Chapter 20 - Janella
I’m not a vain woman, but I haven’t stopped staring at myself in the mirror for the past ten minutes. The thing is, I still can’t conflate myself with the reflection looking back at me.
The Elie Saab gown I’m in is nothing short of a work of art. The amber silk may as well have been painted on. It’s embroidered with the most intricate beading I’ve ever seen. My hair has been swept up in a chic coiffure that a Scandinavian lady called Ida did for me after she did my makeup.
Diamond earrings that Iosif presented me with earlier wink at me.
They match the custom, marquise-cut diamond ring he put on my finger, followed swiftly by the assurance that I can take it off after the gala if I really want to, when I started hyperventilating.
I feel close to it again, looking at this version of myself that may as well have been pulled off a red carpet or peeled from a fashion magazine.
“We’re going to be late if you keep staring,” Iosif’s voice sounds from the doorway, but he’s no better. His gaze lingers. “Not that I can blame you. You’re ravishing.”
“I love it when you compliment me in triple word score words,” I laugh breathlessly.
The truth is, the same can be said for him.
The way he wears that tux should be illegal.
Whatever he paid for it? Worth every penny.
It’s tailored perfectly to his body, the star of tonight, now that someone’s styled his hair back to brag about his unfair cheekbones.
The silver hoop in his ear has a diamond of its own to catch the light.
His grin is impish. “I don’t know if staring at me is much better.”
“Maybe this isn’t my scene,” I suggest, not for the first time.
“You’ll make it yours.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
He crosses the room to me in a handful of strides. His hands swallow mine in their warm grasp. “You can.” There’s no question there, for him.
“Iosif, I’ve never been to anything like this. I feel like Princess Mia in the first Princess Diaries movie. You didn’t even tie me up to the chair with handkerchiefs to table-train me.”
He blinks at me, bewildered. “I understand none of those words.”
I can’t decide if he’s obtuse because he’s in his 40’s or because he’s Russian. Either way, I promise, “We can change that if you stay in with me.”
“Janella,” he coos, turning my knees to mush. “You are a successful businesswoman. You’ve held your own and one by one made every member of my feral-ass family adore you—”
“Actually,” I interject, “I’m still working on Valentin.”
“—And you threw a dagger at a man’s dick without flinching. You can handle a room full of vapid rich fucks making small talk. Because I have to go, and it’ll be a lot more fun with you in my arms.”
My face heats. “That’s different,” I mumble.
His knuckles bump beneath my chin, tipping my head up. “The fuck it is. I’m proud as fuck to walk in there with you on my arm. So, fuck anyone who thinks you don’t belong.”
He says these things sometimes. Big, earnest things with such conviction. He says them like they cost him nothing. But they wreak havoc on my heart every time.
“Even though I’m a nobody?” I ask, my voice sounding small.
“You’re the opposite of a nobody,” Iosif says adamantly. “You’re Janella Yuri. My stunning wife. That’s the only credential you need this once.”
***
The venue looks so much like a castle that I have to ask Iosif if it is one. Once his laughter subsides, he regrettably informs me that there are no castles that he knows of in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yet, when we walk in beneath magnificent, swinging chandeliers casting prismatic light across the glossy marble floors, I still maintain it’s close enough to one to count.
It’s useful that I appreciate it all enough to be more overwhelmed by the beauty than I am by any of my feelings of inadequacy.
My grip on Iosif’s arm never relents, regardless.
When one of the waiters rotating through the ballroom passes by us, he plucks two flutes with his unclaimed hand. With him in his natural habitat, it’s impossible to miss the way his hard, flinty gaze softens when it lands on me.
His attention makes my head spin. I’m grateful when others vie for his attention.
“Iosif!” A man who looks to be in his sixties is headed toward us. “Good to see you, my boy! And is this the lovely bride I’ve been hearing so much about?”
It takes me precisely point-two seconds to realize why he’d been so insistent about the prop.
Playing into my part, I hold it up, flashing it like a blushing bride. “That’s me!” I gush, nodding eagerly.
“Janella, this is Yiannis Nikolaidis. I know he looks like an old fart, but you’re looking at the man who owns half the commercial real estate in Massachusetts,” he introduces charmingly, losing none of his luster to fakeness. “Yiannis, this mesmerizing creature is my wife, Janella.”
