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Chapter Fifteen
“Ineed time to think,” Ivy said.
I hadn’t planned to come to her tonight, but inaction was making me antsy. Dom had sent a messenger over with a ring, and I knew that this was his signal to take care of this situation.
“There’s not exactly time for that.” The Russians were already talking about the beautiful dancer who was potentially the last person who saw Adrian. I was begrudgingly proud that she had been able to think on her feet and told them that we were fucking. It might keep them at bay, at least for the time being.
“You said it yourself.” I could hear the panic in Ivy’s voice. “They haven’t even found a body yet. They don’t know that Adrian is even dead.”
If I were a different man, I would feel bad for Ivy. She was only twenty-one, and there was already a lot on her plate. The more I read about her life, the more I realized that she was both the best and the worst person to get dragged into this mess.
I ran a hand through my hair. “I’m not interested in arguing with you about this,” I said.
“I don’t want to marry you,” Ivy said. She was breathing heavily. I hated that we were having this conversation in the hallway of her building, but I couldn’t drag her back to my place, which had been my plan. Unfortunately, she hadn’t left the house all day, and we didn’t have time to beat around the bush.
“What if I make it worth your while?” I asked her.
Fear wasn’t the only thing that I had up my sleeve. Ivy had a great many problems, and there were some of them that I could easily solve.
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me with incredulous green eyes. “What do you have that could make me want to marry you? Because let's be honest. Marrying you would put me in just as much danger as I’m in now.”
I didn’t want to admit to her that she had a point. Sasha had married Dom, and she ended up with a bullet in the gut. It was one of the reasons that my brother was so precious with her.
“What if I told you I could pay for your brother’s cancer treatment?”
Ivy didn’t hesitate. “I don’t need your money,” she snapped. “I've got a job, and I’m more than able to pay for the treatment.”
I ground my teeth together in frustration and reached into my coat to pull out my phone. I didn't want to play this card, but I knew that I needed to. “I did some research,” I told Ivy. I unlocked my phone, pulled up the file of information, and handed it to her. “There’s a new cancer treatment for pediatric patients who haven’t responded to any other types of treatments.”
Ivy snatched the phone from my hands and started scrolling through the information. “This looks promising,” she said. There was hope in her voice, and I couldn’t stop the terrible feeling in my chest. I was a person who had done a lot of bad shit in my time. As I reminded Alex, we were covered in blood. But what I was about to do, how I was about to dangle hope in front of Ivy, only to snatch it away if she didn’t do what I wanted, left a bad taste in my mouth.
“I can get your brother into the clinical trials. They start next week. I’ve already talked to the doctor.”
Ivy looked up at me. Her green eyes were wide and hopeful, and I felt worse about this than about nearly strangling her. I’d only met her brother for a minute, but he seemed like a nice enough kid. Definitely too young to be at death’s door.
“How?” she asked. “Normally, it takes weeks. They need time to evaluate his file. They would judge his needs against others. Plus, they’d want to know that we had the money…”
“I made a very sizable donation to the research.” This had been Dom’s idea. And I had to give it to him. It was a good one. It was clear that Ivy would do anything for her brother. And while I was fine with cajoling and threatening her. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to use any of this. “But, he only gets to be part of the trial if you hold up your end of an agreement.”
Ivy’s already pale skin blanched. She looked like a ghost standing before me. “You mean marry you.”
I nodded. “You marry me, and your little brother gets into the trial. Then, once all of this blows over, I leave you with a few million for the trouble, and we all ride off into the sunset.” I added the last part to sweeten the deal. Plus, some part of me felt like I needed to make amends for ruining this girl's already hellish life.
I could see Ivy’s defenses crumble. She was a practical girl, and she knew that this offer was too good to pass up. “What would I need to do?” she asked.
I smirked. “Just say ‘I do.’”
She looked skeptical. “That’s it? We are legally married, and you leave me alone?”
I snorted and shook my head. “We have to actually be a married couple,” I said. “At least outwardly. As my wife, you would have protection from the Russians, but if they think this isn’t real, they won’t hesitate to go after you.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “What’s to stop them from going after me even if we are married? I take it you guys aren’t besties.”
I shook my head. “Not really. But we do have a code. Women and children are off limits.” I didn’t tell her how the Bratva wasn’t known for following that rule. My own mother had been caught in the crossfire of the war.
I could see that Ivy’s conviction was starting to break. “What else would you expect from me?” she asked, her voice small. I knew that I had her. She would marry me, and though I wasn’t excited to have a wife, I knew that this was the way things needed to be. If Dom was against killing Ivy, tying her future with mine was the best course of action.
“You’d be my wife.”
