Marrying the Pakhan (Forbidden Kings #16)

1. Harper

HARPER

The guest in front of me wants a room with a water view, and I don’t have the heart to tell him our water view is a parking garage with a puddle in it.

“Let me check what’s available,” I say instead, and type nothing into the system.

He’s wearing a shiny leather jacket, the kind my boss’s son wears when he swings by to hit up his dad for cash. The man taps his knuckles on the counter while he waits, like the seconds matter to him in a way they don’t matter to me.

I give him room 412, top floor, and tell him it faces the courtyard. That part’s true. I just don’t mention the courtyard is where housekeeping keeps the linen carts.

By the time he walks off toward the elevators, Renata’s already leaning against the desk beside me, arms crossed, watching him go.

“You gave him 412?”

“He wanted a view.”

“He’s getting laundry carts.”

“He’s getting a courtyard,” I say, and she laughs low enough that it doesn’t carry past the desk.

Renata’s worked the evening shift with me for two years now, long enough that we don’t have to explain the shorthand anymore.

She knows which regulars tip and which ones complain about the ice machine on the third floor being broken, which it has been since before either of us started. She also knows about Ginger and Mia, though she’s careful not to bring either one up unless I do first.

Tonight, I bring up neither. I’ve got a stack of registration cards to file and a headache building behind my left eye, and for the length of one shift, I’d like to just be a person standing behind a desk instead of the only thing standing between my niece and a house I can’t afford.

It doesn’t last.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” Renata says.

“I haven’t.”

“Ginger?”

“The Ivanovs,” I say it flatly, the way you’d read off a name that’s been circled on a calendar for weeks. “Court date’s in three weeks. My lawyer wants to meet before then. Again.”

Renata makes a face, the one she makes whenever I bring up my in-laws who aren’t really my in-laws anymore.

My sister’s the one who married their son, and he’s been gone even longer than she has, dead since Ginger was barely a year old, some accident nobody in the family likes to talk about in detail.

Now my sister’s gone too. Ginger’s grandparents are her only other family, if you don’t count me, and lately I get the feeling they’d rather you didn’t.

“They’re not going to win,” Renata says. “You’re her guardian. It’s in the will.”

“Wills get challenged all the time.”

“Just by people with money,” she says, and when I don’t answer that, because she’s right and there’s nothing to add to being right, she reaches over and squeezes my arm once, quick, before pulling back to answer the phone that starts ringing on her side of the desk.

I go back to the registration cards. I get through maybe six of them before she hangs up, and when I look over, she’s got that particular look on her face, the one that shows up right before she says a thing she thinks is hilarious and I think is a terrible idea.

“You know what you should do,” she says.

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I know your face. I don’t like your face right now.”

She ignores that. “You should hire a husband.”

I stop filing. “A what?”

“A husband. For the custody thing.” She shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You said it yourself, your lawyer keeps bringing up marital status. So, marry someone.”

“That’s not a real solution, Renata, that’s a sentence.”

“It’s a real factor. You said so.” She says it easy, like she’s not suggesting anything more complicated than picking up milk on the way home.

“I’m not hiring a husband, Renata.”

“You could. There’s a place.” She’s grinning now, fully committed to the bit. “That club on Ashford. The one with the gold sign. I went there for Danny’s bachelorette, remember? Half those guys would marry you for the right price, and they’re gorgeous, Harper, like, genuinely—”

“I’m not marrying a stripper to keep custody of my niece.”

“I didn’t say strip club.”

“You said gold sign, gorgeous, and Ashford. I know exactly what you said.”

She laughs, and it’s loud enough this time that the guest waiting by the elevator glances over, and I press my lips together to keep from laughing too, because it is a little bit funny.

“I’m just saying,” Renata says, quieter now. “Options.”

“That’s not an option. That’s a felony waiting to happen.”

“Marriage isn’t a felony.”

“Marrying a stranger to win a custody case might be.”

She shrugs like she’s not so sure, and the desk phone rings again before either of us can push it further, only this time it’s not a guest.

It’s my lawyer’s office, and I know that before I even pick up, because they’re the only ones who call this line instead of my cell, on account of my cell going straight to voicemail these days out of self-preservation.

“Harper Wilcox,” I say.

“Harper, it’s Denise. Do you have a minute?”

Denise never opens with do you have a minute unless the answer needs to be yes regardless of what I actually have.

I turn my back to the desk, phone pressed to my ear, and watch Renata pretend not to listen while filing a registration card upside down.

“I have a minute.”

“The Ivanovs’ attorney filed an amended petition this afternoon. I just got off the phone with him.”

“Amended how?”

“They’re arguing financial instability now. Specifically yours.” A pause. “They pulled your bank statements somehow. I don’t know how yet—I’m looking into it, but they’ve got three months of overdraft fees, and they’re planning to use them.”

My stomach does the thing it’s been doing for weeks now, the slow drop that never quite finishes falling. “Those overdrafts happened because Ginger needed a coat and new shoes in the same month daycare raised their rates.”

“I know that. You know that. A judge doesn’t automatically know that, and they’re going to make it look like a pattern instead of a bad month.

” Denise’s voice softens, just slightly.

“I need anything you’ve got. Pay stubs, a letter from your manager, proof the coat and the shoes were one-time expenses.

Anything that shows this was a month, not a lifestyle. ”

“I can get you pay stubs tonight.”

“Good. And Harper—” She stops.

“What.”

“They’re not going to stop at overdrafts. I want you ready for that.”

I mumble a “yes” I don’t fully mean, and we hang up.

I stand there with the phone still against my ear for a second after the call’s already ended, because if I put it down I have to go back to filing registration cards like a person whose life isn’t currently being cross-examined by strangers with more money than her.

“That bad?” Renata asks.

“They found my bank statements.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Denise doesn’t know either. Apparently, that’s a normal thing now, people you’ve never met finding your overdraft history and building a case out of it.” I laugh, but it doesn’t have anything funny underneath it, and Renata hears the difference immediately. She always does.

She doesn’t say they’re not going to win again. I think she’s starting to understand that saying it doesn’t make it more true; it just makes me feel like I have to nod along and pretend I believe her.

“You need a break,” she says instead. “Not tonight. Tonight, you need pay stubs and a letter from Greg. But soon. You look like you’re about to fall over, and not in the cute way.”

“There’s a cute way to fall over?”

“There’s a way where it looks intentional.” She bumps my shoulder with hers, easy, like this is a normal conversation and not one happening three weeks before a courtroom decides whether I get to keep raising my sister’s daughter. “I’m serious about the club thing, by the way.”

“You’re not.”

“A little bit serious.”

The elevator dings, and another guest steps out into the lobby. I smooth the tired off my face before I’ve even fully turned around, because that’s the job, showing up steady for strangers while everything underneath stays exactly as unsteady as it was five minutes ago.

Denise’s voice loops in my head, flat and even. They’re not going to stop at overdrafts, like she’d rehearsed how to say it without sounding as worried as she is.

Somewhere across town, Ginger’s asleep at the sitter’s by now, six-years-old and still waking up some nights asking where her mom went, like maybe this time the answer will be different from the last hundred times I’ve had to say it.

For exactly one stupid second, a club on Ashford with a gold sign flickers through my head, uninvited.