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The time that he spends in here with me, in our own private space away from everyone and everything else, is my only escape. It’s the only time that I feel that there’s even the slightest chance that I might get to have something that is mine, and mine alone—for no other reason than that I simply want it.
After everything that’s happened, it’s hard for me to not believe that I deserve it, in some small way. I had so much of myself taken away when I was kidnapped. When I’m with Adrik, I feel like myself again. Like my body, my choices, belong to me.
I know that in this world I was born into, that is rarely the case—and it might not always be the case for me.
But do I love him? I don’t know the answer to that. And all I can hope for is time—time for us to find out, before I have to decide whether or not to take the risk of telling my brother and upending both my life and Adrik’s forever. The risk of what might happen to him if Nikolai is as furious as I think he would be.
It’s not something to take lightly. And it’s not something I can decide minutes before a family dinner.
Closing my makeup case, I check my lipstick, and stand up.
Earlier, I was Adrik’s lover. Now I have to go back to being Marika Vasilev—Bratva daughter, sister—and heiress.
—
Nikolai and Lilliana arrive right on time, and I let them in, leading the three of us to the informal dining room—having dinner in the formal room, at a table that could seat an entire dinner party’s worth of guests and then some, feels a little too ridiculous.
“How is the new estate?” I ask them as the first course of dinner is served. I’d spent a lot of time planning the menu—something to occupy my time—and there’s a salad studded with cranberries and goat cheese and a pumpkin-crab bisque for the first course.
“We’re rattling around in there a little,” Lilliana says with a smile, reaching for the pitcher of sparkling water instead of the wine Nikolai and I are drinking. “But we’ll fill it up soon enough.” She pats her still-flat belly with a smile at her husband. “Although it might always feel a little too big. I would have been happy with something smaller, but you know—”
“Can’t have thepakhanof the Bratva living in a two-story brownstone,” Nikolai says with a smirk. “You’ll be glad for that space when we start having dinner parties.”
“What makes you think I’ll be excited to have dinner parties?” Lilliana asks teasingly, and I watch their banter, glad to see them teasing each other playfully, without the acid bite that there used to be to it. They’ve both come a long way since the rocky start of their arrangement.
“You’ve got to be getting lonely here,” Nikolai says, glancing at me as we finish the first course and one of the staff members brings the second. “This place is too big for one person.”
“It’s not one person.” I feel my stomach tighten a little at the tone of his voice—it sounds like he’s leading up to something, and I’m not sure that I’m going to like it. “It’s me, an endless amount of security, and the staff besides.”
“That’s still lonely.” Nikolai dips one of the shrimp served on the chilled plate into a small crystal bowl of cocktail sauce. “But I think that might change soon, Marika, if you’re open to hearing what I have to say.”
I know well enough that I don’t really have the option. Nikolai is my brother, and he loves me dearly; I know that. But I can hear the tone in his voice—thepakhan’s tone—it’s one I’m not accustomed to. I don’t like the sound of it, and I do my best to keep calm as I answer.
“I think you’re going to tell me one way or another,” I tell him simply. “So you may as well.”
I don’t miss the glance Lilliana gives Nikolai, and it makes me wonder how much he’s told her of whatever it is that he’s about to say. There was a time when he never would have shared any sort of information that might be held in confidence with a woman, not even his wife, but things are different now.Nikolaiis different, softened by what he’s found with Lilliana. I’d hoped that newfound softness might extend to my own situation, but I have a creeping sense of unease that that’s not the case.
His next words confirm it.
“Theo McNeil is looking for a wife,” Nikolai says bluntly. “He’s gone on too long without an heir, and from what I’ve heard, the other Kings are starting to pressure him about it. Most of them have heirs, and they don’t want a civil war breaking out if he were to die without someone to take over for him.”
I frown. “He’s not that old, is he? Not on death’s doorstep, anyway.”
Nikolai chuckles. “No. Forty-three, I believe. But he needs to find a bride first, wed her, produce an heir, and let that heir get old enough to comfortably take over in the circumstance of his passing—and that’s a lot of things to happen when a man in our line of work can find himself on the wrong end of a bullet at any time. They’re taking all that into consideration. We don’t always get the pleasure of growing old.”
Those words aren’t unfamiliar to me, but they hit harder now, in the wake of my father’s death and my own brush with mortality. I swallow hard, holding my brother’s gaze as I ask the question that I feel fairly certain I already know the answer to.
“What does that have to do with me?”
Nikolai’s expression was guarded as he looked at me. “Theo’s organization is the only one more powerful than the Vasilev Bratva,” he says finally. “The Kings have resources beyond what we do, coming in not only from their home organization in Dublin, but plenty of other places as well. Theo has turned his attention to our territory, and I have it on good authority that he’s considering moving in on us. Trying to take our contacts, our territory, our business.”
“That would start a war.” I stare at Nikolai. “That—”
He nods. “And if he’s considering it, it means he feels fairly certain he can do so and win. That puts all of us in danger and everything our family has built.”
“So you’re going to try to make an alliance with him.” It’s not even really a question. It’s how this always goes. An alliance needs to be made, and the innocent, unmarried daughter is how it’s brokered—or, in this case, the innocent, unmarried sister. I’m no longer innocent, but Nikolai doesn’t know that.
For the briefest moment, I consider telling him—shouting it out over a rack of lamb and roasted potatoes, just to see the expression on his face.I’m not a virgin. Adrik fucked me on the couch in the living room. Yes, the informal one. You can see the bloodstain if you like; I never did manage to get it all the way out.
