Chapter 16
Ivan
I peeked into the chapel, which was ridiculous.
Not tacky-ridiculous. Artem would rather swallow his own sidearm than be tacky.
It was expensive-ridiculous, the kind of place where the air itself seemed to have been priced by the square foot.
White roses climbed the archway in such obscene abundance that at least one florist had definitely cried in the service of our wedding.
Crystal lights dripped from the ceiling like somebody had weaponized a chandelier catalogue.
The aisle runner was cream silk. The pews were polished to a shine that reflected the altar candles in duplicate.
And every third pew had a Petrov man in it, pretending to be a wedding guest while carrying enough hardware to overthrow a small government.
Blade was near the back with his hands folded in front of him, which was how he always stood when he was trying to look unarmed. He wasn't unarmed. Killian had already threatened the photographer twice, once for getting too close to the door and once for "breathing with intent."
Mary was standing next to Gregor, her shoulders shaking with the effort of not laughing, which made her look so much like Maeve that it caught me off guard every time.
Mac was in his pram, wearing a sleepsuit with a tiny bowtie printed on the front, because Maeve had seen it in a shop and Artem bought him ten, along with everything else she fawned over.
Fergus was beside the pram in a matching bowtie, looking smug about it. The dog knew he was part of the operation. He'd been insufferable for days.
And Artem. My brother and the future Pakhan, the man who had stared down twelve Bratva heads and lied to their faces without blinking, was panting in his custom tuxedo like a teenager picking up his prom date.
"You're sweating," I said.
"I'm not sweating."
"You're leaking. Profusely. From the face."
He adjusted his cuffs. That was the seventh time in maybe two minutes. I'd been counting. It was the most entertainment I'd had since Mary tried to order a margarita in the hotel bar and got carded by a waiter who looked twelve.
"I'm fine."
"Let’s go inside. It might be cooler and you're sweating more than Maeve did in Prague when she tried to convince us she wasn't in heat.
" I opened the door and stepped inside the chapel and leaned closer, dropping my voice to the register that made him want to hit me.
"I think you might actually pass out at your own wedding.
And in front of Gregor's tactical pram.”
Artem glared at me. "Ivan."
"Yes?"
"If you don't stop talking, I will have Blade remove you."
"Blade likes me. And I’m the best man. Your brother, and she is also my omega."
"Blade likes no one. He tolerates you because you sign his paychecks."
"That's basically friendship in our line of work."
He didn't answer. We reached the altar and his gaze drifted back to the chapel doors. His hands were clenching behind his back, which was a tell I hadn't seen since we were teenagers and our father was about to walk into a room.
I dropped the teasing. "She's not going to run, Artem."
He didn't look at me.
"She chose this. She chose us. Three days after giving birth, she stood on a staircase in your shirt and told you she was marrying you whether you liked it or not." I nudged his shoulder. "I don't think she's going to get to the altar and suddenly remember she left the oven on."
"She could do better."
"Absolutely. But that's not how any of this works."
That got him. The corner of his mouth twitched, and some of the tension in his shoulders unlocked.
The quartet started playing. Something classical and sweeping that Maeve had picked from a list the chapel sent over, not expecting Artem to pay for an actual quartet.
She'd listened to three options and chosen the one she said made her feel "appropriately dramatic," which was a very Maeve way to choose wedding music.
The chapel doors opened.
Gregor came first.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper. He was six-foot-four of scarred Russian muscle, death on legs in any reasonable context, and he was pushing a tactical black baby pram with one hand while carrying a Yorkshire terrier in a bowtie under his other arm.
Fergus yipped.
Someone in the back pew—Killian, I think—made a sound like a cough and a laugh having a car accident.
Gregor parked the pram beside me with the precision of a man positioning a piece of field artillery. "The perimeter is secure," he murmured. "The ring is in my left pocket."
"You're pushing a pram."
"I am aware."
"With a dog in your armpit."
"Fergus refused to walk. He said the aisle was too long."
"Fergus doesn't speak."
"He was very expressive about it."
“You mean you’ve gone soft over the thing? Duke will have Fergus for breakfast when she meets him next week.”
Gregor grunted.
I grinned.
Next came Mary in pale blue, walking with a confidence she hadn't had a week ago.
She caught my eye as she passed and grinned.
Mary had gone from prisoner to fake bride to bridesmaid in the space of a month, and she was handling it better than most of our business associates handled a change in currency exchange rates. I liked her enormously.
Then the music swelled.
And Maeve stepped into the aisle.
The world did not stop. That was the thing.
I'd read enough books and seen enough films to expect the world to stop, but it didn't. The world kept going.
The candles flickering, the quartet scraped through their strings, Fergus wriggled in Gregor's grip.
But all of it went slightly out of focus, like someone had turned the depth of field down on everything that wasn't her.
The dress was simple. Pale pink silk. No giant skirt, no cathedral train, no tiara. Just clean lines over the soft curves that pregnancy and birth had left on her body, the neckline cut low enough to show the scar Finn had carved into her and the pulse beating beneath it.
She hadn't covered it.
That was what got me. Not the dress, not the flowers, not the way the light caught the edge of her collarbone.
The scar. Visible. Deliberate. She was walking toward us with the worst thing that had ever happened to her bared to the room, and her chin was up and her eyes were dry and she was looking at Artem, me and Greogr like we were the only thing in the room she'd come to see.
