2. Nikolai
NIKOLAI
Nina Morozov has a voice that carries.
I learn this thirty seconds after I make my announcement, when she steps forward from the front row and tells the room in very clear terms that this is illegal, that it is insane, that she is calling the police, and that no one, not her father, not her mother, not God himself or any representative thereof including the priest currently standing to my left looking like he wants to dissolve into the floor, is going to tell her who she is marrying.
The church has gone from silent to loud in the time it took her to draw breath.
Both families are on their feet. The Morozov side is louder.
Her mother has her hands on Nina’s arm and is speaking rapidly into her ear, and her sister, the one who was supposed to be standing where Nina is standing right now, has moved to her other side and is saying something I cannot hear over the noise of everyone else saying something I do not care about.
Nina shakes her mother off. “I don’t care what was agreed,” she says. “I wasn’t at that table. Whatever you people negotiated has nothing to do with me.”
You people. She means my family. She’s looking directly at me when she says it.
I look back at her and say nothing because there is nothing to say yet, and because she is more interesting and angrier than she was across the church, and that was already interesting enough.
Rico appears at my shoulder. He’s a large man with a quiet way of moving that people consistently underestimate, and he’s been with me long enough that he no longer needs to explain what he’s about to say before he says it.
“We should go and talk,” he tells me.
“Yes.”
“Both families.”
“I heard you, Rico.”
He steps back. I button my jacket and walk toward the side door at the back of the church without raising my voice or signaling to anyone, and the room understands from the movement alone that this is where we are going next.
The side room is small, a meeting room of some kind, with chairs around a rectangular table and a window that looks out onto the street.
Both families file in with the energy of people who have been arguing and have agreed, temporarily, to argue somewhere more private.
Nina’s father sits. My two senior men stand.
Rico stands behind me. Nina’s mother does not come in.
She stays outside with her daughters, which is where I expected her to be.
Through the wall, I can hear Nina, muffled but continuous, which I find I do not mind.
Ivan Morozov speaks first. He wants to know what I think I’m doing. He has structured the question to sound like an accusation and delivered it with the confidence of a man who has not yet understood what room he is in.
I let him finish.
“The alliance stands,” I say. “The terms stand. The only thing that changes is which daughter.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I already decided it.”
One of his associates starts to say something about contracts and prior agreements, and I let him speak for approximately forty seconds before I look at him, and he stops.
“Mr. Vasin.” Nina’s father again, quieter this time, which is smarter. “I need to understand your reasoning.”
“My reasoning is my own business.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And she will be my wife. Those two things are not in conflict.” I look around the table.
“The debt your family owes mine does not disappear because the name on the agreement changes. The alliance your business needs does not disappear. What you came here for today is still available to you. I’m telling you the terms of how you get it. ”
The room is quiet.
“Why her?” he asks.
“Because I want her.”
It’s the most honest thing I have said in this room and somehow the simplest, and it lands the way simple things land when everyone around the table was expecting complexity. Nobody speaks for a moment.
Then we negotiate.
It takes thirty minutes. The financial terms stay identical.
What changes is the timeline. Morozov wanted the debt restructured over eight years.
I give him six, with two years of reduced payments at the front end while his business stabilizes, which is more than he deserves and enough that he can look at his wife tonight and tell her he got something.
My men are not happy about the two years. They will get over it.
By the time we file back into the church, Nina has stopped shouting, which is not the same thing as having calmed down.
She’s standing with her arms crossed, her sister beside her, and her expression is that of a woman who has made her peace with a situation by deciding she is going to make it as difficult as possible for everyone involved.
She looks at me when I come through the door.
I look back.
Her father speaks to her quietly. Whatever he says doesn’t change her expression, but she unfolds her arms, which is progress of a kind. Her sister takes her hand. Her mother, who has reappeared with red-edged eyes, straightens up and nods at no one in particular.
The priest, to his credit, has stayed.
We stand in front of him. Nina is opposite me, close enough that I’m aware of her in the way you are aware of something running very hot very nearby.
She stares straight ahead. In the corner of the room, her sister sits with her face turned down, shoulders moving in a way that tells me she is crying and trying not to show it.
Her mother stands beside her, doing the same with more success.
The priest begins.
He gets through the opening without incident. Then he turns to me.
I answer without hesitation.
He turns to Nina.
The room waits.
She says nothing. Five seconds. Ten. The priest looks at her with the expression of a man who has already had the worst professional day of his life and is not interested in making it worse.
“Miss Morozov,” he says, gently. “You need to say the words.”
She turns her head and looks at me, and the look is not warm, not soft, and does not pretend to be either. It’s the look of a woman making a decision she has not finished being angry about.
“I do,” she says.
The priest pronounces us married. He does not suggest a kiss. He is a perceptive man.
Nina walks away from me before he has finished the sentence.
The reception is in the east room, and it proceeds as receptions do when no one is entirely sure what they are celebrating.
The food is good. The wine is better. Conversation moves through the room in the careful way it does when everyone present has agreed, without discussion, to avoid the most obvious topic.
Nina stands near the far wall with a glass she refills once.
She speaks to no one for the first twenty minutes and then speaks briefly to a woman I don’t recognize from our side of the room, and the conversation lasts four minutes and ends with Nina smiling at something the woman says, a real smile, quick and a little reluctant, like it got out before she could stop it.
She doesn’t come near me.
I don’t go near her.
But I’m aware of her the whole evening, and she is aware of me, and we both know it, and neither of us makes anything of it. There will be time for that. We have, as of approximately two hours ago, the rest of our lives.
Rico appears at my elbow near the end of the evening.
“Ready when you are,” he says. “I’ll have Anton bring the car around.”
I nod, set down my glass, and look across the room one last time.