Page 89 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

I put the pen down. It cost me something, genuinely, the way giving up any long-held habit costs something, but I put it down anyway, because the woman currently terrorizing a florist on my behalf had earned this particular tyranny fairly, one crisis at a time, over three years of cleaning up messes that were never technically hers to clean.

"You're glowing," she added, softer, catching my reflection in the mirror behind me. "I need you to know that before I go make somebody's life difficult about ribbon width. You look unbelievably happy, and I take full credit for none of it, which physically pains me to admit."

"You picked the flowers, the linens, the band, and apparently the ribbon width. You are allowed a small amount of credit."

"A small amount. I will accept a small amount, gracefully, and mention it exactly once at every future family gathering for the rest of both our lives." She kissed my temple, careful not to smudge anything, and straightened up fast, a woman with a florist somewhere still not sufficiently afraid of her and limited time to fix that. "My own husband did not get this level of production, for the record. I saved it all for you."

She left in a gust of taffeta and barely restrained menace, and I sat alone for a moment in a dress I had not chosen and did not miss having a say in, down the hall from the very ballroom where I had once shown up desperate to save my career and instead lost my heart, all within the space of one badly organized morning.

Sean found me next, wearing an actual suit instead of the general chaos he usually operated in, looking somehow both older and exactly the same as the kid who used to leave mystery containers in a shared fridge.

"You look ridiculous," I told him, meaning it as the highest compliment I owned. "Like a real adult. It's very unsettling."

"I graduated, Cora. It happens to people eventually, even me." He straightened his own tie in the mirror, then gave up and let me do it properly, the way I had been doing since he was twelve. "Mom's already crying. I want that on record before you go out there, so you're not blindsided."

"She's been crying since the invitations went out."

"She's upgraded. It's a whole production now. Diane Walsh, front row, glowing like she personally arranged the sun for the occasion." He caught my hand before I could fuss with the tie again, held it a second, and let something more sincere through the joking for just a moment. "She's proud of you. I'm proud of you. I wanted to say that before some large, terrifying man says it better in front of everyone."

"He's not terrifying anymore. He carries cake boxes now. I've personally watched him accept one from you without complaint, which is more than I can say for most of the men who used to work for our old caterer."

"He is deeply terrifying, Cora. He is simply terrifying in a suit that costs more than my education, on your behalf, which honestly qualifies as its own separate flavor of terrifying." He kissed my cheek, told me not to cry before my makeup was finished, and left me alone with exactly four minutes to compose myself before the ceremony started rearranging everything I thought I knew about how my life was supposed to go.

I do not remember walking down that aisle so much as I remember arriving at the end of it, the way certain moments compress themselves into a single unbroken breath. I remember Rosa in the second row, already dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief she had clearly brought for this exact purpose. I remember Nik standing at attention like he was still on duty, and Luca beside him, visibly, audibly emotional in a way he would spend the rest of the night denying. I remember Beckett, three seats over, wearing the exact smug expression of a man sitting on news he was not yet allowed to share.

Mostly I remember Dmitri, standing exactly where I was walking toward, wearing an expression I had only seen on him once before, the night he told a wrecked ballroom the truth instead of what would have been easier.

"You're not going to cry," I whispered, once I reached him, because someone had to say it out loud.

"I already am. I am simply better at hiding it than you are." His hand found mine, steady in the specific way it always was, my ring catching the light between our joined fingers for one bright second, and something in his voice dropped low enough that it belonged only to the two of us. "East wall."

"What?"

"The last time I stood in this room with you, you told me exactly where things belonged. I have spent a year discovering you were right about all of it. I would like the record to show that again today."

I laughed, right there at the altar, entirely against the officiant's clear expectation of solemnity, and Naomi made a sound behind me that was either triumph or a sob, possibly both at once.

The reception happened the way I understand most receptions happen, in pieces too warm and too fast to fully catalogue afterward. Beckett cornered me by the cake table, practically vibrating.

"I have to tell you something before the toasts, because if I wait I'll lose my nerve." He set down his glass, took a breath, and delivered it like a man who had rehearsed the moment for weeks. "I'm running the entire Zolotov organization events account now. Not just this wedding. Every above-board function that family throws, galas, fundraisers, whatever legitimate front the accountants dream up next. It's the biggest line of business Walsh Events has ever had, and it's entirely mine to run."

"Beckett. That's enormous."

"It's the cleanest money we've ever touched, which, given our history, feels like it should be a bigger deal than it is." He grinned, unable to help himself. "You built the company that made this possible. I just wanted you to hear it from me before somebody less coherent told you at the bar."

"Who's less coherent?"

"Luca. He has already offered to tell you three separate times tonight, each version more embellished than the last. In the most recent one, I apparently discovered the account myself, alone, in a thunderstorm."

Rosa found me not long after, pressed a small worn photograph into my hand without ceremony, the same silver frame I recognized from a story Dmitri had told me once about a desk in Chicago. In it, his parents stood young and unguarded, his mother caught mid-laugh at some joke neither of us would ever get to hear.

"He would want you to have a copy," she said simply. "You are the reason he finally turned it back around."

"Rosa, I can't take the original."

"You are not taking the original. I had a copy made months ago, the moment he told me there would eventually be a wedding to bring it to." She folded my fingers closed around it with both of her own hands, brisk and certain, exactly the kind of gesture I imagined she had used on him a hundred times growing up, the sort that talked an argument back down before it ever got the chance to start. "I have been carrying it since. Waiting felt like the least dramatic way to give it to you, and believe me, I considered several considerably more dramatic ways first."

Nothing I could have said out loud would have matched it, so I simply held her hand and let her see that I understood exactly what she was giving me.