“We’ll do our best,” she says.
Fine. I never made it to the altar because I had an attack of nerves. I’m here now. Doesn’t that count? I’m his wife in every way that matters.
Except this one. Legally, we aren’t married. Rafail was particularly concerned about that point. Only a man who breaks the law so often that he needs to know it inside and out would think to insist upon following it to the letter, lest he risk my safety.
I never questioned whether Dmitri loved my mom. He was born into the bratva just like Rafail was. Just like our children will be. Rafail learned from his father’s mistakes, though he made others, with me.
I’ve made mistakes, too.
I should have stayed. I should have been braver. I let my fears of ending up the way my mother did, single and pregnant, get the better of me. I was afraid to dream big, and kept myself small.
“I love you,” I whisper to unconscious Rafail. A machine beeps. A bag of blood on a pole flows into his vein. “Come back to me. We’re not finished yet.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Madam, you have to leave now. He is going into surgery.”
I watch, desolate, as they wheel him away.
Rafail
I don’t wantto wake up.
Don’t want to live.
Not without myprintsesa.
But she is here. She is with me. She left, but she is here now. I don’t want to leave this place where her hand is so soft on mine. So real. So warm.
“Rafe. Come back to me,” her voice says.
I would walk through fire to get to her. Despite the pain, I reach for Hailey. Find her cheek warm and wet with tears.
My eyes open, and she is the only thing I see.
14
HAILEY
Still wearing my blood-soaked wedding gown, I speak my vows to Rafail as soon as he’s conscious. Instead of being consecrated in an elegant church, our ceremony is performed by the priest who’s kept on staff to perform last rites. I’m not religious so I don’t give a shit who deals with the formalities, as long as Rafail is alive and happy.
I was a fool to think I could live five minutes without him. I didn’t intend to run out on our wedding. I needed a moment alone to think. A breath of fresh air. That’s when his enemies saw me. Not many people get married early in the morning as soon as they’ve satisfied the state of Maryland’s requirements for a legal union. My dress was a dead giveaway. All they had to do was drive down the street and see me standing there like a cow waiting to be slaughtered.
Except that Rafail ran out to protect me. He took a bullet for me. How could I ever have doubted him?
The guilt is eating me. He’s resting again, but we’re about to move him to his home in New York, a four-hour drive. He’ll need to be kept comfortable during the trip—and alive. His second-in-command, Andrei, has warned me that I can’t take any more risks like the one I took yesterday.
I understand now. What he is. Who I have become. I would take a bullet for Rafail, too, if necessary. This doesn’t feel like the right time to tell him that, though.
Rafail blinks in the sunlight, groggy with pain medications, but moving under his own power to get into the bulletproof SUV. His arm hangs in a sling. With the other, he snaps open sunglasses and slides them on. My stomach sinks. I can’t tell if he’s angry with me, or what. Have I ruined everything?
“Where is your dress?” Rafail finally asks me when the doors are closed and we’re rolling out of the lot. Russian radio plays, drowning out our conversation. I glance down at my borrowed scrubs.
“It got blood on it.” I swallow hard. “A lot of blood. I’m afraid it was ruined. Like our whole wedding was. Because of me.”
He turns to me, but I can’t read his expression behind those dark glasses. It’s bright out. I wish I had a pair, too. That way, he wouldn’t see the tears welling in my eyes. I breathe slowly and try to blink them away. One rolls down my cheek. I swipe it away angrily. This is my fault. I don’t get to cry about the problem I caused.
“What matters is that you are mine now,” he says, and that’s the end of our discussion for the next five hours. Traffic is a bitch. When we finally pull into the gated lot of an enormous Italianate mansion in Brooklyn, the tension is tearing me apart.
