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She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m aware. But what does that mean? Do you want children? Will we live together? I take care of Mikey during the day while my mom works…” She trailed off. She had a lot of questions, and I couldn’t blame her. I also had no fucking clue what to tell her. I’d never had a wife, and I never planned to have one.
But there were some questions I did know. “You’d live with me,” I told her. She opened her mouth to speak, but I stopped her. “That’s a non-negotiable. We need the Bratva to believe us.”
Ivy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “What about my brother?”
“Your mother wouldn’t have to work,” I told her. “Or if she still wanted to, I could hire a nurse to take care of your brother.”
Ivy’s green eyes were wide. “I—I honestly don’t know what to say to all of this. It’s overwhelming.”
“Agree to it.” The words came out as an order, and I knew that that wasn’t going to work with Ivy. As much as it pained me, Alex was correct. I needed to treat Ivy delicately if I wanted this to work. She was stubborn as hell, and if I pushed too hard, I knew that she would do the exact opposite of what I wanted.
I ran a tired hand through my hair. I was going to start looking as exhausted as she did. “Look,” I told her candidly. “I know that we got off on the wrong foot.”
Ivy snorted. “That’s an understatement.”
I bit my tongue as I tried to rein in my answer. I wanted to stop her from asking questions and force her to do what I wanted, but I knew that I couldn’t do it. Ivy wasn’t like Sasha who had been raised to be an obedient wife. She would fight me tooth and nail just for the hell of it.
“Do you want me to apologize?” I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t sorry, not really. In the moment, I did what I thought was right. Yes, I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t going to apologize for who I was. I’d been raised to kill, and now that Ivy was going to be my wife, she would be under that protection as well.
She pursed her full lips as she looked at me. I see what her brother meant about that look. “Are you sorry?” she asked me.
“No,” I said.
Ivy chuckled and shook her head. “I suppose I don’t have to worry about you lying to me,” she said sardonically. “You seem incapable of doing it.”
I said nothing at that. I was more than capable of lying, I just didn’t see the point in doing it right now. I was allowing Ivy to believe that she had a choice in any of this, but the truth was that she didn’t. She was going to be my wife whether or not she wanted to.
“Fine,” she said. She laid out her hand. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
I said nothing as I slipped the ring on her finger.
