Page 25 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #1)

In the video, the priest prayed over the rings and gave them to us to exchange, pledging our faith though there were no vows. “Dear God, where did we get wedding rings?”

“At a pawn shop on the way to the Russian Orthodox church. Pawn shops were the only places open that sold jewelry at that time of morning.”

“The morning? How far was the church from Las Vegas?”

“Oh, it’s just in a suburb. I drove you around for an hour and half trying to get you to crash out like you were a colicky baby in a car seat.”

Upon closer examination, the gold wedding band on my finger bore minute scratches. It was definitely used. Sadness wafted through me. “I didn’t even buy us proper wedding rings.”

“You wanted to, but there weren’t any real jewelry stores open. I wanted to twist foil bubblegum wrappers into rings, but you wouldn’t let me. It’s the thought that counts.”

The thought in this case was that crap rings from a pawn shop were adequate for a wife of mine, even in these odd circumstances. Shame spiraled in my head and burned my throat like vomit.

I should have procured a better ring for her, even if I was desperately trying to figure out how to get out of the marriage.

The video lingered on our clasped hands and those inadequate rings. “Who shot the video?”

“The priest’s apprentice-guy. He was the witness.”

Yes, for there had to be an official witness to a marriage. Even that requirement had been fulfilled.

I stopped the wedding video in the middle of the hour-long file. I didn’t need to see the entire horrifying scenario.

“And then, after that, when we got here to this room, did we—” I gestured at the air between us and then at the bed. “Consummate it?”

She was drawing a breath to answer when a much worse thought accosted me.

“Dear Lord, we didn’t livestream that part, did we?” I blurted.

She laughed out loud, a raucous crow-caw that sliced my aching brain.

Her laugh would probably be fine, even sweet, if I hadn’t had an ax-shaped vodka bottle cleaving my skull.

“No. I would definitely not have let you livestream that, and I wouldn’t have let you ‘consummate’ me anyway. I was a little sozzled by the champagne Caesars sent up because we were newlyweds, but no.”

“We did not, then,” I clarified.

“No.” She laughed at me. “I don’t ‘consummate’ drunk people. That’s, like, gross. Seriously, I would never.”

My sigh was too long. “You have again saved me.”

“I was kind of worried about staying here with you, though. Pretending to marry a woman was one of King Henry the Seventh’s tricks when he wanted to get laid.”

I looked up. Why was she talking about kings?

Lexi nodded while she talked. “Old Henry would propose to a pretty young girl, find a priest, which was actually just one of his non-clergy buddies in a black robe, and supposedly marry her with just the fake priest and maybe her mother for a witness. Then, they’d tup?—”

English dismayed me sometimes. “Tup?”

“Yeah, you know, smash . But the next day, she’d find out the priest wasn’t a real priest, and he’d say the marriage never happened. It was all a trick to get her into bed.”

“And you thought?—”

“I thought you were just trying to get some ass, so heckers no, we didn’t. And then you passed out.”

Embarrassment consumed me. “Well, I apologize for my poor showing on our wedding night.”

She chuckled, and that time, her laugh was the adorable little chipmunk-chortle again. “Forgiven. Trust me, Nico. I didn’t want my first time to be a sloppy drunk fumbling around down there and then barfing on the bed.”

Mortifying. “Did I vomit on the bed?”

“Oh, no. You just passed out.”

“At least I am afforded one last modicum of dignity,” I grumbled.

“I tried to sleep on the floor, but you insisted I should sleep in the bed. You climbed into bed, grinned at me like a lunatic, and then your eyes rolled back in your head as you lost consciousness. I made sure you were breathing and covered you up.”

I needed to be certain. “So, you’re sure we didn’t consummate the marriage?”

“I wouldn’t have, and certainly not with you.”

A little insulting. However, “Non-consummation is grounds for an annulment.”

“See? All for the best.” She waved at the clouds of steam billowing from the bathroom behind me. “And your water is hot. Go take a shower. You reek.”

Ah, the same words as I’d expounded to John Borbon yesterday, coming back to haunt me.

Karma, complete.

I gathered my dignity and stood, careful to look unconcerned with my current circumstances, and strolled into the hotel room’s bathroom sized only for a goddamn mouse. I pressed the rickety door closed behind me.

As soon as the door shut, my knees wobbled and gave out, and I slid down the tiled wall, cradling my phone.

The tile chilled the bottoms of my feet and my ass through the thin hotel towel. The shower was pouring down in its minuscule stall, thundering on the plastic shower curtain.

With shaking fingers, I called John Borbon, who did not answer his goddamn phone.

His phone clicked over for me to leave a message, and I whispered with my hand cupped around the phone. “John. John, you son of a bitch. Don Juan Gómez-Acebo y Borbón, Duke of Badajoz and Viscount of La Torre, pick the fuck up. Please pick up. I fucked up. I got my ass drunk, and I fucked up.”

My heart quaked.

“John,” I whispered. “Call me back as soon as you get this. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

I struggled to my feet, damning all the vodka in the world to Hell, and was just pulling back the brittle shower curtain when my phone screen lit with a call from John.

