Page 18 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heiress

Danil says it at the church door with his hand still on the wood. Behind him, the incense is already rolling out into Brighton Beach like weather.

“Gavril asked you?”

“Gavril asked me because he’s afraid to ask you.” Danil doesn’t move his hand. “He’s in the second row. He’s been crying since eight forty.”

“Since eight forty.”

“Steadily. Like a tap somebody left running.”

I go past him into the nave. Four hundred candles going, ninety people, half of them have killed somebody and the other half paid to have it done. The iconostasis takes the whole east wall, gold on gold, Christ Pantocrator up there looking down on a congregation that would strip Him for parts. My father’s money paid for the roof over this building thirty years ago, out of a dead man’s envelopes, and nobody under it today knows that except me and the priest, who has the sense to leave it alone.

Gavril’s in the second row. The suit’s new, so somebody either bought it for him out of pity or he was gambling again. I’ll find out which. He turns when he sees me coming, and his face does the whole show: wet eyes, working mouth, hands out.

“Lev. Levushka. My son now, eh? My boy.”

“Sit down.”

“I only want to give her my arm.” He gets a hand on my sleeve, and it’s shaking. The shake’s real, which is the actual offensive part. “It’s a father’s right. She’ll want it. She’s my whole heart, that girl.”

I take his hand off my sleeve by the wrist and set it in his lap. “Sit down. Cry where she can see you. That’s your one job today, and you’ve been at it since eight forty, so you’re ahead of schedule.”

He sits. He’s still going when I take my place at the front, and men are watching him do it, but neither of them has any compassion for the man who sold his daughter and wants credit for missing her.

Yefim’s front row on the aisle, cane hooked over the pew. He got here at seven to make sure of the seat. Behind him, four rows of the ones who stood up in the restaurant, then the men who’d sell me out for a good enough number, then the ones who’d do it free. Krutov isn’t here. He wasn’t invited, and he’ll have the guest list by two this afternoon, because some men in this church will sell it to him.

The doors open. The whole building turns.

She comes in white, and she comes in alone.

Gavril’s already half out of the second row with his arm out, but she goes straight past him. Her head doesn’t turn. Her hands are on the yellow rims, she pushes herself down forty feet of stone in front of ninety people, and her father’s arm hangs there in the aisle with nothing in it.

He sits back down. Somebody in the third row makes a noise like a laugh and swallows it.

My heart knocks once against the ribs, hard, out of rhythm.

The honey hair’s down. Not braided, not up, all of it to her waist, with a rope of white flowers through it. The dress falls right when she’s sitting, and the freckles are out across her nose because she’s been on the terrace every afternoon this week purely out of spite.

Forty feet takes twenty seconds. Nobody breathes for any of it.

She stops beside me, locks her brakes.

“You’re staring,” she says low.

“I’m the groom. It’s in the job description.”

“You look like a man attending his own arraignment.”

“You look like a woman who stole flowers.”

“Off the arrangement in the vestibule. Nobody was using them.” Her chin comes up. “They were sitting there being decorative, and I have needs.”

The priest starts. Full Slavonic, the long service, because I asked for every minute of it. A wedding nobody can question is a wedding that runs long enough to bore the room, and a bored witness has no story to sell. The candles come out. The rings go on the gospel book.

Then he calls us to stand for the vows.

There’s a chair set for her. I had the deacon place it, arranged the whole thing so nobody in this building could say the bride sat through her own vows, so it would read as accommodation and not weakness. She catches my eye before I open my mouth.

“Don’t.”