My heart was throwing itself against my ribcage.
Beside me, Gregor made a sound so low only I caught it. Not a growl. Something worse. Something that belonged in the dark, the way prayers did.
Artem had gone completely still.
The strategist was gone. The killer. The heir. Gone. He was just a man watching the woman he loved walk toward him with a scar on her throat and a decision in her eyes.
"Breathe," I whispered.
"I am breathing."
"Could've fooled me."
"Shut up, Ivan."
"There he is."
The celebrant was an elderly man with a kind face and the slightly nervous air of someone who had been told, in no uncertain terms, what would happen if he sold photographs to the press. He beamed at Maeve as she approached the altar.
"Well, don't you look gorgeous, sweetheart."
The growl that came out of Artem was not human.
It was low and immediate and entirely involuntary, the kind of sound that belonged in a cave with a fire and something freshly killed. The celebrant took a step back and nearly tripped over his own robe.
"Stand down," Gregor muttered, shifting slightly to block Artem's line of sight. "He's an old man. You cannot kill the celebrant at your own wedding."
"He looked at her."
"Everyone is looking at her. She's the bride. That's how weddings work."
"He called her sweetheart."
"It's an American thing. They do that here."
Artem's jaw worked. His eyes had gone black at the edges. "I don't like it."
"You don't have to like it. You just have to not commit a felony during the ceremony. We can revisit the felony afterward if you still feel strongly."
Maeve reached the altar. She had obviously seen the entire exchange, and she was smiling, despite being a bride trying to pretend her groom hadn't just threatened an elderly officiant.
It crinkled the corners of her eyes. She took Artem's hands and the tension drained out of him so fast I could almost hear it go.
"Hello," she said.
"You're—" He stopped. Swallowed. "You're here."
"I told you I would be. I'm very reliable. You should put that in your files."
"I don't have a file on you."
"You absolutely have a file on me. Probably started it nine months ago and Gregor has most probably laminated it."
From behind us, Gregor said, "It is in a secure binder."
The celebrant, clearly deciding that proceeding with the ceremony was safer than acknowledging what had just happened, cleared his throat and launched into the vows.
I didn't hear most of it.
I was watching Maeve's hands in Artem's hands.
I was watching Gregor behind her shoulder, his gaze fixed on her back like he was memorizing the shape of her spine through silk.
I was watching the candlelight catch Mac's face in the pram, his tiny fist already curled in sleep, completely indifferent to the fact that his parents were getting married feet away.
Then the celebrant said, "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."
He stepped back. Notably further back than was customary.
Artem pulled Maeve against him and kissed her. It wasn't a wedding kiss. It wasn't polite or performative. It was the kiss of a man who had spent thirty-two years expecting nothing and had just been handed everything.
When he pulled away, Maeve was flushed and breathless.
She didn't stop there.
She turned to Gregor. Reached up and cupped his scarred brutal face in both hands and pulled him down. She kissed him with a tenderness that made my throat close.
"Thank you," she whispered against his mouth. "For being perfect."
Gregor's eyes went dark. His hands settled on her waist. "Always."
Then she turned to me.
I pulled her in and buried my face in her neck. Caramel and rain and champagne and something underneath that was just Maeve, just her, the scent that had knocked me sideways in a Prague alley and never let me back up.
I kissed her. Hard and fast, because if I did it slowly I might say something true and I wasn't ready for that yet.
"Always," I murmured.
"Always," she promised.
The photographs were the most dangerous part of the entire operation.
Not because of security risks. Because Maeve was tired, Mac was hungry, Mary kept making faces behind the photographer, and Artem had the expression of a man who had just been asked to smile naturally and found the request physically impossible.
"You look like you're negotiating a hostage exchange," Maeve told him.
"I’m happy."
"Tell your face."
"I am telling it. It's not listening."
I laughed so hard I had to lean on a pew to stop myself from falling. The photographer lowered the camera and looked at me with the wary expression of a man who had worked celebrity weddings for twenty years and still wasn't prepared for the Russian mafia.
Gregor stood behind Maeve with one hand resting on her waist, Mac tucked into the crook of his other arm.
Fergus sat at our feet in his bowtie, having decided that looking at the camera was beneath his dignity.
Mary leaned into Maeve's side, bright-eyed and alive and free in a way she hadn't been a week ago, a month ago, or ever because of her father.
Artem put his hand over Maeve's on the bouquet.
And something in his face finally cracked open. A real smile. One that had been waiting since Prague.
The shutter caught it.
There. Proof. And it wasn’t for the Bratva council, but for us.
"One more," the photographer said. "Everyone together."
"Everyone?" Gregor asked.
"The whole family."
Fergus barked. Mac opened his eyes, registered the situation, and immediately closed them again.
"The whole family," Maeve repeated, and her voice caught on the last word.
I put my arm around her from one side. Gregor from the other. Artem pulled her back against his chest, and Mary grabbed Fergus and squeezed in next to me, and somehow we all fit in the frame even though we shouldn't have.
The flash went off.
"Now," I said, "all we have to do is forge a marriage certificate, survive a honeymoon, and go to war."
Maeve elbowed me.
"I was being optimistic."
"That was optimistic?"
"For me? Extremely."