Page 10

The scent of roses hangs heavy in the air.

Too sweet. Too thick. It clings to the silk-lined walls and marble floor, weeping from the flower-stuffed arrangements that flank the aisle in bloated, suffocating clusters.

Everything about this room is polished to perfection—every candle, every chair, every guest in their carefully pressed suits and subtle weapons.

I stand at the front of the hall, still and composed in a tailored black suit, my hands folded behind me, spine straight. I do not shift. I do not blink.

I wait.

The music plays low and rich. Strings.

The doors open, and there she is. Alina.

Draped in white, wrapped in silk that gleams like moonlight against her skin. Her veil is sheer, short, pinned with something silver. Her shoulders are bare. Her back straight. The dress moves like smoke around her legs as she walks, slow and measured, down the aisle.

I watch her.

I watch the way her jaw tightens with each step, the way her eyes flick once—only once—to the crowd before she sets them forward again. Toward me. Her expression isn’t just sadness. It isn’t fear either. There’s something else there.

Guilt.

It lingers in her eyes like a shadow. Her movements are steady, but the guilt is louder than her silence. It’s in the way she breathes. The way she clenches her bouquet just a little too tightly. The way she doesn’t look at me until the very last second.

I smile.

She reaches me, and the music fades.

The priest—bought and armed—begins to speak. I don’t hear him. Not really. I nod when I’m supposed to. My hand finds hers, and she doesn’t flinch, though I feel the tremor that runs through her fingertips like an aftershock.

Then the doors explode open.

Gasps ripple through the room. Not screams. Not chaos. These men are used to the unexpected. They just turn, slow and calm, like wolves sniffing at a shift in wind.

I don’t turn, because I already know who it is.

Footsteps drag across marble. Rough. Uneven. Then a thud. A body hitting the floor. The music has stopped entirely now. All that fills the room is the faint hiss of candles and the sound of broken breath.

I look over.

Richard Carter is being dragged between two guards, his face bloodied and pale, a man hollowed out by his own legacy. He falls to his knees just beyond the aisle, arms limp, chest heaving. His suit is torn at the collar, his shoes scuffed and one missing. There’s blood on his hands.

He tries to speak. Nothing comes.

Then—finally—his voice cracks through the silence, raw and pitiful. “Please… please, Andrei. Not her.”

The room doesn’t move. No one speaks. Not one of them will interfere. They all know what this is.

This is justice.

He forces himself forward on his hands, crawling like something less than human. “Take me. Kill me. Do what you want—just let her go.”

I watch him. Carefully. Slowly. “Let her go?” I repeat.

His head lifts. His face is wet with tears. “She’s innocent. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“She’s your daughter,” I say, voice like ice. “Your blood, and that’s exactly why she does.”

“She didn’t know,” he says, choking. “She didn’t know what I did.”

“You think that changes anything?” I let go of Alina’s hand. She stays where she is, silent, motionless beside me. “You thought you could bury the past. That you could trade one life for another and forget the cost.”

“I was protecting her.”

“You killed Maxim to protect yourself.”

He winces like I struck him. “I was trying to survive—”

“You lived,” I cut in. “He didn’t.”

Carter lowers his head, shoulders shaking. “Please….”

This is the moment. The one I’ve been building toward all these years. Not the wedding. Not the dress. This.

Seeing him like this. Crawling. Weeping. Crushed beneath the weight of his own guilt. Not behind closed doors, but here—before them all. Every man in this room sees him now for what he truly is. Not a king. Not a legend. Just a man with nothing left.

I step forward, slow and precise. My voice drops until only he and Alina can hear it.

“You came here thinking your shame might save her,” I say. “All it’s done is make it permanent. This moment. This humiliation. This is what you gave her.”

I crouch, level with him, my tone razor-thin.

“You could’ve faced me like a man ten years ago, but you waited. Hid. Lied. So now your daughter will carry your punishment. Not just tonight. Every day. As my wife.”

His breath breaks on a sob.

The silence in the hall stretches—thick, smothering, electric. All eyes are on me.

I wait for Alina to cry. To shout. To turn to her father and plead on his behalf, or to me, begging for release.

That’s how this moment is supposed to end.

That’s the weight of vengeance—crushing, undeniable.

Carter groveling at my feet. His daughter shattered beside him.

A legacy razed in front of those who once feared it.

Alina surprises me.

She steps forward. Not toward her father, not away from me. Toward the center of the room, toward the watching crowd, toward the priest still holding the book with both hands as though it might shield him from the blood in the air.

Her face is calm.

No tears. No visible tremor in her hands.

Her back is straight, her chin lifted, her gaze sweeping the crowd like she belongs there.

Then, in a voice that is clear, steady, and impossible to ignore, she says, “I’m happy.”

The words hang in the air. Carter’s head jerks up.

This makes no sense.

She turns slightly to face the room—her audience—and repeats it. “I’m happy to marry him.”

