Stefania
I see you.
Three words that have been sitting in my chest like a splinter for the last two hours.
The reception is small. A dining room in the main house on the Orlov estate, a long table, white flowers someone picked from the gardens, which I find oddly endearing.
I sit at Yevgeny's right and I eat food I can't taste and I smile when people speak to me and the whole time those words are running on a loop behind my eyes.
What does he think he sees? Because there are layers to that sentence and every one of them terrifies me in a different way.
If he means it the way most men mean it, as a compliment, a possessive little claim wrapped in charm, then it's nothing.
A line. Something he rehearsed on his way to the chapel.
But the way he said it. Low and deliberately just for me...his mouth against my ear like he was telling me a secret he'd been carrying for weeks. That wasn't a line. That was a statement of fact. And the part of me that has spent six years hiding in plain sight heard it for exactly what it was.
A warning. Or an invitation.
"You're quiet."
I look up. The woman to my left is smiling at me. Warm face, kind eyes, dark hair pulled back in a loose twist. Lena. Yevgeny's younger sister. She's been trying to talk to me since we sat down and I've been giving her just enough to be polite without giving her anything real.
"It's been a long day," I say.
"It has." She reaches for her wine glass. "For what it's worth, Yevgeny is a good man. I know that doesn't mean much coming from his sister, but it's true. He's quiet. Private. But he's steady. He won't hurt you."
I almost laugh. She thinks I'm afraid of being hurt. She thinks the tight set of my jaw and the careful distance I'm keeping from her brother are the signs of a nervous bride worried about her wedding night.
She's not entirely wrong. But the thing I'm afraid of isn't pain.
"Thank you," I say. "That means a lot."
Lena squeezes my arm and turns to say something to the housekeeper, Galina, who is seated beside her and has been crying on and off since the ceremony.
Galina has worked for the Rudakov family since before I was born.
She's the closest thing I have to a grandmother, and she's been trying to catch my eye all afternoon, her face a wreck of pride and grief and something that looks a lot like sadness.
Across the table, Kira leans forward and catches my attention. Anton's wife is pretty, with the kind of smile that says she's been exactly where I am and survived.
"The first week is the hardest," she says, keeping her voice low enough that the men don't hear. "After that, you find your rhythm. Or he finds his. Either way, it gets easier."
"Did it?" I ask. "Get easier for you?"
Something softens in her face. "It got different. Better-different, eventually. Anton is..." She glances at her husband, who is deep in conversation with Artem. "He's more than what I expected. They usually are, the Orlov men. They just take a while to show it."
I nod with a small smile. Kira is being genuine, I can tell. She's not performing for the family or trying to sell me a version of this life that doesn't exist. She's telling me the truth as she experienced it.
I look past Kira to where Anastasia is sitting.
Yevgeny's other sister. She hasn't spoken to me once.
She's barely spoken to anyone. She sits with her wine glass untouched and her posture perfect and her gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance, like she's physically present but checked out of everything happening around her.
She doesn't approve of this match. I caught that at the ceremony. The pinched mouth, the flat eyes, the way she looked through me when Ruslan walked me down the aisle. I don't know if it's personal or political or something else entirely, but the distance she's keeping is deliberate and precise.
I recognize it because I do the same thing. Put yourself in the room so no one can accuse you of absence, but keep every part of yourself pulled back behind the walls where it's safe.
Whatever is going on with Anastasia, it's not about me. It's something older. Something she's been carrying for a while.
At the far end of the table, Yevgeny is standing with Artem and Elena. Elena is holding the baby, a round-cheeked boy with dark eyes who is currently grabbing fistfuls of his mother's hair and shrieking with delight. Artem is trying to detach his son's fingers without making him cry.
Yevgeny reaches over and takes the baby.
I watch it happen without meaning to. One second he's standing with his hands at his sides, all control and composure, and the next he's got a baby in his arms and the entire architecture of his face has changed.
His jaw is still sharp and his eyes are still watchful.
But there's something underneath now, something warm and unguarded that he doesn't seem to know he's showing.
