Page 87 of Obsession of the Bratva

“Oh no,” Ilana shook her head. “It has been too long since a wedding has happened in this house. I need you two to decide a date so we can start planning. There is so much to do.”

Vera laughed while all the men at the table looked resigned.

“Do we really have to grill the poor couple like this?” Jarek asked.

“No, we don’t,” Nico added. “We can simply let them live and when they decide to get married, they will let us know.”

“That’s not how it works in families, I am afraid,” Elisse said. “So seriously, you two. When?”

Nico took a drink. “Not tonight.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It was.”

“Not a good one,” Ilana laughed.

“I wasn’t aiming for good.”

I tried to hide my smile but failed miserably. Nico noticed. His hand found my knee beneath the table just briefly, but it was enough. My pulse immediately betrayed me, and his mouth twitched. Bastard.

“We haven’t decided yet,” I shrugged and threw a glance at Nico. “And part of the reason probably has to be that Nico hasn’t proposed yet.”

I raised my hand to show them my bare ring finger, and all the women at the table gasped.

“Nico, what are you even doing?” Ilana almost shouted, her eyes wide. “You better propose to her before I have to personally knock some sense into you.”

Nico looked at me like I had thrown him to the wolves, and I shrugged, letting him take everyone’s wrath. I wasn’t worried about the proposal. I knew he wasn’t going anywhere and the ring would come eventually. But it was still rather fun watching him appease Ilana, Misha and Elisse.

An hour later I was genuinely enjoying myself, which should not have been surprising but somehow was. These people felt like a family. They weren’t perfect, and they argued and interrupted each other and mocked each other relentlessly. But underneath all of it was loyalty. The kind that couldn’t be broken. At some point, Ilana leaned toward me.

“How are you feeling?”

I knew what she meant immediately. She was referring to the pregnancy. She had come to see me when I was healing from the bullet wound and I had ended up telling her. I had been living with the terrifying realization that an actual tiny human existed inside me and Ilana had been a grounding force during that time.

“Better.”

“You still nauseous?”

“A little.”

“That’s normal.”

“Easy for you to say.”

She laughed. “Trust me. It gets worse.”

I stared at her. “That was not comforting.”

“Oh, trust me, I remember Clara telling me she was nauseous for the entirety of her pregnancy and that must have sucked,” Ilana laughed.

“Who’s Clara?”

“Clara Aslanov, now Chernykh. She is the wife of my oldest brother, Iosif, and she herself also comes from a bratva family, the Aslanovs.”

“Good god, how many bratva families are there?”

“Way too many. But you don’t need to worry because the Romanovs are now in a close alliance with everyone, including the Aslanovs and the Chernykhs. So you are in a very safe bratva family, except you just need to look out for all these pregnant symptoms.”