“A pleasure.” Yiannis brushes his lips across my knuckles in an outdated fashion that flusters me.
I don’t know what to do with myself. “Iosif’s a beast for keeping you hidden away.
Though I can see why. I was the same with my third wife.
It’s just what a man has to do when he wants you all to himself. ”
I cover my mouth as soon as the laugh bursts out of me. I’m terrified he’ll be offended until I see that Iosif’s chuckling too.
I try to be normal, as normal as I can be, in this dress, at least. “I’d say I’ve been keeping myself hidden, to tell you the truth. Running a café uses up all my desire for socialization.”
“A café?” Either this man is genuinely impressed, or a fantastic actor. “My daughter’s been looking for a new spot for her book club. Do you have a card I can pass along?”
I’m about to apologize for the lack of one, but Iosif pulls one out of his jacket pocket before I get there.
He never stops amazing me, does he?
“The Great Escape,” Yiannis reads aloud, smiling widely. “I like it.”
We talk some more about the café, his daughter, and her girlfriend, Sophie, and the gala’s charity focus. By the time Yiannis moves on to someone else, Iosif is grinning smugly.
“I fucking told you so. You’re a natural.”
The evening unfolds through a series of introductions.
Iosif, for his part, doesn’t leave my side once.
He never stops touching me in one way or another—a hand at the small of my back, the backs of his fingers brushing against the flush in my cheeks, or whispering a quick joke in my ear while I try not snort champagne out of my nose.
Again and again, he introduces me as his wife. No qualifiers or addendums necessary.
“This is Janella, my wife.”
“Have you met Janella? She runs The Great Escape up on Newbury.”
“Janella just opened her own café a few months ago. You should check it out if you’re in the mood for something enchanting.”
Brick by brick, he builds me up. He polishes my confidence, never saying anything factually untrue to do it. Forget how natural I may or may not be at this. It’s he who has these wickedly wealthy, terrifyingly powerful people looking at me with respect. With intrigue, even.
They take the page out of his book. He treats me that way first, always.
“You’re really on a roll tonight,” I praise during a lull in conversation. The great thing about the heels I’m teetering around in tonight is that, if I get on my tiptoes, I can whisper right beneath his shining earring. “You’re really great at this.”
“At what?”
“Being charming. It’s different from how you typically are. Except it’s not. It’s just another facet of you.”
His laughter is easy to get drunk off. “Disappointed you haven’t met all of me yet?”
I’ve smiled so much tonight, my cheeks ache. “Disappointment is nowhere on the list of emotions you inspire.”
There’s a little devil in his eyes now.
“Oh? What’s on the top of that list?”
Rendered audacious under the warm glow of his praise, I’m ready to answer. I stop short when Iosif goes stony-faced beside me. The light in his eyes is snuffed out and frosted over in the blink of an eye.
His grin doesn’t drop, but hardens. His mask is a convincing one, or could be. I know him now. I know what he looks like when fury boils through his bloodstream.
“Iosif?” Anxiety spikes in me.
He pulls me closer into his side, like he’s trying to enmesh me into his side. “Stay close,” he mutters darkly.
It never occurred to me to be anything but.
My gaze chases his line of sight. The source of his tension isn’t difficult to spot; the man moving through the crowd toward us cuts an intimidating figure. He’s tall—taller than Iosif, which is saying something—and dangerously attractive in a midnight blue suit, and he damn well knows it.
He doesn’t look much older than Iosif. So, what is it about him that intimidates like this? That has such an effect on my generally unflappable husband.
“Viktor,” is all Iosif says.
The man raises his lowball glass of clear liquid. It clearly isn’t water, though his voice comes out chillingly sober. “Little Yuri,” Viktor purrs coolly. “Won’t you introduce your lovely new wife to me? You Yuris have the most intriguing taste in women.”
Oh, so he knows them. Maybe he and Iosif dated the same woman?
“Janella Yuri,” I chirp, stepping automatically in front of Iosif. “I don’t know about lovely and intriguing, but I’ll take it if that’s a compliment.” I summon my warmest smile.
Viktor regards me, his head bending to brush his lips across my knuckles—but there’s no warmth reflected back. There is only black ice to be found in his eyes.
“Good to know.”
The way he’s looking at me makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“So, Viktor,” I try to forge ahead, since Iosif doesn’t seem keen to do anything but glare, “what do you do?”
