Page 3 of My Wedding Night Massacre

He doesn’t move.

Across nearly two hundred people who belong to our world, my father’s eyes don’t leave me. They’re full of a verdict I haven’t asked for. I hold his gaze for one beat longer than necessary, then turn back to the party.

Let him watch. He’ll soon realize I made the right decision.

2

Slava

My father finds me between the bar and the east corridor, which isn’t an accident. Nothing Maxim Yeleshev does is an accident. He moves through rooms with intention, never a wasted step, never an unplanned word. I see him coming, and I don’t run, because I’m not seventeen anymore, and because I’ve had this conversation in various forms since the night I told him I was marrying her.

“Walk with me,” he says.

I take my drink and walk.

He pulls me into the corridor off the east side of the ballroom, far enough from the noise that we don’t have to raise our voices, close enough that neither of us has technically left the party. He picked this spot before he crossed the room. I’d bet my life on it.

“Something’s wrong,” he says.

With my father, it’s always better to wait, so I do just that.

“The security rotation changed this afternoon. Two of Bogdan’s men, whom I don’t recognize, are near the east entrance. The catering staff has a turnover I wasn’t briefed on.” He says it cleanly, no room for argument in any of it. “We need to leave. Now.”

I look at him for a moment. He’s tense, but he’s always tense when Bogdan’s in a room. He was tense through every negotiation, every dinner, every introduction. It’s been the same familiar pressure sitting over us for eight months, and tonight feels no different.

“You’ve had eyes on Bogdan’s men all night,” I say. “If there was a credible threat, you’d have specifics, not a feeling.”

“I have specifics. The rotation, the staff—”

“Staffing changes happen at every event this size. The rotation could be a dozen things.” I keep my voice even because I’m not dismissing him to be cruel, I’m dismissing him because I’ve watched him find reasons to distrust this alliance for eight months, and tonight was supposed to be the end of that. “The marriage is done, Father. Whatever you think of Bogdan, whatever you think of Pavlina, doesn’t matter anymore.”

His jaw tightens. “This isn’t about the girl.”

“Isn’t it?”

The words land between us. He doesn’t answer, but his silence is its own kind of answer.

My father has never once looked at Pavlina warmly. That coldness in his eyes when she walks into a room isn’t personal, or at least he’d say it isn’t. It’s the look he gets when something doesn’t fit the world he’s built, the alliances, the bloodlines, the marriages that were always supposed to mean something beyond the two people standing in front of a priest. She was never part of that. She never fit it. And Bogdan Lyubimtsev has never gotten a warmer reception from him either.

But I chose her. Not the empire, not the alliance he wanted with another family. Her. And that is the thing my father has never forgiven.

“You’ve hated this marriage since the beginning,” I say. I hear the edge that I usually manage to keep sheathed in my own voice. “If that’s what this is, just say so. Say it plainly and let’s have the real argument instead of this one.”

The fight leaves his face before I’ve finished speaking. There’s no anger underneath it. I know what his anger looks like, it lives in the set of his jaw and the stillness of his hands. What’s there instead is older than anger, but quieter than grief. It’s worn into the lines around his eyes like it’s been there for months.

“I don’t hate the marriage,” he says. “I’m afraid of what being tied forever to a man like your father-in-law means, a man without honor.”

“We’re not leaving,” I tell him. “Not tonight. If your security concerns are specific and credible, then we will address them in the morning. But I’m not pulling my wife out of her own wedding reception because you have a feeling.”

My father looks at me without anger, which I could work with. What’s left after the anger is worse. He’s made his case, he knows it hasn’t landed, and he’s done trying to make it land.

“Go back to your party,” he says quietly.

“Father—”

“Go.”

I obey.