Chapter 14 Alina
Alina
He leaves me standing in the middle of the room with my mouth hanging open and my pulse doing something ridiculous. The lock engages, and I stare at the door like it might offer me some clarity. It doesn’t.
I press my hands to my face and let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a scream. It’s muffled by my palms, which is probably for the best because if Dima hears it, he’ll come running, and I can’t deal with his stoic disappointment right now.
I pace the room. Five steps to the window, five steps back to the bed.
Repeat. My bare feet sink into the carpet with each pass, and my brain cycles through every decision I’ve ever made, ranking them by stupidity.
This one shoots straight to number one, overtaking the backless dress, the Beluga shots, and the time I let Mina convince me to skinny-dip in the Serpentine at two in the morning.
But it isn’t stupid. That’s what terrifies me.
It’s actually, horrifyingly, the smartest move on the board.
And that’s what scares me. I can see it.
I can see the logic as clearly as Arkady does, and the fact that my brain works like his—that I can look at a forced marriage and see strategy instead of screaming—tells me I’ve been lying to myself for years.
Alina Ashworth was never real. She was a costume I wore to school, and later to cocktail bars and book clubs, but the woman underneath has always been this.
Calculating. Ruthless when it counts. Bratva to the marrow.
Maybe that’s why Mum left me. She knew I would never be normal.
Tomorrow I will walk into that meeting as Arkady’s wife.
Alina Saranova. No one will know who I am at the start.
I’m willing to bet it takes them up to the end of the meeting to figure out I’m Alina Belova.
But by then it will be too late. I will be Alina Saranova.
The name rolls around my skull like a marble in a glass, clinking against every wall I’ve built.
I stop pacing and sit on the edge of the bed, pulling my knees up to my chest. The garden below is bathed in afternoon light, the guards rotating their pattern like clockwork. I count the seconds between them. Forty-five. Always forty-five.
My dad is going to kill me. Not metaphorically.
I genuinely think Valery Belov might commit actual murder when he finds out his only daughter married into the Saranov family without so much as a phone call.
He told me to behave. He told me to follow Arkady’s lead. I doubt this is what he had in mind.
But then again, maybe it is. Dad doesn’t do anything without a reason.
He handed me to Arkady because he trusted him—or tolerated him, depending on which version of the truth you subscribe to.
Dad knows the Bratva better than anyone.
He knows that a woman without a title is a target. A wife is a fortress.
Dima never returned with a phone, but it doesn’t really matter now. Arkady has given me what I want by also giving himself what he needs. Is this the only way? Probably not. Is it the fastest? The most secure? Fuck. Yes.
The strangest part isn’t the fear. It’s the absence of it.
There should be panic clawing at my insides, a primal urge to scream and claw at the door until my fingers bleed.
Instead, there’s a stillness I don’t recognise.
Like the moment before a wave breaks, when the ocean pulls back, and everything goes glassy and quiet.
I uncurl myself and move to the wardrobe.
I rifle through the meagre selection Arkady packed from my house.
Jeans. Casual shirts. Nothing remotely appropriate for a wedding, even one performed by a priest who owes a debt to a newly-crowned Bratva pakhan in a townhouse in Mayfair.
I’d rather not do this in jeans and a t-shirt, but if I have to, then so be it.
Hopefully, Arkady will have the common sense to send a dress over so I at least can pretend to look the part.
Fuck.
I didn’t even agree to this.
Not really.
He assumed when I didn’t say no, and ran with it. That’s the thing about Arkady Saranov. He doesn’t ask. He decides, and then waits to see if you’re brave or stupid enough to keep up.
The problem is, I am.
I sit on the bed again and press my palms flat against the silk sheets, grounding myself.
The fabric is cool, indifferent, and expensive.
Like everything in this house. Like the man who owns it.
I have hours before a priest walks through the front door, and I sign away the last remnants of a life I built on a lie.
And I didn’t say no.
I didn’t say yes either, but Arkady doesn’t operate in grey areas.
Silence is consent in his world. Inaction is agreement.
The bastard has weaponised my inability to refuse him, and the worst part is that he’s right to.
Because if I’d wanted to say no—truly, viscerally, no—I would have. He knows it. I know it.
I jump a mile when the door unlocks and opens again. Dima has arrived with a silver tray in his hand, a folder resting neatly on top of it with a pen. Sweat forms under my arms, and I chew the inside of my lip.
“Still want the phone?” he asks quietly.
I shake my head. “It’s not necessary. What’s this?”
“A pre nup and the certificate for you to sign.”
“Pre nup?” I gulp. I hadn’t even thought about that.
“Sign it,” Dima says. “Don’t fuck about deliberating and arguing. It works in your favour mostly.”
“That was quick,” I say, stalling as I reach for the folder.
“Standard issue with details filled in. Consider yourself lucky.”
“Lucky?” I choke on that.
“Most Bratva wives get a handshake and a warning. You’re getting protection written in ink. Sign it.”
I’m more in shock that Dima spoke more than two syllables at any one time than at the idea of a pre nup.
I open the folder and scan the document.
It’s fairly simple, which surprises me, and makes me think he got it off Google.
The gist is straightforward: everything Arkady owned before the marriage stays his, everything I owned stays mine, and in the event of dissolution—a word that makes my stomach clench—I walk away with a settlement that is definitely generous.