I scrambled and juggled it to my ear. “John!”

“Nico, you old devil!” John chortled. He fucking chortled. “Congratulations are in order!”

I dragged my hand through my greasy hair. “No, they’re the fuck not! Did you listen to my message?”

“No, I just saw that you’d finally returned my calls from last night and rang you right back. What happened?”

“I don’t know what I did. I’ve awakened next to women so many times. I like waking up next to women. But Jesus, John, I think I really fucked up.”

“Did you not use a condom? Is she not on the Pill or something?”

“Worse.”

“What could be worse?”

I rubbed my hand up the side of my face.

My beard scruff was thick. I needed a shave.

And a shower. And a toothbrush. “There was this woman who was standing outside the Billionaire Sanctuary club in a wedding dress, and I proposed and married her on the spot.” Though flickers of memories felt like I’d been besotted with her, but I’m not a besotted kind of guy.

How drunk had I been? “I’m an idiot. I’m a fucking idiot, John, and I fucked up my life on a goddamn whim. ”

“You’re breaking up. Shitty signal. What was that you said about a wedding dress? Who was she? You seemed overcome on the livestream last night. I thought you were going to break down sobbing at her beauty like a peasant. God, I hope I don’t do that.”

Hesitant knocking pattered at the door. “Hey, I could hear you talking. If you’re not in the shower yet, could I use the facilities before you get in?”

“One second, please,” I called to her. “John, I can’t talk. I’ll call you later. I’m hungover as shit and can’t think.”

“Did you get roofied?”

“Sadly, I’m quite sure this injury is self-inflicted. I’ll call you back.”

I edged out of the bathroom and let Lexi in, then sat on the side of the bed and ruminated on my sorry condition.

Idiot-idiot-idiot chanted in my alcohol-sodden brain.

I couldn’t call John back. Overhearing my rant might hurt Lexi’s feelings, and she seemed like a nice woman. This situation wasn’t her fault.

It was solidly mine.

And she was more than a nice woman. I’d been a mess the night before. She’d saved me from myself in a myriad of ways.

Lexi was a good woman. She was kind.

I was the idiot.

She’d even tried to prevent the ceremony and mitigate the damage. I remembered her begging me to find John or other friends to talk with about my irrational, catastrophic, self-destructive decision. This was all on me.

She emerged, grinning sheepishly, and I went back in to take a damned shower.

The shower stall took up half the floor space of the small, one-sink bathroom, and I tucked my elbows while I showered to avoid bashing them into the walls.

How I wished my wife had used more of my petty cash or fished my credit card out of my wallet and procured us a decent suite for our so-called wedding night.

While I washed my hair using the hotel’s microscopic vials of shampoo that smelled like petroleum-doused flowers, a few more memories solidified.

Demyan Volkov’s attempt to arrange a forced marriage to his daughter still raised a cold sweat to the surface of my skin that the hot water rinsed away as it formed.

At least I’d married some rando on the street and not Volkov’s daughter, whoever she was. Knowing Volkov’s reputation, he might’ve had the girl waiting in the wings for after he’d gotten me polluted and staged a ceremony last night.

I rinsed the alcoholic sludge from my skin.

Arranging an annulment from a Russian mafioso’s kid would have been orders of magnitude more difficult than from this anonymous plebeian American woman.

Paying her off and extricating myself should be relatively simple.

Annulments were frowned upon and severely limited in the Orthodox church, far more rare than in the Roman Catholic church with their selling of indulgences and annulments to divorcés these days.

Indeed, annulments were difficult. There would be hearings. An investigation. Interviews. A request for evidence of the failed sacrament.

Later, I would watch the rest of the video and figure out how to get an annulment from the Russian Orthodox church as soon as possible.

Even though my erstwhile confessor, every bishop, and the Patriarch of Moscow himself would fight me tooth and nail on it.

For anyone, obtaining an annulment in the Orthodox church was difficult.

Granting an annulment to the namesake and heir of the Tsar-Martyr Nicolai II would be a scandal that would rock the church.

I’d probably had to pull the “My great-grand uncle and namesake is a holy martyr of the Church” card last night to force the priest to baptize and chrismate Lexi and then marry us.

I needed to find more reasons that the marriage was invalid.

However, as the heir to an actual saint, I could probably arrange for the process within a few weeks, considering that I had not been of sound mind in the slightest, Lexi had not understood the seriousness of the rite, her chrism hadn’t actually dried yet, and the marriage had not been consummated.

I at least had a chance of getting annulment.

If all else failed, I could ask her to desert me. This woman who didn’t even know me would probably run for the hills if given half a chance.

If she did know me, she’d probably desert me even faster.

Yes, probably, I chuckled while I scrubbed paint-thinner stench from Volkov’s vodka off my skin.

But there was an upside to this fiasco. Being married to someone else would keep Demyan Volkov and his mafia-princess daughter at bay for a few weeks, a silver lining to the thundercloud that was my drunken binge the night before.

Yes, for the next few weeks or so, Demyan Volkov couldn’t push his daughter upon me, demanding marriage and access to my connections, until the annulment was granted.

I blinked shampoo and water out of my eyes.

Wait—