Chapter 10 #2
Maeve's scar flashed through my mind. Not the way it looked. I'd memorized that long ago, but the way she touched it when she was nervous. The absent brush of her fingers against her own skin, as if checking that it had healed, that the worst had already happened, that she was still here.
These men wanted a symbol.
I had a mate.
Those were not remotely the same thing.
"The London operations should go to someone more stable," Yuri said, scenting blood now. "Someone grounded. Someone who understands what this family needs."
"Someone like you."
"I’m married." He spread his hands. "I have heirs. I have alliances with three major families through my wife's connections alone. What do you have, Artem?"
I have an omega who ran from monsters and still stopped to pick up a freezing dog on the side of a road because she couldn't stomach leaving something helpless in the cold.
I have a brother who would burn this building to its foundations and still ask, while the embers were hot, whether Maeve had eaten lunch.
I have Gregor, who caught our son in his bare hands and will guard them with his life.
And I have a son whose entire hand fits around his mother's finger and whose name is Mac, not Mikhail, not Aleksandr, not another Petrov dragged bleeding into another generation, and I still hadn’t held him.
I have for the first time in my life something that feels like it might actually be worth protecting.
But I couldn't say any of that.
If Yuri knew about Maeve, about Mac, he'd have men eliminating them in a flash. Because Maeve was my greatest strength and my most catastrophic vulnerability and I could not let this room know she existed.
"I have an omega," I said.
The silence was immediate and total.
Beside me, Ivan went rigid. Heat rolled off him. He leaned in, voice low enough that only I could hear.
"Artem. Don't."
He thought I was about to name Maeve. He was already calculating how many men he'd need to kill to get us out of the room.
I turned to Ivan and whispered for him to check on Gregor. He knew what that meant. Then I turned my face to Yuri and smiled.
"I'm marrying Mary McCarthy."
The silence changed shape. It went from anticipatory to bewildered.
Ivan slipped out of the room.
Yuri's face twisted. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. "The McCarthy daughter? Callum McCarthy's girl?"
"The same."
"You refused that match. Publicly. I remember because—"
"I renegotiated it." I leaned back, projecting ease I didn't feel.
"Quietly. The McCarthys control Irish movement into the States.
Ports, papers, clinics, registries. We control Europe.
Put them together and you've got the most profitable alliance available to this Bratva.
My father laid the groundwork before he died.
I completed it. She's under my protection in London as we speak. "
"Callum McCarthy won't agree to hand over his daughter now," Yuri said. "Not after you humiliated him."
"Callum McCarthy likes profit more than he likes his pride. I'm offering him Europe with one ceremony. He'll survive the romance deficit."
A few of the older men actually chuckled at that. Not because they liked me. Because they liked profit even more.
But Mikhail was watching me with the kind of stillness that meant he was hearing the shape beneath the words. He knew something was off. He was old enough and smart enough to sense the lie without knowing which part was false.
He also didn't care.
That was the difference between him and Yuri. Yuri wanted the chair. Mikhail wanted the empire intact. If the machine kept running, he would bless whatever lie fed it.
"An alliance with the McCarthys," Mikhail said slowly, "would secure your position. Assuming it's real."
"It's real."
"Then you won't object to proving it."
Yuri slammed his hand on the table. The teacups jumped. "Proof? He's lying. He's always been—"
Mikhail raised one hand. Yuri stopped mid-sentence like a dog on a choke chain.
"Words are wind," Mikhail said. "You know this, Artem. We need more than your say-so."
"What kind of proof?" Ivan asked, and his voice could have cut glass.
"A wedding." Mikhail looked at his watch, a Soviet-era Pobeda that had probably stopped keeping accurate time during the Khrushchev administration.
He then looked back at me. "In one month all the Bratva heads will come to London.
Show us the McCarthy girl, show us the contract, prove the marriage. If she's yours, the seat is yours."
He paused.
"If she's not, the London operations go to Yuri. And we revisit the succession in its entirety."
I had one month to plan a wedding that didn't exist. A bride who didn't know she was engaged. An omega who'd just given birth to my son and didn't yet know I'd put another woman's name between her and the council's hunger.
"One month," I said, standing. "You'll have your proof."
I didn't wait for dismissal. I was past needing one.
The cold outside felt almost good after the stuffy reek of the council room. Snow had started falling properly while we were inside.
Ivan didn't speak in the corridor. Or on the stairs. Or through the front doors. He didn't speak until we were sealed into the SUV, leather seats warming beneath us, bulletproof glass fogging at the edges from the temperature differential.
Then he turned to me. “I got word to Gregor.”
“Good.”
"But Mary McCarthy. How the fuck are you going to explain that?"
"We have to."
"But Mary McCarthy," he repeated, like he was testing whether the name could become less insane through repetition. "The Irish girl in our safehouse. The one who asked Blade if all Russians were born looking like they were actively planning an invasion."
"That very same one.”
He stared at me. Outside, my father’s estate slid past.
"All right," Ivan said finally, very calm now, which meant he was furious. "Let me make sure I understand. You have just told the council, which I might add, wouldn't hesitate to kill you if they know that you’re lying.”
“I know.”
