Chapter 13
Targen had woken me with a soft kiss and an apology this morning.
“It’s Thursday, milaya. Our wedding is Saturday. You gotta go get your dress. We don’t have time to wait for a custom one this time. You can have whatever you want at the renewal,” he promised.
“Renewal?” I repeated sleepily. Hell, I was trying to figure out how to get out of this one.
“You know I can’t go with you, but I’m not letting you go alone,” he told me before kissing me again.
To look so scary, this was the kissing-est man. And damn, he could kiss. It didn’t matter if it was a soft peck or one of those searing, soul-stirring numbers he laid on me too often. Even in my current rebellious mindset, I didn’t object to his kisses. They were too damn good.
“Targen, I don’t— wait, who’s going? Andrei?” My curiosity momentarily trumped my intention to protest.
Another quick kiss and then he smacked my thigh gently as he stood.
“Get up and see,” he said.
And because I hadn’t fully thought out my escape plan and maybe because I was slightly nosy, I got up and got ready.
Which explained how I came to be in this gorgeously decorated bridal shop with his cousins Monica and Sasha.
He’d told me about them before, on one of those long nights at my grandparents’ farm when we just talked and vibed for hours.
I knew they were like his sisters, that he loved them fiercely.
They apparently felt the same way about him.
Monica watched Sasha and barely gave me anything but a sparing glance.
I knew she was indifferent about a lot of things, so I wasn’t taking her disinterest personally.
Sasha, at least, tried. She was riffling through a display of wedding dresses, her hands flying through the tulle and lace, satin and silk, as she eyed them critically.
I knew just from looking at her that her taste would be impeccable.
She oozed sex appeal and confidence even at seven months pregnant.
The way she stood, touched items, and gave anyone who was speaking to her, her full attention spoke to her self-assurance.
“You don’t look too excited to be marrying my cousin,” Monica finally said, an undercurrent of curiosity in her tone.
Her dark eyes held more questions than she’d voiced, and I wondered what was going on in that head of hers.
Targen said more than once that Monica watched people closely and listened to everything that wasn’t said.
I shrugged as my fingers traced the intricate beading on one exquisite piece. “I’m not sure what your cousin has told you, but things aren’t exactly unfolding the way I thought they would in my life.”
She laughed as her hands smoothed over her growing belly. She was pregnant too, probably as far along as Sasha. “I mean, having your life unfold with a young, rich nigga who would do anything to keep you and your people safe can’t be too bad, huh?”
“Monica!” Sasha called out. Her voice carried a bit of a warning, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Sasha was trying to stop. “Behave.”
Monica’s shoulders lifted nonchalantly. “I'm just saying they could do worse than each other. Targen doesn’t do meek.” She turned her attention to me and gave me a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know you, but you give me weak.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s right; you don’t know anything about me, Monica.”
“I know Targen, though,” she asserted. “He will think of a million ways for you to love him while someone like you will find a trillion reasons not to. And he might think that eye-rolling shit is cute, but I’ll—”
“Monica!” Sasha interrupted what had undoubtedly been a threat, the way Monica’s hand had moved toward her back. Targen had laughed when he described her as always on go but said she’d calmed down since getting married, having a kid, and getting pregnant again. Apparently, he was wrong.
“I’m not going to shoot her ass,” Monica laughed as she adjusted the pillow stationed behind her. She looked at me and smirked. “You don’t have to act tough around us.”
“I’m not acting,” I replied, and the cousins shared a look that said they didn’t believe me. “I can hold my own with both of you. I was raised around women like you.”
“No, you weren’t,” Sasha said as she continued to look through the dresses.
“You were raised by a family, by people that love you, not that look at you like a profit.” She turned to face me, crossed her arms, and let her dark eyes take me in.
Her look screamed of pain, trauma, and death.
“I was raised to fuck and Monica?” She lifted her perfectly arched brow and pointed to Monica.
“She was raised to kill.” Sasha dropped her hand and gave me that sad smile again.
“We were lucky enough to find men to love us. The good, bad, ugly, pain, and everything that we don’t like to mention.
