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I rush forward and grab her hands. “Bee, look at me.” I squeeze tight. “I’m gonna be right there with you, okay?”
She doesn’t look convinced. “If I do this, he wins, Wren. He wins.”
“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t win, because you still get to live the life you want?—”
“In the shadows,” she corrects desperately. “How can you call that ‘living’?”
“Jesus, Bee!” Aleksandr sags against the wall. “We’re down to three minutes and it takes at least two to put that stomach on!”
“Shhh!” I hiss at him, pushing my palm in his face. “Go get the prosthetic and let me handle this.” I turn back to Bee and force her to meet my eyes. “Beatrice Zanetti, from the moment I met you, you have been a badass bitch. Don’t go soft on me now.” Her nostrils flare and she chews her bottom lip. I take the stomach from Aleksandr and help her strap it on. “Your father’s suspicious of me now, too. If we don’t see this through, my baby and I are in danger. For all our sakes, this wedding has to go off without a hitch. Watching you marry Dmitri is gonna be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But to keep this baby safe, I’ll do it a hundred times over. And if I can do that, you can certainly get through this ceremony.”
My little speech works. She nods once and the fear leaves her eyes, and just like that, the Bee I know is back again.
Once the stomach’s on, Aleksandr and I help her ease into her dress. I give her a tight hug and then she heads out, with Aleks and I trailing at her back.
The moment she turns the corner, the music starts up and Vittorio twists around from his position in front of the church double doors, his scowl softening just a little.
“You did good back there,” Aleksandr whispers to me as we prepare to follow Bee and Vittorio into the ceremony hall. “That was very impressive.”
“If you repeat a word of what I said to Dmitri, I will kill you.”
He winks and grins. “Understood.” He offers me his arm and I link my hand through it. “Although I will say—and don’t take this the wrong way—Bee’s not the only one who’s a badass bitch.”
67
DMITRI
THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER
“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.”
Aleksandr shuts the door on my private suite. I grab my cufflinks and start to fasten them in place as I turn to him.
“Is Wren ready yet? Does the dress fit?”
He blinks in confusion. “Which dress are you asking about? As far as I understand with the way these types of things normally go, Bee is the one who will be wearing the wedding dress.”
Goddammit. I exhale through my nose and tell my idiot brain to get its shit together. We can’t afford to slip up today. Things are so tentative, so fragile. Dangling on the edge of a cliff.
“They were two separate questions,” I say coolly.
Aleksandr looks unimpressed with my pitiful attempt at saving face. “Ah, Freudian slip, as the good doctor would say. Explains a lot.”
“I’m not in the mood, Aleksandr. What’s the news?”
He claps his hands. “Good news first: the dress fit perfectly, fake baby bump and all, and Bee looks gorgeous. Bad news: she’s no longer in the dress. She’s in the bathroom right now either puking or shitting out her nerves. She didn’t really specify which when she pushed me out of the way, and I kinda figured I’d let her get away with going light on the details this time around. Because, like, does it really matter which end it’s coming out of, y’know? Like, if we…”
He keeps rambling as I glance at the Rolex on my arm. We’re already forty-five minutes behind schedule. I haven’t even seen Vittorio yet, but I know without even having to ask that the old bastard is almost certainly prowling the ceremony hall like a restless lion.
“I’ll go back in and check on her in a minute,” Aleks is concluding when I tune back in. “I just wanted to see how you were holding up first.”
“I’m fine.”
“So you keep saying. Aggressively.”
“The moment this wedding is done, that old fuck Zanetti will be bound to me,” I snarl. “Together, we can finish off the fucking Irish once and for all. That is my only priority right now.”
He winces. “You really think doubling down on the war is a good idea?” Aleksandr ventures cautiously. “I mean, think about it, brother. You have a baby on the way. You have Wren to think of.”
