Chapter 4
NATALIA
The first thing I do is unbraid my hair and tug out the diamond pins, so that it falls loose around my shoulders again. My headache fades in seconds. Then I pop open the bottle of champagne that was left in the sitting room for the reception.
I was supposed to be back here with my new husband, celebrating our first moment alone together as newlyweds.
Instead I’m alone, with my cat, looking forward to a night of cataloging another shipment of paintings.
“We did it, Dasha. We get to stay here, with no men to tell us what to do.”
I raise a toast to my tabby cat, who purrs at me from her patch of sunlight. I rescued her from the street when I was a child, but she’s got a better life than me these days. At least no one ever tries to marry her off for a business deal.
I sigh with contentment. The fizz of the champagne is delicious on my tongue — I tend to avoid the Bratva parties my mother loves to throw, but I do love champagne, so it’s a special treat.
“Celebrating your not-wedding?”
I thought it would be my mother, ready to tell me what a fool I was for cancelling another promising wedding.
Instead it’s a man’s voice — low and rough and warm.
The man with the scar across his face is in the room.
He pulls the door shut behind him and starts walking towards me.
No, stalking towards me, like a predator approaching its prey.
My champagne flute tumbles to the floor, spilling onto the cream carpet and sending Dasha across the room to hide under an armchair.
The man watches on with amusement as I scramble to pick up the champagne flute.
Something about his intense blue eyes following my every move has my brain unable to send the right signals to my body.
My mind can only bounce around in panic, flitting between the dark ink tattoos on his forearm, the buzzcut sides of his hair, and the unsettling intensity of his gaze.
He leans against the windowsill in front of me. He’s so broad that he blocks out the light, a shadow in front of the gardens.
His face is fascinating — black hair, blue eyes so dark they’re like the evening sky in summer, and a scar across his left cheek. I follow its ragged path to his jawline and the side of his neck. Whatever it’s from, that must have almost killed him. This is a face with stories and years behind it.
I wait for someone to follow him in, someone to tell me what this is about.
But it’s just the two of us.
Alone.
I’m the one who has to figure this man out.
I clear my throat and stand up to face him, smoothing my hands over the silk of my skirt, which is already wrinkled from sitting.
I wish I’d left the hairpins in. The diamonds and braids would have felt like some kind of armor.
“Who are you?”
“Your new fiancé.”
“My what?”
“You heard me.”
A lazy, crooked smile curves his lips and my heart gives a stutter.
Is he trying to flirt with me? If so, it’s a bold opening gambit.
I swallow down the strange things his presence does to my body and shake the nervous energy from my hands.
“I won’t have a new fiancé until I agree to it.”
“Seems like your agreement is hard to get.”
He slides his gaze over towards the hallway, and beyond that, the chapel. He might be a new face to me, but he knows my reputation for jilting men at the altar. Definitely Bratva, then, if the faint Russian accent and ruthless lines of his face weren’t obvious enough.
He pushes his sleeves up his tattooed, muscular arms. There’s more ink than skin visible. I’ve never seen someone who looks so rough, not in our household. The tight black suit he’s wearing reveals bulge after bulge of thick muscle. I can’t stop staring.
I get the strange urge to reach out and touch him, trace my fingers over that ink and find out its meaning.
I shouldn’t be surprised to see a man with tattoos.
Our family are Bratva, of course. The Bryusov name carries weight. It’s just that we are more art dealers than we are criminals — my father likes order and tidiness.
I can only imagine the kind of uproar that would ensue if I declared I wanted a tattoo or a piercing.
My purity is everything to my family.
When I was twelve, I tried to ask my father’s head guard a question and he wouldn’t meet my eye. That’s how I learned all of my father’s guards — in fact all the male staff in the household — were under strict instructions never to look at me.
Since my brothers died, my virtue has been my family’s most precious asset. Everything is riding on my marriage, so there can’t be the slightest suspicion that I’ve been with a man. There hasn’t ever been the opportunity.
I think this is the first time I’ve been alone in a room with a man and there’s something intoxicating about it.
His gaze drops onto me like a physical weight. He continues speaking as if I haven’t been rudely, silently staring at him for the past minute.
“Anton didn’t stand a chance. You gave a good performance. The files under the seats were a nice dramatic touch. Very daytime TV.”
