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“Would you have? Really?” Sofia looks at me curiously. “You know what it will mean if the deal Luca struck with him is broken—”
“I do,” I say shortly. “Which is why yes, it was more of a bluff than anything else. But it worked. We had an appointment, and now my new husband is giving me fertility shots in the ass every night instead of taking me to bed.”
“Wow.” Sofia looks almost impressed. “I honestly can’t believe—shit, Cat. You got the leader of the Bratva to agree to a fertility clinic instead of regular sex. That’s pretty fucking impressive, honestly.”
I have to smother a laugh. Sofia’s eyes are wide, and she hardly ever curses, so I know she must be shocked. “I didn’t think it would work either,” I admit. “But I had to try.”
“So, how does it make you feel?” Sofia asks curiously. “Having a baby, but not any kind of real marriage with Viktor. Does that make you happy?”
I have to think about it for a minute.Am I happy? That’s not really a question I’ve been asking myself lately. I know, deep down, the answer isn’t going to be a good one. I was crying into my pillow just this morning. But would a baby be enough to give me some happiness?
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I didn’t expect to behappywith Viktor. After hoping to be happy with Franco and everything that happened, I didn’t want to set myself up for that again. I thought going into it with low expectations would help. But sometimes, being in that house feels even worse. I don’t belong there. Even the staff looks at me like I’m out of place. I hadn’t really thought about babies when we were married. I don’t know why—it’s not like I shouldn’t have thought that would be an expectation. And I do want children. I always did. I just—”
“Aren’t sure about having them with Viktor,” Sofia finishes. “It’s understandable, honestly. I remember how scared I was with Luca. Everything was unfamiliar and unsure, and I felt so out of place. I’d never been somewhere like his penthouse, and for a long time, I felt like a prisoner there. Having a baby seemed like the worst kind of idea, then. But now—” she shrugs. “Now, I couldn’t be happier.”
“You’re in love with Luca, though.” I look at my food, wishing that I wanted to eat. Wishing that I could rewind time back to the night of Franco’s funeral, just before Luca talked to me, when I thought I could be free. I wish I could stay there, in those few hours when none of this had even crossed my mind as a possibility.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t then,” Sofia reminds me. “Or at least I didn’t know I was. All I’m saying is I know how terrifying the thought can be in an arranged marriage with a man you don’t want to be married to. Even if our story turned out good in the end, it was still hard for a long time. But maybe—” she hesitates, looking at me with that same sympathy in her eyes. “if your marriage with Viktor isn’t ever going to turn into love, then the baby could be a good thing. Someone for you to love.”
I hate thinking of a baby like that, like a consolation prize, but I don’t tell Sofia that. I know she’s trying to be a good friend, trying to make me feel better, and it’s not her fault that I feel like this.
I’d thought I’d known what I was getting myself into, agreeing to marry Viktor. But the reality of it seems so much harder to navigate.
“It’s fine,” I tell her firmly, hoping I sound more sure than I am. “Everything will be fine. Viktor might not be happy about using IVF for me to get pregnant, but in the end, when he has his son, he’ll understand it was better this way. More clinical. We both get what we want, and in the end, that’s what this is—a business deal. A bargain. We each get what we want this way.”
“Of course.” Sofia pauses. “Any chance you have for happiness, Cat, you should take it.”
“I know.” And I do, of course. I don’t know how many of those chances I’ll have now, trapped in this marriage with Viktor, ‘til death do us part. There’s never been any romance to wedding vows for me, no anticipation of binding my life to another’s. It’s always been shackles, a prison built for me since the day I was born.
“I have something exciting to tell you, though,” Sofia ventures, and I look up, smiling encouragingly at her. I don’t want this lunch to be all doom and gloom and talking about my misfortunes in marriage, and I don’t want Sofia to feel bad for being happy.
“Idefinitelywant to hear all about that,” I tell her firmly. “So, what is it?”