You have scars, sweetie, seen and usually unseen, I’m sure. We see them.”
“Whatever Targen told you-”
“He didn’t tell us shit but that he loves you,” Monica interrupted me.
My eyes widened at her use of the word “love,” but she continued before I could question that.
“Targen wouldn’t break the bond y’all have developed like that and tell us anything. And honestly, we don't want to know. Because if it paints you in a bad light, then, I wouldn’t be Monica, and she wouldn’t be Sasha.”
“Who would you be?” I couldn’t help asking.
“I’d be the Madam and she’d be Trenches,” Sasha answered with a laugh.
I studied her, wondering what she was getting at. “Which means?” I pressed.
Targen said that his cousins had a checkered past, but I didn’t know exactly what that meant. Sasha referring to herself as a madam had my interest piqued.
“That we aren’t what you think we are,” Monica said, a small smile curving her lips.
“I’m going to say this and then y’all can go back to looking for a dress so we can leave.
Theory, you were raised in love, and yes, we know the situation with Targen isn’t ideal, but he is trying.
He has extended himself to you in a way that he has never done before.
Don’t take his kindness for weakness or his heart for granted. ”
“Or I’ll have to deal with the Madam and Trenches?
” I mocked because her words hit me in a way that caused me to feel a grudging respect for her.
I couldn’t afford to like them. Even though I found myself weirdly enjoying their company, I was still on a mission here and needed them to stay at a distance.
I talked shit, but I could see Monica and Sasha hanging out with my family and actually getting along.
They were blunt, but the love they had for each other and Targen was obvious.
Sasha and Monica shared another look and started to laugh.
“Girl, you wouldn’t last a second in our world. Remember that,” Monica replied and shook her head. “It's obvious that this shit scares you, and compared to what we’ve dealt with, it looks like heaven.”
“I’m not scared-”
“You’re terrified,” Sasha challenged, shaking her head. “It’s obvious.” She looked over the rack of dresses and smiled. “It’s okay, though, because we’ve been where you are. It only stops being scary when you marry him.”
“You haven’t married yours, yet,” Monica said.
Sasha shrugged. “I plan on it, though.” She tapped her hand against a pretty dress and smirked. “She’s fighting the inevitable, while I’m preparing for it.”
The inevitable? I tried not to laugh as I shook my head.
Sasha was talking as if this was a planned, loving situation when it wasn’t.
I knew that Targen would never do anything to hurt me, but the only reason that I was here was because his stubborn ass wanted to do things his way.
Red flags were everywhere. It seemed like both sides of his family were everything but what I wanted for my ideal family.
The Sidorovs were legit off, and from what Monica and Sasha were giving me, they were not just two happily partnered mothers who lived in Kansas City and had escaped a sort of a hard life.
They were potentially all fucked up, and I didn’t want to deal with any of that shit.
“Mrs. Sidorov, have you seen anything you like?” Freya, the perfectly put together clerk, asked as she reappeared.
Being polite was part of her job, but she had seemed genuinely warm when she greeted us and again when she brought us glasses of a delightful Riesling. Suddenly, an idea began to bloom in my head.
“Yes. Can you help me with this one?” I asked, smiling as I chose a fitted, satin confection with a cowl neck and long train.
“That mermaid outline is going to be perfect with your shape,” Sasha complimented, glancing at Monica expectantly.
“Yeah, she’ll probably look a’ight,” Monica mumbled.
It took everything in me not to flip her surly ass off. Instead, I followed Freya behind a carefully draped curtain and down the plushily carpeted hallway. She opened a door halfway down and I walked into the huge, softly lit, mirrored dressing room.
“I’ll stand outside so I can help you when you’re ready. Then, I can get your friends,” she offered.
Silently, I beckoned her into the room. Her eyebrow lifted, but she came in.
“I do need your help, but not like you think,” I whispered.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Whatever you need, Mrs. S—”
“First, I’m not Mrs. Sidorov. My name is Theory Miller, and I’ve been kidnapped.”
