Page 6 of A Surprise Baby for the Russian

“Let me explain.”

“I don’t need you to explain a marriage certificate to me, Yakov; I’m not twelve.”

“That’s not what I meant. Let me explain why.”

I press my lips together; if I don’t, he’s not getting the chance. He takes this as permission and starts.

He tells me about his father’s rage at being humiliated by my brother and Selene’s defection. That his plan, the one Yaroslav had been sent to carry out, was to kidnap me and forcibly make me sign a marriage certificate, making me legally Yaroslav’s wife and therefore creating a double union between our families. This would give his father a way to destabilize the Volkov/Nikolai alliance, and also work as an insult designed to mirror what had been done to Selene. I think about Selene on her own sofa this morning, pouring coffee, talking about Yakov. Was that only this morning? I push the thought down.

“So your father wanted Yaroslav to force me into a Mykros marriage, and your solution is to force me into a Mykros marriage?” I think I am having some weird out-of-body experience; perhaps I fainted outside the bookstore and knocked myself out. I am going to wake up in a moment, in my own bed, with my worried family leaning over me, and it’s going to be fine. This. Is. Not. Happening.

“My solution is to make the document useless to him.”

“By marrying me yourself?”

“After today, my father is going to realize exactly where my loyalties lie. You being married to a Mykros who’s actively working against him gives him nothing. The whole point of Yaroslav taking you was to hand my father a weapon—a forced tie to the Volkovs he could wave around, proof he’d humiliated your family the way you humiliated his when Selene got out, and your brothers would never be able to use whatever information they feel they have over him because he’d have you; he’d hurt you. If it’s me instead of Yaroslav, then you’re useless to him. The document still exists, but its purpose now is to protect you, not harm you.

“You know, when I dreamed about getting married, like girls occasionally do, I was walking down an aisle in a beautiful dress, with my family around me toward a man I love. Not this.”

“No.” He doesn’t try to argue with that.

I lean back in my chair and look at him, trying to work out what is going on behind his eyes, to find any trace of real emotion there. I don’t know what exactly I’m looking for—guilt? He looks back, the full weight of his attention on me, like I am the only thing in the room worth looking at. I find it deeply uncomfortable, but I refuse to be the one who looks away first.

“What if I say no?”

“You have my word, I will take you home, right now. Yaroslav will try again; that much is certain, but next time I may not know when he’s coming.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I think we’ve already established it as fact.”

I hate this. I hate that he is right. I hate this whole damn situation and the fact that any door I choose leads to the same room; me constantly under threat of kidnap and married to a Mykros. I look at the document on the table, already signed by witnesses, Yakov’s signature scrawled along the bottom. I think about Yaroslav on that sidewalk, the arrogance of him in thinking he was going to take me and force me to marry him. This is no different, except for the fact that Yakov stepped in to prevent it. He also saved Selene when her father tried to kill her. There has to be something to that, doesn’t there?

“My family,” I say, “are going to lose their minds, you know?”

“Selene will talk to Simon. Simon will hold your brothers back long enough to keep you out of the direct line of fire for a while—until we know how my father’s actually going to react. He’s not predictable right now. He’s humiliated, and he’s angry. I’d rather you were somewhere safe while we find out which version of him we’re dealing with.”

“And when they find out that you’ve forced me to marry you?”

“I’ll deal with that when it comes.”

“You’ll deal with it,” I repeat this back to him in the tone it deserves. “Wow, that’s very reassuring. I feel so much better about the whole thing.” He says nothing, which is maddening. “I want it noted,” I say, reaching to take the pen from him before I can talk myself out of it, because I am smart enough to understand the alternative and won’t pretend otherwise, “that I am seriously pissed about this whole thing.”

“Noted.”

“And that you are a manipulative, high-handed, arrogant—”

“Also noted.”

“—control freak who thinks kidnapping a woman and forcing her into a marriage is a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem that your psycho family created in the first place.”

“Fair,” he shrugs, as if he’s conceding a mildly inconvenient point.

I sign the damn document and slam the pen down. I look him dead in the eye because I want him to feel the full force of the emotion behind what I am going to say. I jab my finger in his direction. “I will never forgive you for this, Yakov Mykros, never. Do you understand me?”

He holds my gaze and doesn’t flinch, doesn’t apologize, and doesn’t offer me any words of justification. He simply says, “I do,” then picks up the certificate, folds it up, and slides it back into his inside pocket. Done and dusted. It was a stupid dream anyway. I basically said as much to Selene this morning. Better to stick with book boyfriends. I turn away before he can see my face.

I look at the window and the quiet street beyond it, ordinary people living ordinary lives behind their closed doors. What must it be like, I wonder, to wake up in the morning and live a life that is fully your own, on your own terms, not dictated by who your family is, or now, by who your husband is. To walk the kids to school and go for a coffee, to not look behind your back constantly. That must be nice.