Page 18 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

A dark, disbelieving bark of laughter bursts from Boris. “She hasn’t even given you an answer? Anton.”

“It is a political marriage that will uproot her life, which is an extremely full and independent one. She’s allowed a minute.” Or a week. “But she has no real choice. Her brothers will see that. Either the alliance will be broken, or it will be tied even tighter.”

He’s mulling it over, I can tell. Logic is the way forward, and logic is what I’ve given him. Still, he sourly mutters, “Giving a woman an upper hand from the beginning isn’t the smart way to play this.”

She’s not just any woman. And I didn’t ‘give’ her fucking anything.

Exhausted, I chuckle into my drink. “Probably not.”

***

Darya may never marry a man who wasn’t man enough to risk a bullet in the head for her. But I doubt she’d marry one who let her lead him around with his balls in a vice either. I’m not a man to be bullied—not even by her. I’m not as easy to intimidate as she seems to believe I am.

I’ll have to rid her of that false impression.

Why here? Several pairs of eyes are burrowing the question into the side of my head. I don’t answer a single one. The person this production is for only has eyes for the church we’re standing in. I’d suspected that might be the case.

I could say I chose this nineteenth-century stone cathedral in the Back Bay because it’s neutral territory. I could say it’s because I know it’s secure, since the priest here owes me more than he’ll be able to repay in this lifetime. I could say it’s a place even the most trigger-happy of men would have to think twice before firing.

But the truth is that she hadn’t been wrong that night at her townhouse. I’d had time to myself in Darya’s cocoon. I never missed anything about the look on her face, and thus hadn’t missed the stung look on her face as I’d accused her of romanticism. Despite her barbed words in response at the moment, Darya craved more than a ring from a proposal, whether she’d accept one or not. She had, as far as I knew her, a primordial soul of sorts. I can only guess what would appeal to it.

This church, in the presence of the people who matter most to her, and some witnesses of my own, is my guess.

It appears I’ve finally gotten—maybe for the first time since that accursed ball she threw back in May—something right with her.

I’m ready for a second time.

“Darya and I have some news to share,” I announce.

I draw in a breath and hold my hand out to her. It’s a win in itself that, grudgingly, she slips hers into it. Not one person is relaxed enough to sit the fuck down. So, it’s on their feet that they watch me lead her down the aisle, all the way to the end of it. In front of the many candles, some lit and some not, I pull out the small velvet box from my pocket.

The world shrinks to the look on her face: her eyes narrowed, her mouth pursed. There’s no satisfaction greater than seeing her startle when I turn towards her and pop open the box, angling my body to keep the reveal for her eyes only.

“So,” I murmur, thumb stroking along the side of the box, “which announcement am I making?”

Her lips are in a tight line, unmoving, for nearly a minute. In that span, time slows to a merciless trickle, drawing out every second that passes. That’s fine. It is. I’m a patient man. If that’s how she thinks she’ll get me to lose my cool, she’ll be waiting longer than she can handle.

I let her take the time.

Besides, it’s certainly something to watch all the faces around us and their distinct spectrum of expressions. My mother looks like she’s going to pass out, as do more than one of her brothers. A couple looks confused. A couple looks furious, as is justified. Her sister, however, is grinning, her eyes bright. Now, that concerns me, albeit not as much as it does when my brother joins her in her apparent glee.

Yet they all cease to exist when Darya’s voice wrenches my attention back to her. “Anton has asked me to marry him,” she finally announces.

She rips the ring out of the box viciously—then holds it like it’s made of water, like it’ll slip through her fingers if she isn’t careful.

I know that it won’t.

This ring has survived for decades. And it took me every day of the week she gave me to find it for her. Her jewelry has never been yellow gold. A regular old diamond wouldn’t do for a woman like her. Modernity wanted nothing to do with her any more than Darya wanted anything to do with it.

When she slips the ring onto her finger herself, her eyes soften over it. Her touch is reverent as it grazes over the white gold band and the marquise-cut black diamond. She looks besotted, her eyes shining brighter than the much smaller white diamonds around the center stone.

I bite back a grin, certain my eyes still gleam with satisfaction.

Haven’t I earned it? I drove myself half-mad picking what would be right for her. It was no small feat. A worthwhile one, nonetheless.

“What the fuck,” Leonid Yuri curses.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Maxim howls.