6. NIKOLAI
I watch Andie out of the corner of my eye as we cut through the rain-slicked streets of Moscow and she drinks it all in. I can tell she’s still trying to wrap her head around it, her gaze bleary from the flight.
Or rather, what we got up to on that flight.
We landed around an hour ago, at a private airfield a few miles outside of Moscow, and now we’re headed to my family home on the other side of the city.
Which means cutting through the center with its towering, imposing brutalist structures on every street corner, a leftover from when the regime was still commanding full power.
In between, newer stores and bars are studded at random, people spilling out of them as they make their way to the underground stations that will carry them beneath the city and back to their respective homes.
I notice a few glancing toward the car, though they know better than to let their gazes linger, given what I’m sure they know already.
As much as this country has worked to divest itself of the reputation it once had, as a home for gangsters and criminals, there are those who still remember the time when these streets were ruled by the underground, and that fear has not left them yet.
“It’s so beautiful,” Andie murmurs, as we take a turn onto the street that will lead us to the edge of my family’s estate.
I cock an eyebrow. “You think?”
She glances over at me, as if she’s surprised by my reaction. “You don’t think so?”
“No, I do,” I reply. “But most Americans…this place looks too old-fashioned for them. Too many reminders of the past.”
“No, that’s what I like about it,” she replies.
“I mean, I don’t know much about Russian history, but it’s so cool, all the churches and old buildings and stuff like that. It’s way older than anything I’ve seen before…”
She gestures out the window, toward the outline of St. Basil’s in the distance, the curling towers reaching up toward the gray sky above.
“I mean, that looks like something out of a fairy tale,” she sighs. “At least, to me.”
I nod, smirking slightly. I’m glad she seems to be taking this in stride, though I can’t imagine that the champagne on the plane did anything to hurt that. I know there’s still so much for her to wrap her head around, but she seems to be doing her best to keep up, and that’s the best I can ask for.
“Nikolai,” she murmurs, drawing my attention back to her once more.
I look to her, frowning at her serious tone. “What is it?”
“Why…why did you do all of this?”
I stare at her for a moment. “Do what?”
“Marry me,” she replies, twirling the oversized ring on her finger. “I—I know that it’s not because you love me. I mean, not that I thought it would be, I just want to know—want to know what I’m getting into here. You know, so I don’t screw it up.”
I eye her for a long moment, wondering just how much I should tell her.
A part of me wants to brush her off entirely, tell her that she’s my wife and that’s the only thing that matters, but I doubt she would be willing to let me get away with that.
There’s something incisive about her that will not rest until she knows one way or another what’s going on here, and it’s better that she hears it from me rather than trying to parse it out on her own.
“I needed to be married,” I explain. “So that my father would give me the heirship to the family business.”
She screws up her face. “What, like he wanted you to have a wife before he handed that over?”
I nod. She doesn’t seem to have a guess at what that business might be, much to my relief. That part, I will have to share with her later, if at all.
“He expects me to arrive in Russia tonight with a wife,” I explain. “If I didn’t, he would not confirm the passing of the business to me. Hence…” I gesture to her.
Her eyes lower slightly, and I can see her hurriedly calculating everything she has just heard, trying to figure out where it leaves her.
“Am I going to meet your family?” she asks. She looks down at what she’s wearing, as though suddenly nervous that it might not be formal enough.
I shake my head. “Not tonight,” I reply. “They’ll be asleep by now. My father, he needs his rest.”
“Of course,” she replies, and she fiddles with her dress for a moment.
I can tell there is something on her mind, and I lift my chin at her. “What is it?”
“I…I mean, have you told them that you didn’t marry the woman you thought you were going to?” she asks, biting her lip nervously. “I’m not Natalie. And I’m not going to pretend to be her either. I can’t deal with that.”
“They didn’t know who I was going to marry.”
She frowns, confused. “I don’t—how could you get engaged to someone and your family non even know who they are?”
“It’s a long story. But trust me, you don’t have to pretend to be anyone other than who you are. Just tell them that we met while you were planning a wedding, and we ended up getting married.”
It’s the truth, anyway. Or, at least, as close as I’m willing to come to the truth right now.
She nods, twisting a loose thread on her dress around her finger and pulling it off as the driver pulls up outside the large stone gates that lead to my father’s estate.
“Wait, is this it?” she asks, her eyes widening, craning her neck to get a better look at where we’ve just arrived.
He owns half the city; she wants nothing from him.
That usually lasts a chapter or two. Find more billionaire drama at Lokepub.
I nod. There’s a creaking groan, and the gates heave open in front of us once whoever is on the security desk has confirmed that we’re the ones who have arrived.
“This…this place is like some kind of palace!” Andie exclaims, as she peers out the window across the sprawling lawn and gardens, the gravel on the driveway crunching beneath the wheels.
“It used to be.”
“It used to be?” She sounds stunned. I suppose, to someone like her, who has not lived a life like mine, it must come as something of a surprise. To me, it’s second nature.
“My father bought this place a long time ago, around the time the regime fell,” I explain.
“A few people who owned property in the city, they were looking to get out in a hurry, and this place—it used to be a summer home for the royal family—was on the market. My father snapped it up and we’ve lived here ever since.”
