined up on white-clothed tables in a ballroom I walked through an hour ago…
none of it matters. What matters is the woman who's somewhere in this house right now, getting ready to walk toward me and say words she thinks are just a formality.
They're not. Not for me.
I turn from the window and check my reflection.
Dark suit. White shirt. The tie Katya told me to wear because apparently it makes my eyes look friendlier.
Whatever that means. I think I look the same as I always do.
Contained. The kind of man people underestimate because quiet gets mistaken for passive, and still gets mistaken for empty.
I’m neither of those things. I’ve never been either of those things. I am simply a man who learned early that the loudest person in the room is rarely the most dangerous one.
Prague taught me that.
Or rather, Prague confirmed what I already knew.
Two years ago. The Dubovich summit. Three days of meetings and dinners and the kind of careful political theatre that keeps the Bratva running without tearing itself apart.
I'd seen Tanya at a dozen events before that one.
Watched her move through rooms like she was made of glass and steel, beautiful and untouchable and so perfectly composed that most men didn't even bother trying.
I wasn't most men. I was the man who noticed the way her composure slipped, just barely, when she thought no one was looking. A breath held too long. A jaw clenched a fraction too tight. The way her gaze would drift to the nearest exit and linger there like she was calculating the distance.
She wanted out. I could see it. And instead of making me lose interest, it made me want to be the reason she stayed.
But I didn't approach her. Not once in all those years of shared rooms and crossed paths and the low, constant pull of her presence at the edge of my awareness.
I waited. Because Tanya Savitskaya is not a woman you chase.
She's a woman you let come to you, and if she never does, you learn to live with the ache.
Then she came to me.
Midnight. The hotel bar. A drink she barely touched and a conversation that started careful and ended close. She was testing me, I knew that then, and I know it now. Watching to see if I'd push. If I'd stumble over myself the way other men did around her. If I'd give her a reason to dismiss me.
I didn't push. I matched her pace. When she leaned in, I leaned in.
When she pulled back, I gave her space. And when she kissed me in the elevator, I let her set the tempo even though every part of me wanted to pin her against the mirrored wall and show her exactly how long I'd been thinking about her mouth.
She came to my room thinking she was in control. And she was. Right up until the moment she wasn't.
I remember the exact second it shifted. She was beneath me, her hands on my shoulders, and something in her expression changed.
The calculation left her eyes. The performance fell away.
And what was underneath it, the raw, unguarded want that she'd buried so deep I don't think even she knew it was there, floored me.
She felt it too. I know she did. Because she closed her eyes and turned her head and whispered my name in a voice that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with need.
I've replayed that moment more times than I'll ever admit to anyone. Not the physical part, although God knows I've replayed that too. But the sound of my name in her mouth when she forgot to be cold.
That's what I'm carrying into today. That's the thing I've held onto for two years while she looked through me at every function, while she rebuilt her walls higher and thicker and colder. I don't care about the ice because I was there when it melted.
There's been no one since her. I've tried.
In the early months, when I thought maybe the fixation would fade, I went on dates.
Sat across from beautiful, intelligent women and tried to feel something beyond mild disinterest. It never worked.
Every conversation felt like a foreign language.
Every touch felt wrong in a way I couldn't explain until I stopped trying and accepted the truth.
She ruined me. The same night she tried to ruin herself, she ruined me too, and she doesn't even know it.
A knock at the door pulls me out of it.
"It's time," Killian says as he opens the door wider.
I straighten my tie one final time. Take a breath and let it out slow.
Two years of patience. Two years of silence. Two years of watching her pretend I don't exist while I rearranged my entire life around the possibility of exactly this moment.
I turn to my brother.
"You ready?" Killian asks, looking me over with the expression of a man who's been where I'm standing and came out the other side changed.
"I've been ready."
He smirks as he shakes his head. “You went with Katya’s suggestion." He nods at my tie.
I sigh. “Yeah, figured I should try and look something other than scary on my wedding day.”
Killian laughs. “You’ll never be scary to me baby brother.”
“Shut up,” I growl out. He knows I hate it when he calls me that.
We walk down the hallway together, through the east wing of the Savitsky estate with its oil paintings and heavy chandeliers and the faint scent of lilies that someone decided was appropriate for a wedding.
The house is old money dressed in new power, every surface polished to a shine that's meant to intimidate.
It doesn't. I grew up around men who could buy buildings like this and burn them down on the same afternoon.
The ceremony room is smaller than I expected.
Intimate. Tall windows on three sides, flooding the space with that pale morning light.
Chairs arranged in neat rows; half filled with faces I recognize.
Liam is near the front, arms crossed, watching me approach with something unreadable in his expression.
Katya is beside Killian's empty chair, her dark hair pinned up, her eyes already damp.
Grace is beside her with the biggest smile on her face.
What is it about women and weddings?
I take my place at the front and turn face the doors at the other end of the makeshift aisle.
The murmur of conversation fades. Someone adjusts a microphone. A string quartet in the corner begins something low and classical that I don't recognize and probably won't remember.
And then the doors open.
She's a vision in white. That's the only word that comes close and it still falls short.
The gown is elaborate, all structured lace and a fitted bodice that follows the lines of her body like it was sewn onto her.
The skirt fans out behind her, layers of tulle and silk that catch the light from the windows and scatter it.
A veil covers her face, sheer enough that I can see the shape of her features beneath it but not the expression.
She walks toward me on her father's arm, her posture perfect, her steps measured, and every single person in this room sees a composed, beautiful bride fulfilling her duty.
I see the woman who whispered my name in a dark room in Prague and meant it.
Alber Savitsky stops at the front row. He places Tanya's hand in mine, and the contact is a live wire. Her fingers are cool against my palm. Steady. She doesn't tremble. She doesn't hesitate.
But when I close my hand around hers, I feel the faintest twitch of her pulse against my finger. Fast. Faster than her composure would suggest.
She's not as calm as she wants me to believe.
I lean in, just close enough that only she can hear me.
"You look beautiful, Tanya."
Her chin lifts a fraction. She doesn't look at me. Her voice is barely a murmur, cool and controlled and almost perfect.
"Don't."
I hold her hand a little tighter, and I don't let go.