He rocks the baby gently. The shrieking stops. The little hands land on Yevgeny's shirt instead, gripping the fabric with that stubborn infant strength. Yevgeny looks down at his nephew and says something I can't hear and the baby stares at him with huge, serious eyes.
My chest does something I don't authorize.
It's not the baby. I'm not wired to melt at the sight of a man holding a child. I've seen too many men use gentleness as a mask, performing softness in public while their hands do different things behind closed doors.
But Yevgeny isn't performing. I can see that. The way he holds the baby is natural, unconscious, like he's done it a hundred times and doesn't think about it anymore. He's not looking around to see who's watching. He's not angling for an audience. He's just holding a baby.
He looks up and catches me watching.
I don't look away. Looking away is what the obedient bride would do, the one who smiles and blushes and pretends she wasn't staring.
But something in his gaze holds me there.
That same steady, seeing quality he had at the altar.
The quality that says he already knows something about me that I haven't told him.
He doesn't smile. He just holds my gaze and the baby grabs at his jaw and he lets him, and for one unguarded second I see something in his expression that makes my pulse kick.
Want.
He wants me. And he's not trying to hide it, but he's not pushing it either. He's just letting me see it, the same way he let me see that he knows. Like he's laying his cards on the table one at a time and waiting for me to decide what to do with them.
I'm the first to look away, blinking back to the conversation that Kira is having with Lena. Something about European history. Jess is watching them with fascination.
The reception winds down slowly. My brothers leave first with Galina.
Ruslan shakes Yevgeny's hand at the door and I watch the exchange from across the room.
It should be simple. A handshake between two men who've completed a transaction.
But Ruslan holds on a beat too long, and there's something in his face I haven't seen before, though I’m not sure what.
I make my way quickly to the door to say goodbye and Ruslan gives me a nod of acknowledgment. Like I've done my part and now I'm dismissed.
My younger brothers follow without a word. Galina hugs me so tight I can feel her ribs through her dress. She whispers something in Russian against my hair that I don't fully catch, something about being true to myself, and then she lets go and walks to the car without looking back.
Jess finds me in the foyer shortly after. She's been hovering at the edges all afternoon, too aware of her outsider status to push in but too loyal to leave.
"You okay?" she asks quietly.
"Yes. I’m fine, thank you."
"You don't look fine. You look like you're mapping this place and the people in it."
That makes something close to a real smile cross my face. Jess knows me better than I realized.
"I always map exits," I say. "Force of habit."
She studies me for a moment. Then she pulls me into a quick, hard hug. "If you need me, you call. I don't care what time it is."
"Thank you.”
She leaves, though a little reluctantly, and then it's just the Orlovs and me.
Artem and Elena take the baby and say their goodnights before they head upstairs.
Lena hugs me again, warm and genuine. Kira presses my hand and gives me a look that says more than words before she leaves with Anton.
Anastasia passes me on her way out and inclines her head, just barely, and says "Welcome to the family" in a voice so flat it could be a greeting or a condolence.
Then the house is quiet.
Yevgeny appears beside me in the hallway.
He's taken off his jacket. Rolled his sleeves to the forearm.
It shouldn't make a difference but it does because the formality of the day has been like armor for both of us, and watching him shed even a small piece of it shifts something in the air between us.
"There's a house on the east side of the estate," he says. "It's ours. I had it set up for us this week."
Ours.
We walk. The estate is large, manicured, lit by low landscape lighting that makes the paths between buildings glow amber. The air is cold and clean and I pull it into my lungs and try to settle the noise in my head.
The house is smaller than Artem’s but made the same way, with stone and wood. It’s two stories and has a covered porch with a light on above the door.
He opens the door and steps aside to let me in first. I walk past him and smell his cologne, something warm and woody, and my body reacts before my brain catches up.
The inside is simple. Clean. Warm in a way that feels lived-in, not staged. A kitchen with a coffee maker on the counter. A living room with a deep couch and bookshelves lining one wall.