Freya looked at me, then toward the door, then back at me. “Kidnapped? By the two pregnant women with the jewelry that could pay my bills for a year?” she asked skeptically, the shock of my confession making her drop the little proper facade.
I scowled at her. I didn’t have time for all this. “Don’t be fooled, Freya. Not by them. By their cousin who’s making me marry him.”
“You talking about that tall, fine man who told me you could charge whatever?” she asked.
“Ye— wait, why you looking at him like that?” I demanded.
“Why you care, if he kidnapped you?” she snapped back.
I kissed my teeth. “You gon’ help me or not?”
She stared at me a minute, before sighing and rolling her eyes.
“You gon’ make me miss out on the biggest commission of my damn life, Ms. Miller.
I can’t let you go out like that, though.
You end up in Lake Houston, I’ll never get over it.
My phone out there at the front desk with my co-worker, though, so we can’t call 911. ”
I bit my lip before saying, “I don’t really wanna call 911. I don’t want him to go to jail.”
Her gaze was all doubt and suspicion as she eyed me. “He kidnapped you, and you don’t want him to go to jail. Come on, mama. Something in the milk ain’t clean.”
“Girl, you sound like my Granny Nette. You way too young to be saying that. He kidnapped me and he’s tryna marry me because he thinks it’s the only way to keep me safe,” I explained as briefly as I could.
“What the hell you done got into? And what if that man is right? Way he walked in here, looking and smelling like money with the black card to back it up, it might not be too bad. And he put that ice on your finger? Shoot, tell him to kidnap me,” she said, smiling.
I huffed my frustration. “I will, soon as I get out of here. Could we get back to my escape plan?”
“Y’all okay back there?”
I almost jumped out of the damn building when Sasha’s voice rang out. Freya and I exchanged panicked looks, momentarily frozen in place. Then, I pushed her toward the hallway.
“Say something,” I hissed.
She frowned at me before clearing her throat. “We’re fine. She’s almost got it on. This might be the one, ladies! She’ll be ready in just a minute.”
I clapped quietly. Freya’s eyes narrowed.
“I’on even know why we going through this. If you and I can’t get past two fifteen-months pregnant women, you deserve to be kidnapped, and I deserve to feel bad when I see you on the news,” she mumbled.
I turned up my nose at her. “First of all, one, possibly both, of them are armed. I’m pretty sure one is trigger happy. And even if we managed to duck and dodge the bullets—”
“Which I am not doing. Girl, I’d have to think twice about taking a bullet for my mama, much less a woman who been kidnapped by a nigga who got more money than the Monopoly man,” she interrupted.
“Even if,” I insisted, “There are two big Russian guys waiting on us outside the door.”
She glared at me, shaking her head. “You know, I started to let Karena help him when he came in. But no, my stupid inner self said. We don’t get a lot of Black men in here and I wanted to help a brotha out… literally. Now, look. You got me caught up in a Lifetime movie.”
“Freya. Focus! You gon’ help or not?”
“I told you I was gon’ help, didn’t I? We got a back door…”
I listened as she planned a simple escape route for me through the alleys behind the block of storefronts. She’d call her best friend to let me in the back door of a nearby boutique where she worked.
“She’ll let you use her phone. Hell, I’ll tell her to have an Uber waiting for you.”
I nodded my approval, even as a strange feeling twisted up from the pit of my stomach and into my chest. Stupid emotions.
I was absolutely doing the right thing. I understood the danger, but I believed Ajani, Prime, and Braeden could keep us safe.
I needed to leave this behind, leave him behind.
My eyes fell to the beautiful ring he had slid onto my finger.
I pulled it off slowly, then curled my fingers around my palm where it rested, reluctant to let it go.
Stop it, Theory! I grabbed Freya’s hand and pressed the ring into it.
“For your troubles. Thank you,” I whispered around the sudden lump in my throat.
“Yeah, yeah. Come on.”
She led me to the back door then entered the code that opened it. I thanked her again, but she waved it off.
“Let me go out here and stall them. Then, I’ma send them to the dressing room, and Karena and I going right out that front door. I ain’t tryna be on the news, either.”