Her voice doesn’t shake. Her hands don’t clench. She isn’t begging. She isn’t lying the way hostages do, with cracked voices and teary eyes. She’s choosing this. Or pretending to, with enough conviction that even I struggle to tell the difference.

Carter gasps like she’s stabbed him. “No,” he breathes, barely loud enough to carry. “No, Alina. You don’t—”

“I do,” she says, louder now. “I want this.”

She turns to him then, but her face stays composed. “You should leave, Father. You don’t belong here.”

Every man in the room shifts. Quietly. Uncomfortably. They didn’t come for this. They came to watch a powerful man fall. Not to see his daughter deliver the final blow.

Carter stares at her, his mouth slack, his body trembling.

“I did this for you,” he whispers.

Alina’s expression doesn’t change. “I’m doing this for you now. Don’t worry about me.”

A beat passes, and then I signal to the guards.

Carter doesn’t resist. Maybe he can’t. Maybe her words gutted him more than any gun ever could.

He sags in their grip, eyes still locked on his daughter as they haul him away.

He’s not weeping anymore. Just hollow. Like something vital has been stripped from him and there’s nothing left but the ruin.

The doors close behind them with a sharp, echoing thud.

The room exhales.

The priest clears his throat, tentative. “Shall I… continue?”

I glance at Alina. She’s still looking at the doors. Then her gaze slides to me.

For the first time in years, I feel something shift in my chest—something I can’t name.

She just protected him, even after everything.

Even here, in the belly of the beast, she shielded the man who gave her away.

The priest clears his throat again, louder this time, a brittle sound echoing through the high-vaulted room.

I turn toward him slowly and nod once.

The man’s hands shake as he opens the book again, flipping to the marked page, his thumbs pressed white against the gilded edges. He begins the ceremony with a forced calm, reciting the lines in solemn, even tones.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today—”

The words are smoke to me. I barely hear them.

My gaze is on Alina.

She stands beside me, veil lifted now, hair pinned neatly behind her ears, skin pale but smooth. No visible cracks, no exposed edges. She is perfect for the part—poised, silent, devastating in white. And yet there’s nothing docile about her.

Even now, with the world watching, she does not lower her eyes.

When the priest asks who gives this woman, the silence is deafening. There is no father to step forward. No willing hand to offer her as if she were property. The absence of tradition is louder than the words themselves. And everyone hears it.

It’s a void I created. One I meant to savor.

She fills it with her stillness. Her steadiness.

When the priest turns to me, asking if I take her to be my wife, I respond without hesitation.

“I do.”

When the same question is posed to her, there’s a pause.

It lasts only two seconds, but they’re long enough for the entire room to hold its breath. “I do,” she says, calm, clear.

The priest continues, his voice stronger now, emboldened by her answer. He calls for the rings.

Dima steps forward from the crowd, offering the small velvet box without expression. His eyes flick between the two of us, as if assessing a battlefield. I open the box and take her ring—simple platinum, elegant, deliberately absent of diamonds.

I slide it onto her finger.

Her hands don’t shake.

Then she takes mine. Hers is smaller, lighter, but still heavy with implication. She hesitates—just a flicker—and then pushes it down to my knuckle.

The priest’s final words echo through the hall like a judgment passed down. “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

The room doesn’t erupt into applause; it stays deathly still. The kind of still that follows a gunshot.

“You may kiss the bride,” the priest adds, almost as an afterthought.

I turn to her, studying her face. There’s no pleading in her eyes, no fear. But there’s no invitation either.

This isn’t about affection. This isn’t about tenderness.

I raise a hand to her cheek. Her skin is warm. Her breathing shallow but controlled. She doesn’t pull away. Not even as I lower my face toward hers.

I kiss her—softly, briefly, no more than necessary.

Her lips don’t yield. They don’t respond, but she allows it.

When I pull back, her eyes are locked on mine.

The priest steps back, announcing it once more: “Mr. and Mrs. Sharov.”

The crowd stirs now—low murmurs, the scrape of chairs, the slow exhale of men who have witnessed something they’ll never fully understand.

I offer her my arm, she takes it.

The doors close behind us with a heavy thud that echoes down the long corridor. The sound is final—like a vault sealing shut. The weight of it presses down on the silence between us, thick as smoke, unbroken even by the soft rustle of her gown trailing over the marble.

Alina walks beside me without stumbling, without hesitation, her arm tucked into mine like it belongs there.

It’s not a gesture of closeness. It’s control.

She lets me guide her, lets the facade hold—but her body is rigid, her jaw locked tight, and her fingers curled subtly inward, as if bracing for the next blow.

We turn the corner past the final row of guards, and I feel her shift slightly, the tension in her spine sharp enough to cut glass. I glance down at her.

Her expression doesn’t waver.

She’s holding everything in. Her breath. Her rage. Her grief. She’s locked it all down beneath that veil of composure, and part of me wonders what it would take to break it—what would finally make her feel instead of just survive.

“Now what?” she asks, voice flat.

I stop just before the doors to the private suite and look at her fully.

“Now,” I say quietly, “we begin.”