Chapter 2 #2
Lexi slowly shook her head. She was convincing herself she didn’t have to leave, I could feel it.
“That one billionaire guy didn’t even legally marry his weird new wife when they rented out Paris for their pretend wedding, and he even bought a magazine so she could be on the cover in her too-tight skanky wedding gown,” she mused.
“They just had an overpriced party and made everyone look at them while they said legally unenforceable vows to each other. Their fake priest wasn’t even ordained in anything, so that dude actually did pull a Henry the Seventh.
No one signed a legally binding marriage license like we did.
God didn’t bless that marriage, just Mammon. ”
A smile tightened my mouth, but I twisted it into a grimace because this conversation must end with her leaving me.
Admitting to Lexi that mentally sparring with her was the most exciting thing to happen to me in years would be counterproductive.
The gray yes-men and dull wits of the emotionally stunted upper class bored me.
“Those nouveau riche tech bros are the pinnacle of gauche. It amuses us that they believe they will have class if they commit the crimes against humanity our ancestors did. They paint their unfashionable homes in faux-gold paint as if it evokes the Hermitage, but it looks crass. We don’t associate with them.
The few of us who did slum with them lost their titles and succession numbers, as they should have. ”
She nodded, her nose still scrunched with disdain. “Yeah. Ew. And gross. But still, we’re really married.”
“I’ll tell them it was fraudulent, that it wasn’t legal. No one will know. No one will care.”
“But we signed the wedding license, and it was notarized and deposited. It wasn’t a bogus wedding.”
“They’ll believe me.”
“It’s easy enough to dig up a marriage license with even halfway decent Google-fu. People will know it was legal.”
“I can convince them.”
“But can you?” she argued, her voice adamant.
John Borbon’s disbelief when he’d pulled me aside at the Omnia bar to again interrogate me about Lexi intruded into my thoughts. “Of course I can.”
“I don’t know, there, Nico. You seem pretty straight-laced. What was that thing about you demanding your school teach more Latin?”
“As an elective. And I’m not uptight. I’m just not an idiot.”
Lexi had me back on my heels, nearly on the ropes, in this dispute. I was defending myself instead of shepherding her toward accepting my viewpoint.
Tricky girl.
I dug in, desperate to win so she would see herself out of my life and be safe, and yet I was grinding my feet into the proverbial intellectual mud, matching wits, enjoying the sparring, and watching the pretty pink rise in her cheeks.
I didn’t want her to hate me, but I should have.
“But I could convince them of things,” Lexi insisted, her dark eyes bright with stars from the window’s morning sunlight and lamps behind me. “I’m an actor. If we decide on a story to tell them, I can do it.”
“Excellent. Act like you’re pissed as hell at me and stomp through the lobby and out of my life so you will be safe from these motherfuckers because I would not be able to bear it if anything happened to you,” I growled at her, not raising my voice because Ueli sat just beyond the door.
Shit, I was saying too much, but the heat, from needing her to get the fuck away from me and wanting to tumble her into the sheets and make her gasp, was a torment.
“But I don’t want to leave you with these guys breathing down your neck. Country folk don’t run from a fight.”
“You must. I insist.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, and I don’t leave friends in the lurch.”
“I admire your loyalty, but your sense of self-preservation leaves much to be desired.”
“I will make this decision for myself.”
“I told you early on that I would ensure you were safe. I won’t renege on that promise.”
She fluttered her hand, brushing my concerns away. “That was a long time ago.”
“It was yesterday morning.”
“Still.”
“Misguided loyalty to me will result in you being killed, horribly, terribly. You didn’t see the rest of the video. I don’t understand why you won’t just go for your own safety.”
“But you don’t want me to go, right?”
“God, no, and I never should have admitted that. I should have been increasingly abusive so you would leave. I should have driven you away.” I heard myself speaking the truth, and yet despaired at the thought of the pain and then hate in her eyes.
“I should have manipulated you as I manipulate everyone else in my life, to keep them and myself from being murdered.”
Her wide-eyed glance of sympathy at my words was infuriating because I’d set my cause back again.
“No,” I told her. “No. When you grabbed my phone, I should have done anything to stop you, but I didn’t want to hurt you.
I should have convinced you to leave, lied and manipulated and ripped your proverbial heart out to make you leave, including having Ueli drag you out.
He will. I will tell him to, and he will. ”
“I won’t leave you.”
“I don’t see why you won’t save yourself.”
This circular argument was why we were still swathed in blankets, bickering, entirely unsuitably attired and still tousled from sleep, when fists pounding on the suite’s exterior door rattled the walls.
Chills washed over me.
The bedroom door was still shut and locked, though Ueli had arrived an hour before.
My hands strayed across the bedcovers, reaching for Lexi. I shifted my center of mass toward and in front of her, ready to tuck her under my body if the shooting was beginning, in position to fight if they tried to take her. I could fight. I’d been trained to resist abduction since childhood.
My bloodline was too valuable to be allowed to be stolen.
My heart pumped harder. I was ten toes down and ready to leap at whoever came through that door.
But the bullets and the fight did not materialize.
Instead, low voices muttered in the other room.
Ueli knocked on the door. “Mr. Romanov, your lawyers say they have an appointment with you at your request. They are here.”
Dear God, my fucking lawyers had arrived just like I’d told them to, dammit.
Lexi’s dark eyebrows lifted, and she turned from where she’d been watching the door, too.
“Oh, yeah! The lawyers with the post-nup contract. You said you’d sign it this morning.
” She leaned on her hands, glaring right into my eyes like a laser to my brain.
A wily smile curved her luscious mouth. “You promised.”
Ah, fuck me. “Fine.”