Page 14 of His Stolen Bride

Then I see Sergei’s name.

His payment is finalized, dated, structured like a dowry, and it’s clean in a way that makes my stomach go cold. I keep going, and I find a later entry, and my anger turns sharp enough to focus.

Secondary buyer retained until debts cleared.

Two lines beneath it.

Two columns of figures.

I stare at the page, and the understanding lands with dull finality.

Morozov didn’t seek alliance. He built redundancy.

He promised Alina twice.

Sergei was only one of them.

My hands go still on the paper, and my pulse stays steady, but my thoughts move fast. If Sergei was one buyer, then the other buyer had motive, and the timing fits, and the public hit fits, and jealousy becomes a weapon men use when money isn’t enough to satisfy them.

I close the register and reach for the phone.

My intel chief answers on the second ring. “Boss.”

“I want a name,” I say. “I want the other buyer, and I want him now.”

There’s a pause, then, “We don’t have it yet.”

“You will,” I tell him. “Pull every transfer tied to Morozov, pull every shell company, pull every meeting Sergei had outside the house, and pull every name that touches this register.”

“Yes, Boss.”

I hang up, and I sit back in the chair, and the silence in my office feels heavier.

Upstairs, my wife is behind a lock she knows doesn’t matter, and I’m married to a problem I can’t kill and I can’t release.

Sergei is dead because he wanted what was promised to him, and now I’ve got a second man out there who thought he could compete for Morozov’s debt and erase my brother to do it.

I stare at the closed register, then I pick it up again, and I read the names a second time.

Alina thinks she’s buying time.

So am I.

4

ALINA

I’m still in the dress when the house goes quiet.

The pins in my hair are biting my scalp, my feet ache, and the ring on my finger feels heavier than it should. I stand in front of the mirror in the suite they’ve decided is “mine” and stare at myself until my eyes go unfocused.

Wife.

It sounds fake in my head, and the more I repeat it, the more it turns into a joke someone else gets to laugh at.

I tug at the bodice until I can breathe properly, then I make myself stop. If I rip it, they’ll call it a tantrum. If I cry, they’ll call it weakness. If I sit on the floor in a white dress and panic, they’ll call it entertainment.

So I do none of that.