17. Katya
Katya
Lacey's apartment is large, warm, and has a guest room with an actual bed frame and a bathroom with water pressure that works, which makes it ideal for hiding out from my life, especially considering I'm currently homeless.
She takes pity on me when I show up at her place with a single bag, red-kissed lips, and rumpled clothes.
"Wine?" she asks, leading me into the kitchen.
"You know I don't drink during the season."
"The season," she says carefully, pouring a healthy dose of red, "is probably the least of your problems right now."
She has a point. I take the wine. If there was ever a reason to imbibe, a forced marriage to a monster warrants it. And if it didn't, the hot sex I just had with said monster definitely deserves a drink.
We sit on her couch with our legs folded under us, and I try not to wince as my sore ass hits the cushion. Artem didn't really hurt me, but I can definitely feel his marks on my skin.
"Spill," Lacey orders.
And I do. I explain everything. All of it. Artem. My grandfather. The restaurant. The sheets on the table.
Lacey doesn't speak for a long time after I finish. I lift my brows at her. "Anything?"
"I'm processing." She takes a long sip of wine. "Give me a second."
I give her a second, and the first question surprises me.
"He kept the sheets?"
"Yes."
"With your virginity bloodstain?"
"Lacey—"
"I'm not judging, I'm just—" She presses her lips together and shakes her head. "Okay. And your grandfather. Viktor Popov. Who I have met exactly twice at company fundraisers and who I always thought seemed surprisingly charming for an elderly man?—"
"He is surprisingly charming," I admit. "It's very inconvenient, but probably good for his line of work."
She looks at me with wide eyes. "As a mafia don?"
"Pakhan — that's the Russian equivalent."
She nods. "He's forcing you to get married…on Saturday."
"Yes."
"To the man who orchestrated all of this."
"Yes."
Another long pause. She refills her glass, which she finished with surprising quickness.
"There's something else," I tell her.
Lacey closes her eyes briefly. "Of course there is."
I look down at my wine. The words are harder than they should be, harder than anything else I've said tonight, because saying them out loud makes them real in a way they weren't when they were just something that happened in a room I'm trying not to think about.
"After he cleared out my apartment," I start, "I went to the penthouse…"
I take a sip of liquid courage.
"I was furious. I wanted to scream at him, which I did, and then—" I stop. Start again. "And then it went somewhere else."
The silence is exquisite in its discomfort.
"Katya." Lacey's voice is very controlled. "Are you telling me that you went to the home of the man who is forcing you to marry him and?—"
"Yes."
"You—"
"Yes, Lacey."
She stares at me. I watch her cycle through at least four distinct emotional responses before she lands on something that isn't quite any of them.
"Was it—" She stops, biting her lip. "Are you okay? Did he…" she swallows, "force you?"
"I initiated it," I admit, ashamed. "That's the part I can't stop thinking about.
He didn't push. I kissed him first." I pull my knees to my chest. "I thought I was taking something back.
Taking back some kind of control. Like if I chose it, knowingly, it couldn't be done to me.
" I laugh, but it comes out wrong. "Instead I just feel like I gave him something else. "
"What do you mean?"
"I mean—" I search for the words. "I went in there furious and I came out furious, but something was different.
He's not completely cold, Lacey. I wanted him to be.
It would be so much easier if he were just a monster, just all the way through, but he's—" I shake my head.
"There's something else in there. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it matters."
It shouldn't. Considering what he's doing and what he's done, I shouldn't want him anywhere near me.
Lacey is quiet for a moment, turning her wine glass in her hands.
"Did he hurt you?" she asks carefully. "Beyond the — I mean, was it?—"
"No." The answer is immediate and true and somehow more complicated than either of us wants it to be. "It wasn't like that."
She nods slowly. I watch her thinking, which with Lacey is always a visible process.
"So," she says. "He's not completely cold."
"No."
"And you felt that. Clearly."
I roll my eyes. "I mean, I know he's a man and all, but he was in it," I say, trying to explain it. "He wasn't unaffected by it, by me."
Lacey sets her glass down. "Katya. Listen to me.
" She reaches out and grabs my hands, squeezing them hard.
"You are about to marry this man whether you want to or not.
You have no power in this situation politically, legally, or practically.
Which means the only leverage you have is what you just described. "
I stare at her. "What?"
"He feels something." Her eyes are bright, and I recognize the expression — it's the one she gets in rehearsal when she figures out a variation that wasn't working.
"That's not nothing. That's actually everything.
If he were completely cold, you'd have nothing to work with.
He would have pushed you away once he got what he wanted, but he didn't."
"Lacey, he's a man. You always told me that they'd stick it in anything."
"He's a man who values control. He planned all of this, meticulously. He's not the type of guy who loses control of his cock and fucks someone over a couch unless he can't help himself, and it sounds to me like he can't."
"What are you saying?"
I'm not na?ve, but I don't know what to do with this information, and I know Lacey can see that.
"He wants you."