I did get that idea from one of my mama’s ridiculous television shows.
He speaks lazily, like he’s got all the time in the world.
“Did you… Was it…” Certainty settles in my stomach. “The information about Anton. It was you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches up and his eyes are warmer when they fall back on me.
“You’re smarter than your father thinks. Anton didn’t deserve you.”
“And you do?”
I should be outraged. Instead I’m curious.
This man made sure my wedding would fail just so he could have me for himself.
“Your father doesn’t think so.”
He pushes away from the windowsill and comes to stand behind me.
Rough, warm hands close over my shoulders.
I try to shrug away, but I’m unsteady in my heels from the champagne. I stumble to the side but a firm hand stops me.
He tuts his tongue and I can already imagine the way a smile will have spread over his mouth.
Lazily. Slowly. As if he’s enjoying the experience.
He starts to lace up the back of my corset, eyelet by eyelet. His touch is rough yet deft at the same time.
I am so frozen in shock that I don’t stop him, don’t argue. I just let him put my wedding ensemble back together like he’s really about to marry me.
There is absolutely no way.
The way he talks… The way he looks… This is not the kind of suitor that my parents have been sending my way for years.
This man is something else.
I should be afraid, I should be stopping him, but instead I find myself relaxing under his touch.
I suck in a breath as his fingers brush against my skin. The simple contact sends a rush of warmth right down the center of my body, reaching all the way down to my toes.
“There. Are you ready for our wedding?”
I’m frozen, overwhelmed, unsure of what to do next. The gentle pressure of his hand on my back has derailed all rational thought.
We both know what this is. If this man has any interest in me, it will be because of my surname and nothing else. So why is he pretending he’s interested in me?
His hand brushes the side of my neck and he runs his fingers through my hair.
“You know, I like your hair better like this.” His lips are so close to my throat that I can feel the hot whisper of his words just below my ear. “Don’t pin it back up.”
I nod my head on instinct.
His voice is a low rumble. “You’re not getting out of this wedding. Trust me, I’m harder to escape than your exes.”
He slides his grip down from my shoulder to circle my wrist. His thumb brushes over the soft skin just where my wrist meets my hand and a thrill of excitement runs up my arm and slips down my spine to settle in my stomach.
He pulls me around to face him and my insides melt into a confused, nervous mess.
This is crazy. There’s no way I’m marrying this man, no matter how much my skin might be begging for his hands on me again.
“Who are you?”
He never answered my question, I realize faintly. It took me far too long to notice.
I need to put a stop to this. It’s improper. My parents would kill me if they found out this man had touched me, whoever he is.
The question makes his face drop from teasing into something more serious.
He blows out a stream of air. “You’re not going to like the answer.”
I try to think it through.
Who he is.
Why he doesn’t want to tell me.
None of it makes sense.
“Did someone let you in here?”
Something is wrong.
No one would have let him in here.
“Natalia. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The sound of my name in that rough, deep voice only makes me more nervous.
“What do you want?”
I itch to do something, to fight this, to stop him. I pick up a candlestick from the table and he shakes his head at me, smiling.
“Who are you?”
He sighs, the playfulness gone from his face. “Do you promise to hear me out if I tell you?”
I nod while crossing my fingers behind my back. I’m not promising this man a single thing.
“My name is Aleksandr Zhukov.”
I run for it, dropping the candlestick to the floor with a clatter.
“Natalia,” he calls after me, his voice faintly amused. “You promised.”
I kick the white stilettos off my feet because they’re slowing me down. The stupid corset won’t let me breathe. He’s so much faster.
Just as my hand closes over the door handle he loops an arm around my waist, lifting me off the ground.
His arms are warm and solid and so much bigger and stronger than me that it’s ridiculous to fight him, but I try anyway.
Kicking is impossible in this long dress, plus I’m not wearing shoes, but I pound his back with my fists.
There’s no give. It’s like hitting a brick wall — I’m only hurting myself.
“I’m not marrying you.”
Aleksandr ignores my protest and carries me calmly across the room.
There’s no effort to the movement and that makes me angry. My lungs are burning and my fists are sore by the time he drops me onto the chaise longue.
He’s unfairly good-looking, for a murderer. Like those snakes with beautiful patterns who are really venomous.
He stands in front of me, folding his arms.