“But you told them that you are marrying a woman who doesn't know she's engaged.
You need to produce a marriage certificate in one month.
And you need to do this while simultaneously convincing Callum McCarthy, who hates you, and Mary herself, who thinks we're all Bond villains, that this is somehow a good idea.”
“I know.”
“Oh, and Maeve. Our omega, the mother of our child, who just gave birth doesn't know about any of it."
"That's accurate."
"And you think this is going to work."
"I think it has to work."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," I agreed. "It's not."
Ivan's jaw worked. His hands flexed against his thighs. The anger was still there, it was always there now, simmering under his skin like a second pulse, but it was bending toward the same point everything had bent toward since Prague.
Maeve. The pack. The baby.
"If Maeve thinks you're replacing her," he said, "she will leave. She'll just—go. Quietly. Because that's what she does when she thinks she's a burden. And we will never find her."
The words landed harder than anything Yuri had said.
"I know."
"Do you? Because you just bet her security on a lie you told to men who will absolutely use her against you the moment they figure out she exists."
"That's why I told the lie. So they don't figure out she exists."
"For now." He shook his head. "You have to tell her. Quickly. Before someone else does. Before she hears 'Mary McCarthy' from anyone but you."
"I know."
"And then you have to convince Mary McCarthy to fake a marriage to a man she's barely spoken to, without her father finding out it's a sham and starting a war.”
"I'm aware of the logistics."
"Logistics." Ivan snorted. "You sound like Gregor."
"Gregor would have a spreadsheet by now."
"Gregor would have three spreadsheets and a risk assessment matrix." He rubbed his face with both hands. "Fine. Fine. We'll figure it out. But I'm telling you right now, if this blows up, I'm blaming you. And then I'm saving you. In that order."
"That seems fair."
"It's not fair. Nothing about this is fair.
" He dropped his hands and looked at me, and for a moment the fury cracked open and what was underneath was just exhaustion.
"She just had your baby, Artem. She’s emotional and she can't even walk to the bathroom without help.
And you're about to walk in and tell her you're marrying someone else. "
"I'm fake marrying someone else."
"You know what I mean."
I did. That was the problem.
My phone buzzed.
I pulled it out. Gregor. Again. The man had gone from stone-cold field medic to obsessive baby correspondent in a matter of days and showed no signs of slowing down.
Gregor: Mother and child stable. Mac has decided he hates hats. He screams every time we put one on him. Fergus has not left her side. More to follow.
Underneath the message was another photograph.
Mac's fist, tiny, furious, absolutely perfect was wrapped around Maeve's finger. Her thumb was in the corner of the frame, nail polish chipped.
I stared at it.
The SUV hit a pothole. Moscow's roads were Third World on a good day. The jolt made my phone slip and I caught it with a grip that was probably too tight.
"What are you going to name him to the council?" Ivan asked quietly. "When they ask. They'll want a suitable Russian name as your heir."
"Mac."
"They won't accept Mac."
"They won't need to. Mac won't be near the council. Mac won't know the council exists until he's old enough to choose for himself."
Ivan was quiet for a moment. "You really believe that."
"I'm going to make it true."
The snow was falling harder now. The driver turned onto the road toward the airstrip.
"Maeve is going to be furious," Ivan said.
"Yes."
"And hurt."
"Yes."
Ivan sighed—a long, theatrical exhale that fogged the window beside him. "I didn’t survive Moscow and nine months of celibacy to come home and watch her murder you with a breast pump."
The laugh that escaped me was brief and rough and entirely unexpected. It hurt somewhere in my chest. "That's a very specific weapon."
"I've been thinking about it since you opened your mouth in there. She could do it. Those things are heavy. The hospital-grade ones, anyway. Gregor showed me when I called him."
"You're fixating."
"I'm preparing. There's a difference." He rolled his shoulders back. "Tell her when we get back. No delays. No waiting for the right moment. There isn't one."
"I know."
"And for God's sake, lead with the part where it's fake. Don't open with 'I'm marrying another Irish omega.'"
"That seems obvious. I think she’d kill me."
"You'd be surprised what stops being obvious when you're exhausted and guilty and standing in front of the woman you love."
I looked at him.
He looked back, unblinking. "What? I pay attention."
The airstrip came into view. The jet was waiting, lights on, engines already warming. Snow had started to accumulate on the wings.
I thought about Maeve on the velvet sofa, Mac against her chest.
I didn't know how to be a father. My own had left me standing in a corridor for six hours to teach me a lesson about power. The best I could do was the opposite of that, whatever that looked like.
It wasn't enough. It was what I had.
"One more thing," Ivan said as the SUV pulled up to the jet.
"What?"
"If Mary McCarthy says yes, and she might, she's just crazy enough, you're going to owe her. Not money. Not protection. Something real. You've spoken to her maybe twice. That's going to need to change."
"I’ve spoken to her more than that but you're right."
"I know I'm right. I'm always right. It's exhausting." He opened the door and cold blasted in, sharp and immediate. "Come on. Let's go home before your omega decides she prefers peace and quiet."
I stepped out into the snow. The jet engines were a low roar. Somewhere behind us, Moscow glittered with its particular brand of brutal indifference.
I had one month to get married.