"He wants to fuck me."
She shakes her head. "No, it's more than that. He's hot, Kat. He could fuck anyone. There's something about you that he wants."
I suck my teeth, contemplating her words.
"I'm not saying seduce him into letting you go," she says impatiently.
"I'm saying you have more power here than you think.
He can control everything about your life on paper.
He cannot control what happens between you two in private.
And if there's something real there, even something small, even something he's trying to bury—" She squeezes my hands again. "We can use that."
I look at her for a long moment.
"Men like him aren't led by their cocks," I tell her. "If they are, they don't live long."
She snorts. "No," she admits. "But they are led by their hearts. That's why they are so cold. A wife you care about, a family — it's a liability, right?"
I laugh, understanding dawning on me. "You're insane."
"I'm practical." She releases my hands and picks up her wine. "Also I'm furious on your behalf and this is the only productive outlet I have, so let me have it."
Despite everything, despite the weight of Saturday sitting on my chest like a stone, I almost smile.
"What does 'use it' even mean?" I ask.
"It means seduce him. Use the fact that he wants you to your advantage."
Normally, I would laugh in her face, but I can't help but feel like there's something to what she is saying. Adrian Nero told me as much. His wife and his sister, both forced into marriage, and now very happy.
I don't think I could ever be happy with Artem, not with everything between us, but as I think about the way he had me in the penthouse, I can't help but see that he's not completely unaffected.
"Okay," I say quietly.
"Okay?"
"Don't push it."
She pushes it. She opens another bottle of wine, and we sit there until two in the morning talking about everything and nothing, and it's almost possible to forget, for stretches of minutes at a time, what Saturday means.
Almost.
I spend the days before my wedding sulking in Lacey's apartment. I hold off on getting ready for as long as I can, but as time ticks away and I field call after call, I realize there's no getting out of this.
Thankfully, Lacey takes the lead on getting me dressed. I do my makeup, trying to keep my hands steady as I paint my lips a soft pink, and she adds the finishing touches on my hair — a low chignon that pulls my locks off my face and neck.
"You look like a queen."
"I look like a prisoner in a beautiful dress."
"Same thing, sometimes." She squeezes my shoulder. "Remember what we said."
I remember. Too bad I'm not sure how to actually do any of that.
The church on Sixty-First Street is Russian Orthodox and looks the part.
It's all dark wood, gold iconostasis, candles burning in clusters that make the air smell of beeswax and incense.
It seats two hundred, and yet there are perhaps thirty people in the pews, which makes the space feel enormous and the silence feel deliberate.
I walk in alone, trembling, but with my head held high.
My grandfather offered to escort me. I declined with two words and the kind of look that made his security detail take a small step backward.
Viktor is seated in the front pew when I enter, silver-haired and upright, and when he sees me he does something I don't expect — his face crumples, just for a moment, just enough for me to see it before he pulls himself back together.
I look away, blinking back tears. I refuse to let them fall. Instead, I fix my face, making sure that not a single person can sense the absolute despair that I feel.
Lacey and Nico are three rows back, side by side. Nico holds Lacey's hand, which tells me everything about how they're both doing. When I pass them, Lacey mouths something. I think it's queen. I think it might also be something considerably less appropriate for a church.
Artem is at the altar.
He's in a dark suit, charcoal, almost black, perfectly tailored in the way everything he wears is perfectly tailored, and he's standing with his hands clasped behind his back, looking straight ahead. When I appear at the end of the aisle, he turns.
The look on his face lasts approximately two seconds before he controls it, and his face is blank and controlled once more.
But I see it, and I file it away as I walk the length of the aisle at the pace I was taught as a child — measured, unhurried, the walk of someone who has decided that if they must arrive somewhere, they will arrive with intention.
My train follows behind me in a whisper of lace.
The candles blur at the edges of my vision.
I stop beside him.
He looks at me, at the high neck, the long sleeves, the dress that covers every inch of me and still somehow manages to be the most deliberately chosen thing in this room, and something moves behind his ice-blue eyes.
"You look beautiful." Low enough that only I can hear.
"I know." I lift my chin.
Father Dmitri begins.
The ceremony is forty minutes of ancient words in a language that my body remembers even when my mind doesn't. The crowns placed on our heads. The circling of the altar three times, Artem's hand warm and steady on mine, leading. The shared cup of wine.
I say the words I'm supposed to say.
I do not cry.
At one point, during the circling, Artem's thumb moves across my knuckles — once, slow, almost imperceptible. I don't know if it's intentional. I don't look at him to find out.
When Father Dmitri pronounces us married, the word lands in my chest like a stone dropping into still water.
Married.
Artem turns to me. His expression is unreadable in the way it always is, in the way I'm starting to understand is not the same as empty.
He kisses me once, brief and formal, in the way the ceremony requires.
His hand stays on my jaw for a moment after, and I suppress a shiver.
Lacey told me I have power over Artem, but I pray that in this game I don't give this man any more power over me.