Page 3 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

Supruga

LYDIA

I was getting married to Yom Rustanov. In less than six weeks.

I could buy a two-bedroom house in Gemidgee for the cost of the engagement ring on my finger, and it still jolted me every time it caught my eye.

Yom had proposed right after scoring the Frozen Four championship goal, and everything since had been a blur.

All-nighters to finish my final papers and presentations.

The walk across the graduation stage. Renewing the lease on the house I’d been renting so my friend Merry could stay there a little longer, even though Yom had already moved me into his place.

And now, here I was, somehow standing in the presidential suite of the Tormaline DC Hotel, at an engagement party thrown for us by the vice president of the United States and her husband, Yom’s cousin Alexei Rustanov—the billionaire (maybe even secretly a trillionaire) CEO.

The summer soiree felt like something out of a modern Gatsby retelling… only with no murder and men with vague Bratva ties instead of the mafia.

A string octet played instrumental versions of modern songs on a raised dais while waiters in tails drifted through a sea of Rustanovs, their high-powered friends, and the handful of guests from my side of the upcoming wedding aisle.

Below the panoramic windows, the capital sprawled like a kingdom, and overhead chandeliers cast a golden glow on guests the media always described with predatory words like sharks, ruthless, shadowy, and old-school oligarchy.

Trish—my best friend, fresh out of university with a psychology degree—was already plotting her gap-year paper. “There’s no way any grad program would turn me down if I delivered a full case study on the American branch of the Rustanovs.”

She’d recently moved in with her girlfriend, Rina, the personal guard Yom had assigned to me. And as she liked to whisper, whenever Rina was out of earshot, “He didn’t make my ass sign an NDA!”

My adoptive father, Joseph “Your Pal Joey” Carrington, was thriving, too. Back in Minneapolis, he was a real estate millionaire with his eyes on the governor’s seat. Here, surrounded by shadow trillionaires, he looked like he’d finally found the bigger pond he’d always believed he was meant for.

Trish and I had to drag our unexpectedly pregnant friend Merry out of a depressive funk onto the private plane from Gemidgee to D.C.

, but even she was smiling now. One hand rested on her swollen belly as she chatted with Sam, Nikolai Rustanov’s wife.

She’d brought P.M.—the midnight-black pit bull I’d rescued in February, though he was definitely her pittie now—as the surprise guest of honor.

Honestly, I should have been over there, crouched beside Sam, giving P.M. all the pets and peppering her owner with questions. Her husband might have been a hockey legend, but I was more starstruck by Sam, who’d founded her first domestic-abuse shelter in her twenties.

I had a new idea percolating for how I’d spend my first years as a hockey wife, and I couldn’t imagine anyone better to mentor me through it than her.

But instead of fangirling Sam Rustanov, I was hiding in a quiet corner of the presidential suite, clutching my phone as I left a message for my older brother.

“Hey, Paul, it’s Lydia. Calling from my engagement party in D.C… which you’re not at. Um…”

The string version of “High Hopes” swelled like hold music while I tracked the recording bars on my phone.

“We’re no-contact after Chicago, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected you, even though you marked yes on the RSVP.

But Mom was expecting you. And if you weren’t coming, you could have at least given her a heads up… .”

Sometimes I couldn’t believe how much more consideration I gave our parents than their own biological son.

But this was Paul. My preppy, blond, I-banker brother was the walking definition of entitled. Of course, he wouldn’t show up to celebrate my engagement to the man who had nearly beaten him to a pulp a few months ago.

“I just… Could you at least call Mom? She’s worried about you not showing up. And Dad’s—” I paused, grimaced. “Well, he’s obviously concerned about how it’ll look for his campaign if you’re not at major events.”

That last part was kind of a lie. Ever since Yom signed with the Minnesota Raptors, Dad had treated my fiancé like the son he wished he’d had, plugging him in wherever Paul should’ve been.

Future son-in-law = good for business.

Biological son = liability.

Subtract Paul.

Solve for Yom.

Mom, though, looked miserable. Standing off to the side in her signature pink dress, awkwardly clutching her fifth glass of champagne, even though the party had only started an hour ago.

Her eyes kept flicking toward the door, like she still expected Paul to walk in at any moment.

I just couldn’t take seeing her so sad when I was so happy.

“Anyway,” I sighed into the phone, “I talked to Yom, and… you’re allowed to come to the wedding if you want. Even if you don’t want to, you should call Mom. She’s worried.”

Usually, I ended with Love you, but not this time. Not after February—when Paul took his frustration with Dad out on me. My bruises had healed. The reasons I’d gone no-contact hadn’t.

Still, for Mom’s sake, I forced out, “And listen, if you need help… if you owe the wrong people money or something, let me know. I don’t want Mom to find you?—”

“Hello, zayka .”

Yom’s low, accented voice rumbled in my ear as his arms slid around my waist from behind. “I am looking all over party for you.”

I fumbled to hit send on the voicemail before tucking my phone into my wristlet clutch.

“There you are.” I leaned back into his embrace, and a teasing smile lifted my lips. “I was afraid you’d decided to marry my father instead. He’s been hogging you all night.”

“ Da , all politics.” Yom’s tone flattened. “He is sticking to me like tick until I am introducing him to Aunt Eva.”

