Page 37 of Scarlet Vows

Chapter Eight

ILYA

I’mglad Monday morning doesn’t begin at the Yegorov mansion for me.

Facing Alina isn’t something I’m in the mood for. She made it clear last night that the marriage, if indeed it goes through, is strictly business. I plan to completely respect that. It should make it easier, having something I knew confirmed.

But the text made me think of what Isaak said. Can she see how I feel? Can others? Is it obvious to others?

I don’t want it to be.

A crush, feelings, whatever the fuck you want to call it is something I’m never going to act on, so it may as well not be there.

I just don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.

But her text drove home a point I need to remember. I need to be very aware of how I act around her.

Especially if we’re doing this.

And I have a sinking feeling, which sometimes morphs too close to elation, that we are.

Alina’s always been a girl of her word. She’s never been wishy-washy.

Even in this, she’s stuck to her initial leap into speaking without thinking. She’s stuck to her saying she’s going to do this.

Her idea, not mine.

Her push, not mine.

Her absolute insistence, not mine.

I take a deep breath. We’re going to be living together in a week, on paper as man and wife, in life as friends helping friends. Roommates. Whatever you want to call it.

I’m aware anything I may feel needs to be buried so fucking deep that not even a skilled archaelogist will be able to dig it up.

With a sigh, I look at her text from this morning.

Alina

We need to meet to get the license before the wedding. Tomorrow?

Nope, she’s not backing down, and with her bending over and tying herself into pretzels for me, I can’t use Demyan or even her concerns as an excuse. She’ll treat them like rejection. Or worse. She’ll think her text last night was right.

We’re doing this.

“And it’s going to be fine, Ilya,” I mutter. “All of it.”

I look across the road at the gate that forms part of the fence surrounding the lush grounds of my mansion.

Even if I don’t come up with a bride, this is mine.

Last night after her texts, I finally opened the folio and read through it all.

If I don’t marry, this is mine, all the taxes and rates and upkeep to come out of my pocket, even if I choose not to live there. Another pakhan would, because although I’d own it, the stipulation in my charming grandfather’s will is I can’t sell it in my lifetime.

Of course, if I marry a bratva-connected bride and makeit through twelve months of marriage, then I can do what the fuck I want.

The mansion is the albatross if I choose to walk.