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Still, all told, it hadn’t been a bad party, mostly because every time I’d felt the strain of my new circumstances, I’d looked over at my father, who had his arm in a sling, and who sported the face of a pissed off bear who’d been awoken from hibernation two months too early.
Straightaway, that sight cheered me up.
Eoghan mostly ignored me during the meal, which was delicious but not enough to tempt me to eat more than a few bites, and I was strangely okay with his silence. I had Declan, the best man and Eoghan’s brother, to my left, and on Eoghan’s right, he had my maid-of-honor, Veronika, a boring cousin who had a wicked temper when crossed.
I wasn’t the only one he was ignoring, because he evaded her every attempt at conversation, and just sat there, brooding, slouched back in the seat that was like a throne as he watched over the events.
The place was done out classily, I’d give the organizers that.
The parquet floor had over eighty round tables dotted around in a formation only they knew, and each was decorated with overflowing centerpieces that consisted of the freshest of flowers with ivy trailing over the linen as they demarcated the settings between diners, almost putting people at a point on a clock face.
The head table was at the back of the room in a very fancy hotel that, I got the feeling, was a front for the Five Points—a genius, wasn’t I?—and the dance floor was bordered by the tables, creating a huge semicircle. Overhead, large pieces of netting and fabric had been swathed like something from a pasha’s cavern, rich silks and such draped here and there with more foliage swirling into being, heavy chandeliers dripping with crystals refracting light, and hidden inside a heavily gilded kind of box, the DJ played tunes that were alien to me at these events.
Soft notes. Jazz. Sinatra. Some classical music. None of the robust songs I was used to hearing.
A part of me wondered if I’d ever hear them again. Father had made it clear that the second I was married, I was no longer Bratva, but I was expected to feed him information out of loyalty to the brotherhood that had raised me.
So, technically, I was now Five Points. I’d be attending Catholic ceremonies and events, not Russian ones.
Would Father let me attend my sister’s wedding when her time of sacrifice came?
I had to wonder, even if I knew the answer already.
“You’re looking way too miserable for a girl who has a plate of chocolate in front of her.”
Declan was surprisingly cheerful, and even though he kept shooting glowers at Eoghan, it seemed like usual, he’d appointed himself as the official family greeter. Like he was the one charged with smoothing things over because Eoghan couldn’t be expected to do it himself. He’d been doing that for years, but it wasn’t like Declan was going to be living with us. He couldn’t keep doing that on his brother’s behalf.
Eoghan had made it known, quite clearly, that he didn’t want a wife, and yet, he’d gone to great and dangerous lengths to honor me. To show me the kind of husband he’d be.
The only thing I didn’t believe?
That he wouldn’t hurt me.
All men hurt women.
I knew that just as I knew I was a Bratva daughter in a Five Point family who would never truly trust me.
I was the enemy. The Trojan Horse they believed would betray them at the first chance…
An outsider, and a dangerous one at that.
Because Declan was trying, I murmured, “I don’t actually like chocolate.”
My wry comment had his brows lowering. “Thought all bitches liked chocolate.”
Nose crinkling at his phrasing, I muttered, “Well, maybe all bitches do, but I don’t.”
His eyes twinkled, but what surprised me was Eoghan’s chuckle. “You teach him some manners, Inessa. You’d think he was raised on a pig farm with that mouth of his.”
Declan’s eyes widened to such a degree he looked like he was in a cartoon. “Me?” he boomed, pointing his finger at himself. “Me? I’m the one with the mouth of a sailor?”
Eoghan grinned—I saw, because I cast him a look to see if Declan was joking or not—and stated, “Ma would be so ashamed.”
Declan growled, “We all know I’m her favorite.”
Eoghan laughed, and the tenor told me Declan wasn’t telling the truth. “I’m the baby.”
“And don’t we fucking know it.” The second he finished, he winced. “Sorry, Inessa.”