Yom’s bicep flexed around my arm as he steered me toward the far end of the presidential suite, where our hosts—Alexei Rustanov, the infamous oligarch, and Vice President Eva Rustanov St. James—were talking to my father beneath a dripping chandelier.

“They are opposing parties,” Yom continued, his accent thick and quiet in my ear. “But there is rumor she is maybe looking for opposite party candidate for her president run. I am thinking your father is hearing this rumor.”

I chuffed at the idea, but then again… “Dad has always been a fan of shooting his shot.”

Vice President Eva stood in glaring contrast to my stout Midwestern father. She was wearing her trademark pastel-purple cowboy hat with a glittering evening gown to match.

An article I’d listened to on the plane explained that purple was supposed to signal she was a middle-of-the-road candidate.

But watching her address my father gave a different impression: a beneficent queen holding audience with her merchant subject, flanked by her glowering husband, Alexei Rustanov, and their daughter, uh…

“Is that Layla or Alma next to the vice president?” I whispered. No matter how many times she’d invited me to call her “Eva” or “Auntie,” I couldn’t bring myself to use anything but her title.

“That is Layla. Obvious, because she is not true Rustanov in face.”

I frowned. “Come again?”

If Rustanovs had a brand, it was “Greek gods, but make it hotter.” The men towered, faces carved from stone, bodies sculpted by a higher power with a bias toward muscle.

The daughters all seemed like ethereal clones of Ruthie, the cousin I’d met (and initially mistaken for Yom’s girlfriend) in Minnesota—supermodels cosplaying as regular people.

The closest I’d come to finding someone who looked remotely like me—dark skinned with dreadlocks—was Tasha Nakamura, and she was twenty years older. Also, not technically a Rustanov.

Layla Rustanov, on the other hand, had just made headlines for landing at #2 on a PermaLads.com poll: Girls We’d Wish For If the Genie Said We Could Only Have One.

Way to objectify, as Trish would say. Still, in a sea of jaw-droppingly gorgeous Rustanovs, Layla had officially been voted the hottest one. How could Yom think she didn’t look like a Rustanov?

“The smiling,” Yom clarified with a sneer.

“Oh.” I almost laughed. “I see it now. Alma’s the one with the permanent scowl, like her father.”

Across the room, Alma sat stiffly at a table with her cousins—Pavel and Cheslav, Yom’s hockey-playing brother—and hadn’t budged all night.

Meanwhile, Layla hovered dutifully at her mother’s side, already playing America’s princess, even before her mom officially announced her run for the presidency.

Yom grunted. “I am boring from this. We go back to room and fuck until I am forgetting I find you here leaving ‘I will help you’ voice text for brother you say no contact.”

I stilled. “It’s not what you think. I was just worried?—”

“Yes, my zayka is always worrying. About everybody except self. Even if man you call behind my back is toxic ublyudok who hurt you. Still you worry for him more than being here with your future husband.”

“Easy for you to say.” The words slipped out, tight and resentful, before I could stop them. “Like, eighty percent of these guests are family who love and care about you. Paul and my parents are the only family I have.”

A tense silence followed my cranky reply.

Then came the guilt, rising fast. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t have it easy growing up in Russia, and now the American side of your family is bending over backward to celebrate our engagement. You deserve that, and I’m happy for you.”

“Look at your wolf, zayka ….”

Yom turned me around in his arms and rough fingers tipped my chin up so I had no choice but to obey the command. His grey gaze burned through me, tender and merciless all at once.

“What is this my family, your family chush you are saying? To me, this is great insult.” Yom’s voice rasped with indignation.

“There is no my, no your anymore. My heart is your heart. My money is your money. My family is your family. They throw this party for us. Us , forever. There is nothing I am wanting more than for you and me to be us , without misunderstanding.”

I could only stare at him, too choked up to speak.

“Why do you look at me like this?” A deep, particularly Rustanov frown creased his face. “Are these words I am saying not clear to you?”

“No, they are,” I rushed to assure him. “I just wonder how I got so lucky.”

He opened his mouth—probably to chastise me again for doubting I deserved him.

But I pressed a hand over his lips before he could.

“I love you. I love you so much. Since March, it’s felt like waking up every day inside a dream.

And all I want is us . This engagement party is nice, but I can’t wait to marry you in August.”

That was the right answer. His hand slid from my chin to my waist, tugging me against his chest… and against the hard evidence of his desire pressing through his tuxedo pants.

“I want nothing more than to call you supruga .”

“ Supruga ?” I echoed, startled. After nearly six months of spending every waking minute together, I thought I knew all his endearments and curses. But this was new.

His gaze swept over my face, reverent and fierce all at once. “ Supruga means wife. And I am hardly waiting to get married to you, too. In fact—here is preview of kiss I give you when we both say ‘I do’ in August.”

He tipped my head back again, this time for a kiss that stole the air from my lungs and left me without a shred of doubt. I wanted this man. This life. Forever.

We broke up less than six weeks later.

And six years after that…

What did we do last night?

So very much, supruga. Want to do it again?

Six years later, I suddenly recalled the meaning of that Russian word… while watching a SportsGoss.com clip of myself, grinning like a fool as I married Yom Rustanov in a Vegas chapel, with a Prince impersonator officiating.

In the wee hours of the morning.

On the exact date, I left him six years ago.