I just start walking, trying to push back tears.
I will not cry in front of them. In front of any of them.
Everyone stands as I walk past. I’m amazed at the level of dedication to this farce. It’s almost enough to make a girl feel like she’s really getting married.
You are getting married, Esme.
Okay, fine, it’s real, but it still isn’t a true marriage.
The walk down the aisle is lonelier and more isolating than I could have imagined, but when I make it to the end, my eyes nonetheless search for the one face that’s familiar to me.
I hate him, but for some reason I need to see him.
The man who stole me and murdered my father is dressed in a smart black suit. He’s nearly clean shaven—only light stubble lines his square jaw.
His dark eyes are hooded, but they drink me in the same way they have since the moment we met.
He looks like a modern-day Adonis. Even if I hate to give him that much credit.
I realize that I’ve stopped moving only when someone pushes me towards the raised dais. Artem leans forward and takes my hand. He pulls me up next to him and then drops my hand almost immediately.
We turn to face the minister, who gives me a smile that’s almost kind.
Then he starts talking and I block him out.
I can only hear my own thoughts—panicked, scared, and uncertain. But for some reason, a part of me has resigned myself to my fate just as Alice advised me to do.
I stand there like a statue as the minister says all the typical things you would hear at a real wedding.
When he asks me if I take Artem as my lawfully wedded husband, I don’t even know if I answer out loud.
Maybe I do.
Maybe I don’t.
This is all such a fucked-up nightmare that I’m not sure what’s real and what’s fake anymore. What’s inside my head and what’s actually happening.
Besides—no one in the cathedral gives a fuck either way.
This is happening whether I like it or not.
At some point, Artem takes my hand and slips a ring onto it. I stare at the gorgeous Princess cut diamond that reflects the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows above.
And then the minister speaks with finality.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” he says, in a low rumble. “You may kiss your bride.”
The veil that’s given me some small degree of protection through the entire ceremony is whisked over my head and then, all at once, he’s kissing me.
I gasp as his lips thunder down on mine with furious possession.
I’m vaguely aware of clapping and whistling from the crowd, but all I can really absorb is this kiss.
I try desperately to pull up some kind of resistance to him, but it melts into dust when his lips coax open my mouth and his tongue slips inside.
My head spins for a moment, but he’s holding me close and I know there’s no chance that I’ll fall.
Artem Kovalyov will never let me go.
He’s the one who started this kiss and he’s the one who ends it. He pulls back, leaving my lips raw and stinging as he looks down at me.
Then he leans in and whispers in my ear. Something in Russian.
“Teper' ty moya navsegda.”
“I don’t know what you just said,” I manage to stammer. It still sends a chill down my back all the same.
One corner of his mouth goes up in a dark tilted smile.
“You will soon enough,” he rasps.
Then he hooks my hand around his arm and we move down the aisle to thunderous applause.
As we walk towards the cathedral’s entrance, I’m able to take in more faces, people I wasn’t capable of noticing before.
Like an older gentleman in a sharp black tux, insulated by a ring of the largest men I’ve ever seen.
It takes me only a second to figure out why he looks familiar.
He must be Artem’s father.
The two don’t exactly look alike, at least not physically. The familiarity is more in their mannerisms. The hooded, dangerous look burning in their dark eyes.
I expect Artem to stop, but he doesn’t. He keeps walking past everybody until we emerge into the bright sunshine.
The limo is waiting for us at the steps of the cathedral. Artem walks me all the way down and opens the door for me.
I get inside, but he doesn’t follow me.
For one moment, I actually think he’s going to shut the door in my face and send me back to the apartment by myself.
Some fucking wedding day.
But then he ducks down and looks at me, framed by the car door.
“I have to speak to my father,” he tells me. “It’ll only be a moment.”
He shuts the door. I sit there in the limo, trying to process what just happened.
I’m married.
Legally speaking, I’m a married woman now. That seems like it ought to be top of mind.
But strangely enough, I’m more preoccupied with what Artem said to me. The words he whispered in my ear.
Acting on impulse, I press the button to bring down the partition separating me from the driver.
The chauffeur glances back at me with surprise. Nervousness, too, like he’s afraid of being caught talking directly to me.
I don’t explain myself. I just repeat the words that Artem said to me back in the cathedral.
“Teper' ty moya navsegda.” I say, enunciating as carefully as I can. “What does it mean?”
He raises his eyebrows and there’s a second of silence.
“Tell me,” I order with a confidence I don’t really feel.
He licks his lips and sighs before saying, “It means, ‘You’re mine forever now.’”
I hold the driver’s pitying gaze for just a moment.
“Thank you,” I say as I put the partition back up.
It takes everything I have not to scream.
27
Artem
“Congratulations, son.”
Stanislav’s face remains impassive even as he shakes my hand. His skin has a sallow complexion to it today but I refrain from asking about his health. He’d never forgive me if anyone overheard it.
Budimir and Cillian converge around me, saying
