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The waiter didn’t speak. He just placed the plates down with a practiced grace and disappeared into the velvet-lined shadows like he hadn’t even been there at all.

In front of me, a delicate starter: charred bone marrow with sea salt and thyme, served beside torn hunks of warm baguette and a smear of smoked garlic butter that made my mouth water. Across from me, Nikolai’s plate held a twelve-ounce wagyu ribeye, cooked rare—still bleeding slightly at the center—and sliced perfectly across the grain. It glistened under the low lighting, juice pooling on the plate.

He cut into it without a word, like it wasn’t unusual to be dining alone with the woman you’d taken from her own apartment and were going to force to walk down the aisle in a few days. As if this wasn’t the aftermath of a political war meeting where I’d nearly come to blows with my father in a room full of Russian power.

I watched him chew slowly, savoring the bite. I didn’t know why, but it did something to me. The way he ate. Calm. Intentional.

I hadn’t even touched my fork yet.

Instead, I tilted my head slightly and asked, “What do you think it’s going to be like?”

He looked up from his plate. “What?”

“Us. You and me. As husband and wife.”

A flicker of something passed through his eyes, amusement maybe, but not mocking. “Bold question.”

I shrugged, tearing off a corner of the baguette and dragging it through the marrow, not looking at him. “You’re the one who just decided you were going to marry me, Morozov. Don’t act surprised that I’m trying to understand the terms of my impending captivity.”

That earned the barest twitch of his lips. “Captivity?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like the word.”

“I like what it means whenyousay it.”

I rolled my eyes. He set his knife down gently, wiped his mouth with the linen napkin, and leaned back in the booth.

“It will be loud. And chaotic. Because you are. It’ll be a constant battle of wills until you realize I’m always going to win, each and every time.”

I huffed, even as heat swirled low in my belly. “Sounds exhausting.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

He spoke with conviction, certain what he said was true.

Maybe that’s what threw me off the most—how damncertainhe was. Like he wasn’t just hoping this would work. He’d already decided it would. He’dchosenit. Chosen me.

“You ever wanted someone like me before?” I asked, my voice softer now.

“No.”

“Why now?”

His eyes met mine, unflinching.

“Because you don’t need saving. You needcontainmentand I know how to do that without putting out your fire.”

The breath left my lungs in a long, slow exhale.

I tried to deflect. “Your brothers think this is a good idea?”

“They trust me,” he said, cutting another bite of steak, the sound of the knife against the plate oddly grounding. “They’ve seen what happens when I decide something is mine.”

I stared at him for a moment. “And the fighting? Is that going to keep going?”

He nodded. “I fight because I’m good at it.”

“How good?”