She gapes as we make our way up the drive, and I have to admit, I find her reaction endearing. It reminds me of the luxury that I’ve taken for granted for so long, how well I would do to remember that there are people who don’t even come close to having everything that we lay claim to.
The car pulls to a halt at the bottom of the large stone steps that lead to the main building, and the driver moves to the trunk to lift out our luggage before he leads us inside.
She stands at the bottom of the steps for a second, just gazing up at the place as though she can barely believe what she’s seeing.
The building is enormous, fit for royalty, and my father has been careful to keep up with the repairs and renovations without losing the historical value.
He is a man who puts great stock in what came before, something he has always impressed upon Maxim and me.
What came before you is what made you. You have to respect it, or it’ll find a way to make you pay.
I offer Andie an arm, and she takes it as we make our way up the stairs toward the main building. Inside, Marta, the head of the household staff, welcomes us with a warm smile.
“Marta,” I greet her, and she comes over to give me a hug. She’s gray-haired now, her face written with smile lines, a far cry from the young, severe woman who helped raise Max and me, but I’m as glad to see her now as I was then.
“You had a long journey?” she asks in her slightly broken, heavily accented English.
She learned it when Max and I did, to make sure she could continue our studies when my father decided that we should be educated in the ways of the world and to prepare me for my time in the US, but since she started so long after us, she never quite caught up.
I’ve always loved Marta. She never tried to become my mother, after everything that happened, but she proved herself more than capable of filling the maternal role in our lives.
“You want something to eat?” she asks me.
“No, I’m fine,” I reply, and I glance back toward Andie, who’s standing just behind me, looking around with a stunned expression on her face. “Andie, you hungry?”
“And this must be your wife!” Marta exclaims. She rushes over to Andie, taking her hands and clasping them tight. “So beautiful.”
Andie smiles at her, still slightly nervous. “Uh, I’m okay for something to eat, thanks,” she replies. “I think I just want to get some sleep. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” Marta replies. “Let me take you to your room. This way, follow me.”
She takes off toward the stairs, and Andie does her best to keep up.
I watch the two women leave, and head through to my father’s office so I can clear my head before I get some rest.
I’m not sure if Andie will want me sleeping in the same bed as her, not after everything that has happened, so I’m going to give her some time to unwind by herself before I include myself in proceedings, at least.
My father’s office is just as I remember it, books stacked high on the shelves around his desk, and a large glass cabinet full of the best vodka that money can buy. I’m not usually a vodka drinker, but when in Moscow…
I pour myself a glass and flick on the desk lamp, filling the room with a low, warm glow.
There are a few papers strewn over the desk, and I leaf through them briefly—nothing of great interest, just a mention or two of my father taking on new properties.
I keep telling him that he should worry himself less about expanding his empire, that he’s getting old and needs the time to rest, but that would be like telling a lion not to hunt.
He doesn’t have it in him to keep from doing what has come naturally to him for so long, and I suppose that’s part of what his insistence on me getting married has been about.
He will be pleased with Andie, I’m sure of it.
She has a sharp way about her that I’m sure he will appreciate.
He’s never liked people with no spine, those simpering types who do anything they can to get on his good side, and that’s certainly not where she sits in all of this.
As much as she’s had to go along with everything I’ve asked of her, she has not done it without question, and that is something that will benefit her in this world.
A world that she has become a part of now, whether she likes it or not.
The moment Natalie chose to walk out on me, I would have done almost anything to make sure I had a ring on my finger by the end of the day, a wife at my side.
It’s the only way my father is going to step back from the business, if he believes that I’m capable not just of running this place, but of providing an heir to ensure that there will be someone to pass this empire down to.
Now, that matter is another one entirely.
One that I have not discussed with Andie, though I suppose I will have to eventually.
I don’t want to spook her, not when all of this has come as such a rush to her in the first place.
She can’t be expected to just give in, agree to carry my child when we barely know each other. Though…
Though it’s clear, at least, that there is a part of her willing to do what we’d need to in order to get her pregnant.
I can’t help but grin at the thought of what we got up to on that plane.
The way she had bristled at almost everything I told her to do, all the ways I took control, I didn’t expect her to make it so easy for me to take what I wanted from her like that—but I can tell she responds to that kind of commanding presence, even if she’s just beginning to understand it.
She made no mention of protection and neither did I, and the feeling of her warmth wrapped around my cock was downright fucking heavenly. And I know that there’s a chance she could have gotten pregnant. A small one, but a chance nonetheless.
I feel a little guilty for half wanting it, because I know it would make everything easier. My father wants an heir before he hands over the business once and for all, and this would be the way to ensure that Max doesn’t have a chance to get his hands on it before me.
But bringing a child into the world just for that, having Andie go through a pregnancy just so I could get what I want…I can’t pretend it doesn’t prick at the back of my mind as something wrong. Somehow too callous and cynical, even for me.
I sip on the vodka and lean back in my seat, the house quiet around me.
I know that soon enough I will be hit with a cavalcade of questions about Andie, about everything we’re doing together, what I’m planning with our new lives.
But I don’t care. I can deal with that when I get there.
Right now, the only thing I care about is getting some rest—and figuring out if what happened on the plane was a one-time thing.
Or if I can expect a repeat performance sooner rather than later.