Chapter Six — Alexei #2
“She’s stubborn,” I continued, “and she doesn’t shrink.
She was brought into a Bratva poker room with zip-tied wrists and within twenty minutes she was conducting a threat assessment of the space and arguing with my security staff about whether she needed to be carried across the lobby.
” I paused. “She’s brave; I’ve also seen that much.
She’s a professional—her business is legitimate, well-run, and her client relationships suggest genuine competence rather than mere show.
” Another pause. “She’s reckless the way people are reckless when they’re angry enough that their self-preservation instinct is temporarily overridden. ”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Anya was the one who spoke. “Well, do you like her?”
“Anya,” Katerina called.
“What? It’s a relevant question,” Dimitri insisted.
“I don’t know her,” I said, facing Anya and deciding to ignore Dimitri.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I held her gaze for a moment. Then I looked at Mikhail, because Mikhail was the point of this conversation in the way that mattered—the operational point, the structural point, the point that would or wouldn’t extend the protection of the family’s name to a woman who had been in my building for less than two days.
“She looks at me like I’m answerable to her,” I said. “Not like I’m a man with the power to end problems. Like I’m a man who has made decisions she disagrees with and is going to be required to account for them.”
Mikhail was quiet for several seconds in a way that wasn’t passive. It was, as usual, active and weighted. Then he nodded once. The specific, final nod that in our family meant, ‘This is decided.’
“Do it properly,” he said. “Not a courthouse. Here.”
“This evening,” I disclosed.
“This evening, Lex?” Katerina asked, surprise clear in her expression.
Viktor sighed.
Dmitri grinned at me. “I want to meet her,” he said.
“You will, except you plan to miss the wedding.”
“Is she as—”
“Dmitri.”
“I’m just asking—”
“Is there any reason to hold on?” Mikhail asked, looking around the table.
“Nope,” Anya answered immediately. “But if she’s as stubborn as you say, she’ll definitely not agree easily.”
Of course.
“I think it’s far-fetched. But I see no real danger, either,” Viktor remarked.
“Alright, then,” Mikhail said. “This evening.”
He stood, and we all stood after him.
Next comes the not-so-easy part.
*****
She was at the window again when I came back. I was beginning to understand this as her position.
She turned when she heard the door. Still, her posture was controlled. Deliberate. She’d slept—the circles under her eyes had faded.
“Tonight,” I said.
Her control flickered visibly. “What?”
“The wedding will be tonight. The Golovin estate, civil ceremony, legally binding.” I watched her face. “The family will be present.”
The silence that followed moved through two stages.
Disbelief first—a rapid blink, a fractional parting of her mouth.
Then the anger, bringing a familiar heat, straightened her spine, bringing her away from the window.
“You are announcing this to me. Again. Like it’s a schedule you’re reading.
‘Tonight, the wedding.’” Her voice quivered a bit like it did the last time she was furious. “I haven’t agreed—”
“You haven’t refused.”
“That is not the same thing as accepting, you arrogant motherfucker!”
I didn’t say anything. I could, but I didn’t. Not when the fear beneath her fury just let itself out.
She sighed deeply. Then she did it again, looking towards the window and then at my face again.
“I have terms. Conditions that must be in place if this fucking marriage is going to happen,” she bit out.
“What are your terms?” I asked.
She looked at me for a long moment with the expression of someone who had prepared for one kind of conversation and was planning for another. She moved to the couch and sat down, looking at her hands for a moment before looking back at me.
“My work,” she said. “It remains completely mine. No interference, no Golovin involvement, I won’t have clients thinking they’re doing business with a Bratva-adjacent company.”
“Agreed.”
“My name. Monroe-Golovin, as we discussed. Not dropped.”
“Agreed.”
“And…” She hesitated on this one in a way she hadn’t hesitated on the others, which told me it was the one that cost her something to say.
“I’m not a prisoner. I won’t take public humiliation in any form.
Even with the security. Even with, ” she gestured vaguely at the space between us, “all of this. I don’t want to feel like I’m being managed. ”
I looked at her. “I can’t guarantee how things feel.”
“Then guarantee what you can.”
“You won’t be followed unnecessarily. You won’t be overridden on your own professional decisions. You won’t be asked to perform… wifely functions you haven’t chosen.” I held her gaze. “What happens between us, if anything, will be because you’ve decided it.”
She looked at me with those bright eyes that radiated a kind of warmth I couldn’t explain nor escape.
“The timeline,” she said.
“That’s non-negotiable.”
“Of course it is,” she pressed. “Why not?”
“Siroc White remains an active threat, and the intelligence on your location is almost forty-eight hours old. That’s why not.”
She huffed and looked away.
In that moment, I felt a crazy urge to hold her. Not just to feel her skin against mine but to hold her. To comfort her. It was an infuriating abnormality.
I moved to the door.
*****
The ceremony took twenty minutes.
I had intentionally organized the arrangement of the main room at the estate.
It wasn’t elaborate because that would have felt like a mockery of a situation that didn’t require decoration.
There were flowers, because Elena had insisted on flowers, and I had not had the energy to argue with my first sister-in-law about flowers.
Candles were also featured because the evening light was low and the room needed warmth.