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Zak
Four weeks should only have been longenough to put together a small, intimate wedding. Instead, Victoria Volkov wasted no time and had planned one of New York’s weddings of the century. It definitely would have impressed me if it weren’t for the fact that now the press was covering my marriage.
Security had to be tightened, not only for my bride-to-be and me, but also for our families. As the small list of people I’d invited began to arrive, the number of men I had surrounding Sofia any time she was outside the walls of our brownstone or not at her parents’ compound were doubled.
Oleksandr and Olena, along with Yulia and Volodymyr, checked in to their hotel just a few days before the wedding, but both Olena and Yulia were invited to participate in last-minute wedding preparations. Before they left to meet up with Sofia and her family for the final dress fitting, I reminded them both to keep their mouths shut about who they were to Sofia.
Olena pressed her lips into a hard line but gave me an affirming nod as she grabbed her silent daughter, and the two left with their own security detail, leaving me alone with my bride-to-be’s biological father and maternal grandfather.
“Well,” Oleksandr said with a huge grin as he rubbed his hands together from the chair in the penthouse suite I’d reserved for both couples. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Zakhar, but I didn’t imagine you could pull this off so quickly. This is perfect. Christmas with my entire family under one roof for the first time will be magical. Maybe by then, you will also be announcing the girl’s pregnancy.”
I gritted my teeth but gave him a hard smile. “Perhaps we will.”
The fact that Sofia was already pregnant was something we’d decided to keep to ourselves for the moment. She wanted everyone to focus on the wedding preparations and not coddle her because of her condition. I didn’t want Oleksandr to know I’d had sex with his granddaughter before marriage. It would piss him off, and a pissed-off Oleks was unpredictable.
The old bastard wouldn’t take his anger out on me, though. I was too important to him and his future goals. Plus, he’d taught me well, and he knew that I would give as good as he gave. No, I was more worried that he would run his damn mouth and Sofia would learn things I wasn’t yet ready to tell her. If I ever would be. She didn’t need to know that the reason I’d come in search of her, that I’d pursued her and made her fall for me, had more to do with her grandfather’s scheming than any real desire for her myself.
At least, that was how it had started.
Now, I couldn’t imagine my life without her. She was a part of me. The reason my heart beat in my chest.
Losing her because someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut about what was really going on behind closed doors wasn’t an option. If Oleksandr—or anyone else, for that matter—caused me to lose Sofia, no one would be able to save them from my wrath. A wrath that was not only nurtured into me by Oleks himself, but a part of my nature as a Morozov.
It didn’t matter that the Davydov family had been the ones to raise me. I might have respect and love for them, but what I felt for Sofia was incomparable. She was more important. Not just because she was the mother of my child, but because she was my goddamn soul.
Oleksandr wouldn’t fully comprehend that kind of love, however, and I wasn’t about to school him on my emotions for his granddaughter yet. There wasn’t enough time before the wedding to make him understand.
Across from his new father-in-law, Volodymyr gave him a disgusted glance before turning his focus back to me. His eyes softened when they locked with mine, but not by much. He knew about Oleksandr’s plans and didn’t approve. That didn’t mean he’d tried to intervene and stop any of it, though. I didn’t know if it was because he was scared of either the older man or me, or if perhaps Yulia had asked him to stay out of it. Maybe it was even that his own arranged marriage hadn’t been all that horrible—at least, not in comparison to how Yulia’s to my brother had been.
Before he could speak his mind, I turned our conversation away from whatever he was about to say, not in the mood to deal with him any more than I was Oleksandr. “Are Nikolai and Nikita not coming?”
“They are spending a few weeks with their maternal grandparents. Since their mother’s death, I share custody with them so my children will know her side of the family.”
“Good thinking, considering that Nikita looks so much like the girl,” Oleksandr muttered into his glass of vodka. “There is no denying you are the girl’s father, Yanukovych.”
“Her name is Sofia,” I snapped at the man who had raised me. “I suggest you get used to saying it. If you insult her in any way, you can kiss goodbye all thoughts of us living under the same roof with you and Olena.”
The way the old man rolled his eyes reminded me so much of the woman I loved that it distracted me for a few moments. Then Oleks set his glass down hard. “Fine. Sofia.” He practically spat her name. “That’s not the name her mother gave her, though.”
“It’s the name the orphanage gave her to make it harder for anyone to find her once she turned eighteen,” Volodymyr reminded him. “Something Yulia made sure they would do when she gave our baby up for adoption. To keep her safe. From you.”
“I prefer the original name Yulia gave her,” Oleksandr continued, ignoring his son-in-law completely. “Draya has a better ring to it.”
“The fact that, in Greek, it is derived from the name Alexander has nothing to do with it,” Volodymyr muttered, more to himself than anyone else, since the older man typically pretended he wasn’t even in the room.
“Yulia named her child after her father, like the good daughter that she is.”
“Her name is Sofia now, and that is the one you will use,” I barked.
My cell rang as the old man opened his mouth to argue with me. Taking it from my pocket, I saw who it was and lifted my hand to cut off Oleksandr’s bitching before lifting it to my ear. “Hello,dragotsennyy,” I greeted, my voice quieter, softer than it had been only moments before.
“I’ve changed my mind. Let’s elope.”
The exasperation in her voice made me narrow my eyes even as a grin lifted my lips. All week, she’d been saying something similar. The last of the wedding preparations were exhausting for her, but I knew this was what she wanted, so it was what she was going to get. “What can I do to make this easier for you?”
It was what I asked every time she came to me with such frustration in her tone.
I heard her sniffle, and I clenched my fingers around the phone. “The dress has to be taken in another inch because I’ve lost more weight—stupid morning sickness,” she whispered so only I could hear her. “My mother and aunts all think I’m starving myself and have been giving me the third degree about eating properly, especially Mom. My veil has a tear in it, and no one is admitting to causing it, but it’s going to take even more time for them to fix it than it will to alter my dress. Stupid family heirlooms.”