There’s a clause about infidelity that applies to both parties, which surprises me, and a section on children that I skip past so fast, the words blur.
Dima says nothing. He stands there like a monolith, waiting.
I pick up the pen. My hand hovers over the signature line, and for one crystalline moment, I see every fork in the road that led me here.
The silver dress. The Beluga. Arkady’s shoulder under my ribs as he carried me out of that alley.
The shower. The spanking. The gunshot through a phone line that I wasn’t supposed to hear.
A dead pakhan with his eyes open. A theory that might be right.
A man who cuts fingers off before lunch and packs tampons without being asked.
I sign.
The pen scratches against the paper, and it sounds louder than it should. Alina Belova. Not Ashworth. Not anymore.
Dima takes the folder without ceremony, slides it under his arm, and produces the marriage certificate from beneath it.
I sign that as well, barely reading it because what’s the point? The decision was made the moment I didn’t say no. The paperwork is just theatre.
“The priest arrives at seven,” he says. “Pakhan wants you ready by six thirty.”
“Ready how? I haven’t got anything to wear that isn’t jeans and a hoodie.”
Dima steps back, and a woman with a garment bag steps forward. I gulp.
She’s petite, dark-haired, mid-forties, with the kind of no-nonsense expression that says she’s been dressing difficult women her entire career and isn’t about to let a Bratva bride ruin her streak. She hangs the garment bag on the wardrobe door and unzips it without preamble.
White silk. The dress is simple in the way that only obscenely expensive things can be. It’s the kind of dress that says I don’t need to try while trying very, very hard. Low neckline, beads, lace, but still understated.
“Try it on,” the woman says, her accent clipped. Eastern European, but polished smooth by years in London. “I’ll adjust if needed.”
Dima has already vanished, so I strip out of my jeans and shirt while the woman assesses me with the clinical efficiency of a surgeon prepping for theatre.
She helps me into the dress, and the silk slides over my skin like cold water.
It fits like it was made for me. Apparently, Arkady took my clothing size when he packed my bags for me.
“Good hips,” the woman murmurs, pinching the fabric at my waist. “Turn.”
I turn. She circles me, tugging here, smoothing there, her fingers quick and sure. When she reaches my back, she pauses.
“Shoes.” She produces a pair of heels from the bag. Simple, elegant, high enough to give me a few extra inches without making me look like I’m trying to compete with Arkady’s height.
I slip them on and stand in front of the full-length mirror. I look like a princess. A Bratva one. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not. The woman steps back and nods once, satisfied with her work. “You’ll do,” she says, which I suspect is the highest compliment she gives.
“Thanks. I think.”
She helps me out of the dress again, and packs up her things with military precision, zips the empty garment bag, and leaves without another word. The door doesn’t lock behind her, which I notice immediately. Either Dima forgot, or Arkady has decided I’m not going to run after signing that pre nup.
He’s right. I’m not going anywhere.
I stand in the middle of the room in my underwear, holding the heels she left behind, and feel the weight of what I’ve just done settle over me like armour being fitted piece by piece.
There’s no going back now. The ink is dry, the certificate signed, and somewhere in this house, Arkady Saranov is preparing to make me his wife in every way that matters to the men who will sit in his living room tomorrow night.
I set the heels down by the wardrobe and pull my jeans and shirt back on. No point getting dressed up yet. I’ve got hours to kill and nothing to do except think, which is dangerous territory for a woman who just signed away her life.
The unlocked door calls to me like a dare.
I test the handle. It turns. The corridor stretches out in both directions, quiet and cool, and I stand on the threshold for a moment, half expecting Dima to materialise from the shadows and shove me back inside. He doesn’t.
I move barefoot to the top of the staircase and listen. Silence.
It makes me want to go back to the safety of the room, but I also want to see if I’m free to roam or if this was a mistake.
I take the stairs one at a time, letting each step test the silence.
The marble is cold under my feet, and I curl my toes against it as I descend. The hallway at the bottom is empty.
I turn left towards the kitchen, which I’ve only seen once, that first morning when Arkady made me breakfast like a domestic psychopath.
The door is ajar, and I push through it into a space that smells like fresh bread and something herby.
A stockpot simmers on the hob, filled with potatoes and there’s a woman I haven’t seen before standing at the counter, chopping vegetables with the kind of speed that suggests she could take a finger off and not notice.
She looks up. Mid-fifties, sturdy, with silver-streaked hair pulled back in a bun so tight it’s practically a facelift. Her expression doesn’t change when she sees me. Either she knows who I am, or she doesn’t care.
“Tea?” she asks.
“Please.”
She nods towards a stool at the island, and I sit. She moves around the kitchen with the quiet authority of someone who’s been running this household longer than Arkady’s been alive. The kettle clicks on, and she returns to her chopping without acknowledging me further.
“I’m Alina,” I say, because the silence feels like it needs filling.
“I know who you are.” She doesn’t look up.
The knife hits the board in a rhythm that’s almost meditative.
Carrots, celery, and onion. She sweeps the vegetables into the stockpot with the flat of the blade and wipes the board clean.
The kettle boils, and she pours without asking how I take it.
Milk, no sugar. She sets it in front of me.
I pick it up and stand, carrying it out without another word.
Sitting there was making us both uncomfortable, so it’s just easier to remove myself from her presence.
I move to the living room and sit on the sofa where I slept the first night, contemplating how the next few hours are going to go.