“My first performance with the orchestra is next Friday night. I have some tickets to give to family and friends—and I’d really like it if you would come. I’ll give you two, in case Viktor insists on coming—or you want him to. But whether it’s with him or alone, it would really mean a lot to me if you could be there.” Sofia is smiling as she talks, and I can see her eyes sparkling with excitement.
It’s yet another difference between her marriage to Luca and mine to Viktor. Viktor is never going to let me go work as an elementary art teacher, any more than my father or Franco would have. But Luca apparently was wracked with guilt over stealing Sofia away from finishing her education at Juilliard and her chance at a top spot with an orchestra. Her plan had once been to go to London, to escape Manhattan and the mafia and all it entailed and play in the orchestra there. But of course, that hadn’t happened—thanks to the Bratva and the threat they posed to her at the time.
It hadn’t been very difficult for Luca to convince the head of Juilliard to let Sofia sit for her final exams. Then she’d moved directly into a spot in the New York Philharmonic. She wasn’t a first-chair violinist, although Luca had wanted to strong-arm the director into giving her exactly that. She’d insisted that she start in a spot more appropriate to her experience. However, Sofia is still playing violin again, doing what she loves, using her talents that at one point earned her a spot at Juilliard. And now, she’ll be performing for the first time outside of the school.
She has a level of freedom that I can’t ever hope for. And while I would never resent my friend for her happiness, I can feel an ache in my chest that reminds me that I won’t ever have that. Viktor might not be the cruel monster that he was always made out to be in the stories I and everyone else have always heard—at least not to his children and me—but that doesn’t mean he’s the kind of man who will ever give me that kind of freedom. He’s made it clear that he chose me for two reasons—my pedigree and my ability to mother his children.Allof them.
“I’ll absolutely be there,” I promise Sofia. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Telling Viktor, however, is going to be a whole different matter. So far, he hasn’t insisted that I stay home or avoid my friends—in fact, he seemed happy that I was having lunch with Sofia today. “Public proof that the wife of thepakhancan have lunch with the wife of the Don,” is how he put it, more precisely. But I’m not sure how he’ll react to me going out to Sofia’s performance at the orchestra.
When I pose it to him just before bedtime, though, after the injection that’s administered every bit as bluntly as it has been since we went to the clinic, his response is similar.
“I’ll attend with you, of course,” Viktor says thoughtfully. “That will be good. Thepakhanand his wife, attending a Philharmonic performance where the Italian Don’s wife is playing. Luca may have invited Macgregor as well. It’s good optics. It will be good for us to be seen there.”
I feel a rush of bitterness as I stare at him. I’m not even astonished at the fact that he assumed he was invited, that I might not have intended to go to my best friend’s performance alone and without my “husband.” It’s the thing that makes me lash out at him, even though I know a fight isn’t in my best interest. The arrogance of it makes me too angry to stop myself.
“It’s always astonishing to me to hear you use words likeoptics,” I snap, glaring at him. “Aren’t you Bratva supposed to use your fists instead of diplomacy? Torture instead of photo ops? Or are you, specifically, somehow above all of that?”
Viktor’s eyes narrow, darkening dangerously, and I know that I’ve perhaps stepped just a bit too far.
“Oh, I’ve done my fair share of torture,” he says, his mouth twitching as if it’s somehow amusing to him. “Is that what you want to hear about, my sweet wife? All the blood I’ve spilled? The teeth and fingernails I’ve ripped out when I’ve been betrayed or crossed? The screams I’ve heard? Do you want a body count?” He moves towards me as he talks; his body is suddenly taut, muscles coiled. “If I tell you about the man I beat to death as a rite of passage when I was a teenager, will that satisfy the image of me that you have in your head?”
A cold rush of fear washes over me, my mouth going dry.He can’t be serious. As a teenager?But even as I tell myself that can’t possibly be true, I know it likely is. It fits with the stories I’ve heard of the Bratva, the horrible, cruel things they do. But what I can’t make fit together is the cold, elegant man I married, the gentle and involved father, with the brutal Bratva leader that I know lurks inside of him.