If there’s anything I’ve found out tonight, it’s that rich people love talking about why they’re rich.
“Your husband hasn’t told you?” Viktor asks, and the amusement dancing in his eyes disgruntles me instantly. “No worries. We run in similar circles. Though Iosif likes to run behind me.”
His gaze slips to the man behind me, heat radiating from him in waves. “Isn’t that right, Iosif?”
“That’s a matter of perspective, I suppose,” Iosif says through his teeth. He’s clenching his jaw so hard, I’m worried he’s going to crack a tooth. “Don’t you have something better to do tonight, Zakharov?”
Zakharov.
I miss whatever Viktor says next over the rush of my pulse roaring in my ears. I know that name. Iosif has said this name before, while pacing in his office, surrounded by many a curse word.
“Actually,” I choke out, aiming for sunny and hearing the words come out high-pitched, “I think I see your brothers waving us over, Iosif!” I don’t know what the look on my face must be. Something tells me I don’t pull off looking apologetic as I begin to tug on Iosif’s arm as hard as I can.
It’s completely bullshit. All I know is that I have to get Iosif away from this man. This man, who simply grins after us, as lazy as a snake.
“Bye!” I manage, nails digging into Iosif’s arm until he moves with me.
We make it about ten feet before I can feel him rearing to turn back. I don’t have to guess what would happen then. In the depths of me, I just know it.
“Nope,” I forbid, and wrap myself around his arm, like it’s enough to anchor him to the spot. “Keep walking, mister. Let’s get out of here. We don’t have to stay.”
“That fucker,” Iosif hisses.
I have to interrupt him before he starts breathing fire.
His chortle sounds maniacal. “You’re ordering me around at a gala now. We really are married.”
“Did you have any doubt?” I quip, like my heart isn’t pounding in my chest. “Either way, you’re going to listen to me because the alternative seems to be your committing assault in front of a few hundred witnesses.
Not to mention ruining this glorious tux with blood splatter.
And that would be a tragedy, wouldn’t it? ”
Iosif sucks in a harsh inhale and shakes his head at me. But I can see the way the corners of his mouth twitched. I’ve got him.
He lets me haul him to the other side of the ballroom, pulling him out the nearest exit. They open onto a terrace, where the air is frigid, and we find ourselves alone.
We exhale together.
“Okay,” I say after a beat. “You want to tell me what that was about, baby?”
Iosif runs a rugged hand through his dark waves, thoughtlessly ruining poor Ida’s hard work.
The unsuppressed fury blazing in his eyes still steals attention.
Neither aspect makes him any less sexy, unfortunately.
More, maybe. “Viktor Zakharov is a fucking rat. He’s Anton Zakharov’s younger brother.
Rival gang. We’ve been trying to pin him for months.
He always slips through. And that—” he grits out, huffing hot air, “—was him telling me to my face that he knows I’ve been following him.
Which means that’s months down the drain, and we’re no closer. ”
My stomach drops. “Was he being pointed about me on purpose?” I ask breathlessly. “Did he approach you to tell you I’m—”
“I would’ve killed him on the spot,” Iosif thunders.
I have to reach out and hold him in place all over again.
“What would happen if you went after him head-on?” I prompt him, trying to get him to see reason through his haze of rage. “Walk me through it.”
He’s taken aback enough by the question to still.
“Best case scenario?” Iosif barks an humorless laugh. “It would become a spectacle. He would have the ammo to play the victim. We’d look like the aggressors. It would ruin any chance of getting Anton to believe any evidence we ever do manage to get our fucking hands on.”
I swallow hard. “Worst case?”
“For killing him?” Iosif seems to be asking himself more than me. “A bloody, ruthless war between the gangs. Death, destruction, and some friends.”
I don’t have to point anything out.
Iosif gets there on his own. “Which is what the fucker wants. His mission was to provoke me, and it’s fucking working. If we leave, he’ll know it.”
I step closer, rubbing my chest against his. It’s a cheap ploy, I know, but it always works. I loop my arms around his neck, leaning my weight to the balls of my feet, and brush my lips over his. “Okay, so we don’t give him what he wants. We dance instead.”
“Janella,” Iosif says in an aggrieved growl.
“You can pretend you’re dancing on his grave, if that helps.”
At the very least, it pulls a reluctant grin from him.