The implication is clear.
If I make a run for it again, he’s going to stop me again.
“You said you would hear me out. You’re going to hear me out.”
“Actually, I didn’t. And that was before I knew you killed my brothers!”
“I didn’t kill Fyodor or Pyotr. I do know what happened to them, though.”
That makes no sense.
Everyone in the Bratva knows what happened to Fyodor and Pyotr — and exactly whose fault it was. Even I know this now, and I was the last person on Planet Earth to find out.
“They locked you away.”
He shrugs his huge shoulders. “The place burned down. All the records of why anyone was in there went with it, too.”
“I’ll call… the police. I’ll do something.” I straighten my spine and look up at him, but he doesn’t seem the least concerned.
“You’ll call the police?” He arches an eyebrow, as if to suggest I could do better with my threats. “We’re Bratva, Natalia. Even you, with your fancy paintings and statues. You can’t call the police.”
“Sculptures, not statues,” I correct him instinctively.
“Right. Sculptures.” His lips press together like he’s trying to suppress a laugh. It irritates me that he’s so amused, like he’s already won.
“This won’t work,” I hiss at him.
He might have gotten rid of Anton, but that’s just the beginning. Anton is nothing compared to what he’s going to have to go through to get my father to send me off with the man who killed my brothers.
Aleksandr turns to walk to the windows. They’re enormous, floor-to-ceiling, looking out over the expansive lawns filled with cherry blossom trees where marquees have been set up to celebrate the union.
Lawns where I grew up. Lawns where scum like him shouldn’t be allowed — haven’t been allowed, for decades. It’s why we built these walls, it’s the structure that the Bratva depends on.
There are some people whose names are respected, and some whose names are worthless.
Aleksandr Zhukov falls into the latter category.
I watch him shrug those thick shoulders.
“Then I won’t give you what you want.”
“There’s no way you know what I want.”
He fixes me with those deep blue eyes and for a second I feel unmoored, battered in the roughest rapids with only a flimsy life raft.
“You want the truth about your brothers, Natalia.”
“I already have the truth.”
He turns, shaking his head.
“Doesn’t that seem a bit convenient, Natalia? That the unionists who were creating trouble for your father just happened to also be evil assassins who were out to get his sons?”
“It makes perfect sense to me.” I fold my arms across my chest. “That’s what people like you do. You’re common criminals.”
“I was friends with Fyodor and Pyotr. For years. I wouldn’t have done that to them.”
There is no reason for me to trust this man. But the pain in his voice when he says my brothers’ names sounds all too real.
I find myself sucked in. “Then what happened to them?”
Aleksandr’s deep-blue eyes shutter into blackness again, pushing me out. “That’s what you have to marry me to find out.”
I may be a bit curious now, but I’m not the issue. My father is never going to go through with this.
“My father—“
“He’s already agreed.” Aleksandr’s face gives away nothing. “Ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me.”
I don’t need to. Because at that moment, just as I’m about to burst into tears, my father walks into the room with his whole entourage of guards.
Thank God.
Even I can see that this is the only way out of the situation — brute force.
Aleksandr is one man. He may be a monster, but my father and his men could easily restrain him and stop him from whatever it is he’s threatening. We’re on home territory, for God’s sake.
I widen my eyes at him, mouthing: “This is Aleksandr Zhukov.”
The guards studiously avoid my gaze the way they always do. They barely glance at Aleksandr Zhukov, either.
Instead, it’s me that they walk up to and surround.
My father takes my arm in his, our elbows linked together just like they were earlier this morning. A lifetime ago. Before I looked my brother’s killer in the eyes. Before I — God help me — shivered under his rough touch.
The words out of his mouth make me want to shove him away. Instead, my body goes heavy and frozen.
“Did Zhukov explain the situation to you?”
My papa knows about this.
I try to pull my arm out of his but he grips me tighter. He leans close and hisses in my ear.
“No time for you to pull one of your little tricks — and it wouldn’t work even if you did. You have to marry this man, Natalia.”
My blood runs cold.
I see something I hadn’t seen on my father’s face in a long time, since I was a child. Fear.
I still as it hits me why this is different.
This isn’t a union between two families, an exchange the way my previous engagements had been.
There is no give and take. There is only take.
And Aleksandr Zhukov is taking me.