Page 34 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

Whatever I was going to say dies on my tongue.

Darya is beaming at my mother.

“Redecorating? Wh—”

My mother releases a sharp tsk, accompanied by a slow, disapproving look. “Close your mouth, Anton. A fly will zoom in.”

“Yes,” Darya chips in gleefully. “Redecorating. I was telling Galina about how you said last night that I could arrange whatever I’d like? Don’t you remember, malysh?”

My eyes widen in alarm for several reasons at the same time. I can’t imagine a woman as proper as Darya flaunting her sexual escapades, but then again, I couldn’t imagine her spread open and coming all over my cock either, until it happened. But here we are. “Yes, yes, I remember fine. It’s fine,” I rush to say.

Only when I look around do I take in the rolls of fabric, stacks of catalogs, and other accouterments that fill this room, which has looked the same way my entire life. A room, like every other in this place, that my mother has gone to great lengths to preserve the historical value of—that she’s not letting Darya run wild redecorating?

“Good,” Darya says. “Hi, Anastasia. Will you be joining us for dinner?”

Just as I’m about to say, Why the fuck wouldn’t she?, my cousin and best friend says, “Not on your life,” with a snort of laughter, shaking her head as she takes a step back. “You all enjoy yourselves. I’m going to find something less dangerous to do with my night.”

The looks my traitorous best friend shoots me harbor too much amusement at my expense. Unfortunately, it’s pretty standard. We’re off the clock, so to speak. When I’m not her Pakhan, nor she just a brigadier in my Bratva, Anastasia is just the person who knows me best. I’m not surprised she can see that my new wife is the bane of my fucking existence, and I don’t know what the fuck to do about her.

Besides, of course, fucking the shit out of her until she’s gone sweet and pliant in my arms, her exhausted head lolling against my chest as I carry her to the bathroom.

Though that, I must remind myself, won’t be happening again.

Darkly, I’ve little choice but to accept my fate. “Dinner will be a three-person affair then. Maxim and Boris are otherwise occupied tonight.” I wonder if it’s too late to summon at least one of them.

“Excellent,” my mother says, rising to her feet.

***

Had it only been one short month ago that I had sat in this very seat, and Anastasia had come into the dining room bearing the bad news of a mole wreaking havoc on the alliance between my Bratva and the Yuris? A month that’s been spent planting false information on both sides, and still no name to condemn—but still. It seems uncanny.

Especially with the seating arrangement rearranged and my mother no longer on the other side of the table, but instead holding court between me and, oh yes, Darya, who is now my wife.

So long as I don’t lose my head, I can remember that this entire affair is my own machination. I can remember that this had been my idea, my proposition, my hand that put the ring that gleams on this woman’s finger. The union is complicated, but not fragile. That had been the whole point.

The crux of the problem is how disastrously easy it is to lose my head, faced with evidence of Darya’s dark, dry sense of humor that’s somehow still so tactful, it takes a beat to realize what she’s really saying. I don’t know if I’m more caught off-guard by how macabre she can be, or how much it delights my mother, who keeps dissolving into peals of laughter, like that’s a normal thing she regularly does.

No longer is Galina questioning why I’m quiet; that’s for sure.

And I can’t blame her for it.

Darya talking about her work at her atelier—her big, blue eyes alight with passion and unfettered zeal for what she does—would render a boulder transfixed. She’s expressive, talking with her hands, “It isn’t like I’m the one who stole it. I just pointed out that he did, and while I commended his taste for choosing my atelier, I would be morally inclined to alert the authorities. A piece like a 1900s Bracquemond would be missed. Stunning, bold work... Which may or may not be hanging atop my living room fireplace now.”

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine...

I force myself to look away for a minute at a time before I let myself look my fill of her again. Even then, only for just ten seconds.

Then I have to turn away again.

I fucking have to.

***

With a heavy sigh, I readjust my body in the armchair. My eyes parse over the same sentence for the eleventh time, which is at least also the hour on the clock above the mantle. The synchronicity isn’t enough of a salve for thoughts that burn through my mind.

Thoughts about the woman in my bed, probably asleep by now, like I ought to be. I know that, theoretically, I could join her. There’s a chance she wouldn’t even notice until she woke up in the morning, and even then, though I’m sure she’d give me some shit for it, she’d accept it. For all the feral objection Darya had bludgeoned me with on our wedding night, she was a logical woman. I can see that.

Yet I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I can’t.