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 blacksuit 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 onlyimaginethe 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?”
