Page 58 of Marrying the Silver Fox

“So,” I remark, as we pull away from the townhouse. “Who exactly am I meant to be keeping an eye out for tonight?”

“Malachi Brown,” he replies. “He’s one of us, old mafia family, but it’s the woman he’s engaged to that I’m really interested in.”

I perk up. “Oh, yeah?”

He nods. “Sasha Bronstein,” he replies. “A property heiress. They were engaged recently, and if he goes through with the marriage, he’ll have access to some of the biggest warehouses in the city. Exactly the kind of place I’d like to have a clear path to and from, if I can get it.”

“So what do you want me to try and figure out?”

“Just how serious they seem about getting married,” he replies. “Engagements, they can mean life, or they can mean supplication. I want to find out where he lands with this woman.”

“Hmm, noted,” I murmur, as I twist my ring on my finger. He’s had it resized recently, to make sure it fits me properly. It might have been intended for someone else when it was purchased, but now it has been entirely edited for my hand, as though I was always who he intended it for. I can’t help but see it as a symbol of something greater.

We pull up outside the museum and I take his arm as we head inside. You’d think that I wouldn’t be impressed by these huge events anymore, given that I organized so many of them myself, but I still have to take a moment to drink the place in when we step into the main hall.

Large marble columns rise at either side of the dance floor, a band tucked into an alcove beneath a stained-glass window. Immaculately-dressed waiters move to and fro with drinks and tiny bites of food that already have my mouth watering, and everyone gathered looks as though they’re ready to walk the red carpet.

“Woah, this is amazing,” I murmur, and Nikolai grins, glancing down at me.

“Up to your standards, hmm?”

“Trust me, anything’s up to my standards when I don’t have to organize it myself,” I reply, grabbing one of the appetizers from a passing waiter and popping it into my mouth. I close my eyes, groaning. “God, that’s good…”

“Artesco,” a voice calls out, and Nikolai turns to see a man striding toward us, hand outstretched. “I heard you were back in the old country…glad to see you’ve decided to join us here again. And this must be that wife I’ve heard so much about, hmm…?”

I put a smile on my face, and let Nikolai introduce me to the man—another Russian, Bratva, but with a great passion for art history, at least by the size of the donation he’s making to the museum. I notice that Nikolai doesn’t move his hand from around my waist for a moment, as though he’s intent on showing me off, making sure everyone knows just how proud he is of me.

I find myself relaxing as we begin to move through the crowd, falling into that familiar, comfortable pattern that I learned when I was planning weddings. Noticing the body language, the details in the way these people speak, and trying to reflect it back to them so I’ll feel entirely natural here. There are even a few people here who have attended the weddings I organized—friends of friends, relatives who recall my face—and I seem to impress them when I ask about the couples who were married in those events, as if they thought I wouldn’t so much as remember their faces.

“There they are,” Nikolai murmurs to me, as we head to the bar to get another drink.

I glance behind me as casually as I can, and see a young couple canoodling on the other side of the long, dark wood counter. “Sasha and Malachi?”

He nods, and I give them a hard look. At a glance, they look as if they are utterly in love, but I know people can put on fronts when they’re aware that they are being watched. A recent engagement, I’m sure they’re aware, will put them at the center of attention, and I can tell that she’s making certain the enormous diamond hanging from her finger is pointing outward and toward the room.

“Come on,” I murmur. “Let’s talk to them. Let me get a feel for the relationship, okay? I have an uncanny ability to figure out if these things are going to last.”

Nikolai squeezes me around the waist, as though letting me know that he hears me, and calls out to Malachi, who glances around at once. He reaches out to shake Nikolai’s hand and greets him warmly, as if he’s an old friend, though there must be nearly twenty years between them.

“Ah, Nikolai, good to see you,” he remarks. “And have you met my fiancée, Sasha?”

“Oh, fiancée!” I exclaim, as though this is the first I’ve heard of it. “That’s lovely. When did you get engaged?”

“A few weeks ago,” Sasha gushes, and I peer down at her ring.

“Oh, wow, that’s beautiful,” I murmur. It’s certainly huge, that’s for sure. “And when are you going to get married?”

“We haven’t decided yet,” she replies, waving a hand, but I can see her glancing at Malachi out of the corner of her eye, as though hoping that he’s going to jump in and contradict her. He seems utterly oblivious to it. Not exactly off to a great start…

“Well, if you need to find a wedding planner, just let me know,” I tell them brightly. “I know this really great one. She organized our wedding, didn’t she, Nikolai?”

He smirks slightly. “Yeah, she did a great job,” he agrees, circling his thumb on the small of my back.

Sasha looks over at her fiancé with a hopeful expression on her face. “I bet we could use some help, right?” she remarks. “My sister had a wedding planner. She made it so easy for them⁠—”

“We don’t need all of that,” he replies, looking at her fondly. “We just need our friends, our family, some little church somewhere. I was thinking we could even elope. That would be romantic, right?”

“Right,” she replies, and I can see from the tense smile on her face that she’s not entirely convinced by what he’s saying. “But, you know, if we wanted to do a bigger ceremony, then…”