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I really do think about it, just for a second. But I can’t. Not only because of the punishment that would undoubtedly be visited on Adrik if I did, but because, after everything, I can’t bear to see the look of disappointment on my brother’s face. He’s the only family I have left—the onlybloodfamily—and the idea of him seeing all his plans wither because of my foolishness feels like too much to bear. He’s my big brother, and he’s never been disappointed in me in all my life. I hate the idea that he would be, now.
“Yes.” Nikolai still has that guarded expression on his face, as if he’s waiting for my reaction. “I think you know how that will be arranged, Marika.”
Lilliana is very quiet across from him. I wonder if they had this discussion before, if she tried to talk him out of it, or if she understandsthe way things arenow. If she’s come around to the way that the Families do things, now that she’s chosen to accept her place in it—if she’ll be as accepting one day when it might be her own daughter handed over to broker a business arrangement.
Love has a funny way of making people see things very differently than they used to.
“With a marriage.” My voice sounds flat and distant, like I’m hearing it down a hallway. “Between Theo and I.”
Nikolai lets out a breath, as if he were expecting a tantrum from me, and nods. “That’s exactly it. But, Marika—” he pauses, considering his next words. “It won’t be forever.”
“What do you mean?” I look at him confusedly, and he glances at Lilliana before returning his gaze to me.
“This is an arrangement that has an end date,” he says. “I’m planting you as his wife, Marika. You will go through with it in reality, of course—the wedding, the consummation, all of it. But I intend to have you find information that will enable me to put an end to Theo and his branch of the Kings before they can do the same to us.”
I stare at him. “You want to use me as a spy?” The possibilities feel different now. I still don’twantto marry Theo McNeil, or go to bed with him, or pretend to be his happy wife—but this isn’t the same as sayingtil death do us partand meaning it. This is something else.
“I want you to be careful,” Nikolai says firmly. “But essentially, yes. I want you to find whatever you can—get him to talk to you, any means you can devise of finding out what’s going on that I can’t access. You will be able to get closer to him than I or anyone else possibly could, especially if he thinks you’re happy with him and you please him.”
I see Lilliana wrinkle her nose at his phrasing, but she says nothing.
“Once he’s taken down and his organization disbanded, you’ll be a widow,” Nikolai continues. “I’ll write the deed to the mansion over to you. You can do as you like after that—marry or not marry at all, sell the house or keep it, whatever you choose.”
I look at him for a long moment, unsure what to say. “This is a dangerous plan,” I say finally, picking at a loose thread on the seam of my pants.What will Adrik think?It shouldn’t even be a consideration—it shouldn’t matter. But I think, for a moment, of his hands and mouth on me, the eager passion every time he takes me to bed, and I wonder if he’ll be willing to stand idly by while I marry someone else, even for a little while.
But I haven’t made him any promises, and I’m not even sure if there’s a future for us. That’s not a choice I’ve made. It’s not one I’m ready to make any time soon.
This is a choice I have to make now—if I even have one.
“What if I say no?” I ask Nikolai softly, and he sighs.
“I’m not going to force you, Marika. I’m not Lilliana’s father, or ours. I am going to give you a choice in this. But I think you know the choice that I want you to make.”
I do, of course. And I also know that I don’t really have one. My purpose has always been to marry for the advancement of our family, and that hasn’t changed just because our father is gone. I was a fool to think that it might have.
I don’t think there’s a single future where I don’t end up married to someone to benefit our family’s future. At least with Theo, there’s a purpose to it beyond just warming the bed of some crime organization’s heir and providing him with children. I can keep our family from being hurt by this man. And then—
There’s a possibility of a future with Adrik. It feels far away—almost impossible to think of right now. I don’t know if Nikolai would allow it, even after I’ve done what he wants. But there’s a chance—a chance, at least, for me to find out if that’s what I want. Space for me to make a choice without being rushed into it. It seems better than the other options that I can see unfolding in front of me, if I tell Nikolai no this time.
“Alright,” I tell him quietly, the food in front of me forgotten. “I’ll do it.”
Theo
“The Vasilev Bratva is ripe to be taken down. Now is the time, if we’re going to make a move.”
Finn O’Sullivan, my right-hand man and the one man I trust to tell me the truth, is sitting across from me at the Kings’ table, all the other chairs now empty. The meeting we’d been in is over, the other Kings are gone, and I’m left with the decisions that they want me to make.
I’m used to that. I was born to it, and it’s been my entire life. I was raised at the elbow of the man who made these choices before me, seated at the table when I was old enough to have a voice, and now I’m the head of it all.
“There are generations of McNeils to think about,” I tell Finn, tapping my fingers against the scarred wood of the table. “My father and grandfather and his father before him worked their way up from nothing to make this what it was. My great-grandfather wasn’t born a King. They sent him here to Chicago, from Dublin, to see what he could make of himself. To see if he couldearnit. And he did.” I flatten my hand against the table, feeling the roughness of it against my palm. “This has to be done carefully, or not at all.”
“You know how the others feel.” Finn rakes one hand through shaggy ginger hair, shaking his head at me. “Their Bratva is in shambles, torn apart from the inside. Nikolai Vasilev didn’t think he’d take over for years yet. He executed more than half of the men in the organization for their treachery.”
I shrug. “I’d have done the same, if that happened here.”
“That means there’s a lot of fresh blood, though. Men who are acting through fear, not years of loyalty, and a lot of shifting pieces. Now is the time to strike, before he gets a handle on what he’s doing, and it all coalesces again. Stronger than before, maybe. The old man had gotten a little careless in his older years.”
I rub a hand over my mouth, sinking back into my seat. “And here? They want a great deal from me.”
