Chapter 16 - Aleksandr

The ceremony was rushed, and City Hall was crowded, but Katie looked stunning in her new blue dress. It skimmed her knees, and made a quiet whispering sound when she glued herself close to me and tucked her hand into the crook of my elbow. She'd carefully styled her hair in a gleaming cascade of auburn waves down her back. Not even the dull overhead office lighting could detract from her beauty.

She'd barely been able to greet Lev when he blustered up to where we were waiting in the hallway for our turn. My brother wasn't sure I hadn't lost my marbles with this sudden marriage, but I assured him I knew what I was doing. And it would calm our father's constant nagging to present the Fokin Bratva with an heir before his time on earth was up.

Katie's green eyes darted from me to the judge when it was our turn to speak our vows, and I wished I'd thought to get her a bouquet, or ask my sister Mila to be a witness instead of gruff Lev or my distracted assistant. Mila would have remembered flowers, at least.

As it was my turn to speak, I shook off my regrets. Once everything settled down, I would give Katie free rein to plan whatever kind of wedding or reception she wanted to celebrate our union.

Before I knew it, we were officially husband and wife, and when I lowered my head to kiss her, Katie held onto my jacket lapels in an iron grip, her legs trembling. Surrounded by strangers at the courthouse, I didn't think she'd appreciate being swept into my arms and cradled like a baby, so I only put my arm firmly around her to guide her back to our car.

Lev was irritated I wasn't immediately getting back to work, and part of me understood since we needed to continue strategizing what to do about our new foes. But I was a newlywed, and as fast as it happened and as odd as the circumstances might have been, I wanted to savor at least a couple days alone with my new bride.

Not thinking about what was going to happen next in our budding war, or arguing with my brothers. Not cracking skulls or issuing threats. Just being with Katie.

"Shall we fly to Sonoma for a mini honeymoon?" I asked, already envisioning us poking around among the grape vines, tasting the fine wines, and lazily enjoying the sunsets, hand in hand.

What had Katie done to me in the short time I'd known her? I was coming unhinged.

She bit her lip, and her brow furrowed as she gathered all her curls into a ponytail. "I kind of wanted to get back to my deliveries," she said, glancing at me nervously. "If I'm away too long, I might lose a lot of my customers."

I snorted. "So much for loyalty."

"Well, it's not like they can skip lunch forever while waiting, can they?" she said reasonably.

"I've lined up the man who'll be doing your deliveries," I told her. "And Olga can go to the market for you tomorrow morning. How about we have a day just for us. What would you like to do?"

Sonoma Valley disappeared from my imagination, but in truth, I was a bit relieved to stay close. Lev wasn't wrong to be in such a dire mood about the Armenian gang encroaching on our territory. They'd been keeping all of us on our toes with their scattered and random attacks on our businesses.

My main worry regarding them right now was keeping Katie out of their line of sight. They would stop at nothing to attain it if they knew they had that sort of hold over me. If they touched Katie, or even breathed in her direction, it would be war. An all-out bloodbath. Those were messy, caused too many casualties on our side, and always got the attention of law enforcement.

It was better to keep her a secret for now, hence the low-key wedding ceremony. All my siblings had been sworn to keep their mouths shut, and we'd agreed to even keep it from our father for now. It would make a better surprise to spring it on him when Katie was pregnant, anyway.

I nudged her arm, urging her to tell me what she really wanted to do today.

"Do you think we could go get some of my stuff from my house?" she asked, wrinkling up her nose.

I groaned. "Is that the only thing you can think of?"

"I can think of a lot of things we can do later," she told me with a wicked smile. "But I do need some of my special utensils, like my lucky wooden spoons that my aunt gave me, and this cheese grater that I bought on the same day I met Jamie Oliver at the Beverly Center. He said it was a good one. Oh, he's a famous chef," she finished, out of breath, but taking a new one. "And family pictures and some of my clothes. I'm really grateful for the outfits you bought me, but… you know…"

I sighed, but I had already had some people at her old place, and most of the big items should have been boxed up by now. If we went there today, it would be off her mind, and she would be done with it. And I had told her to pick anything she wanted to do.

I instructed the driver to head that way, and she beamed, snuggling up to me.

"You've got to learn to dream bigger," I teased. "Especially when I offer you anything."

She looked up at me and shrugged. "But I feel like I already have everything I want."

It was clear she was deadly serious. There was nothing coy about her, no artifice to make me think she was better than she was. My heart squeezed, and I wrapped my arm around her, pulling her close for a more robust kiss than what we'd shared at the courthouse.

After we pulled into the gravel driveway of her modest house, she scampered to the door, overturning a flower pot and pulling out a spare key. The lack of security made me shudder.

"What's all this?" she said, shocked to see all the stacked boxes inside.

"We can move all this to our place, or put it in storage. But the lease was up at the end of next month so it had to go somewhere."

"Yeah," she said slowly. "But we always renew the lease."

"Not this time," I said.

"What?" She leaned against the closest stack, her eyes skating over the bare walls. "How could you just make a decision like that without talking to me?"

I gathered up my patience in the face of her distress. "Is this place that special to you?" I asked. "You live with me now. Why is it so important to keep paying rent on it?"

Did she want me to buy it outright? It was too crowded of an area to make a good safehouse. I raised my eyebrows and waited for her answer, which she seemed to be struggling to find.

"Well, Jenna comes home for school holidays," she stammered.

I laughed. "We live in a house with sixteen bedrooms. Or she can stay at the beach house, or the apartment in the city."

Katie's shoulders lowered and she nodded. "I guess."

She hurriedly went through everything and pointed out what she wanted to take back with us, and I made a call to get it done. On the way back to my—our house, we took a scenic route where she pointed out the high school she went to after St. Ambrose, the catfish restaurant where she got her first job at sixteen, and the park where she sometimes took the little kids that she babysat.

"You certainly were busy as a teenager," I mused.

"I took whatever job someone offered," she said. "Jenna had a couple part-time jobs too, but every time she took one, her grades suffered, and we were determined for her to get the scholarships she was going to need to go out of state."

I, too, had been working from a very young age. I'd been born into the business, after all. But it had all been mine, and I'd never wanted for anything. Never knew what it would be like to go without something if I didn't work. Hearing Katie talk about her past made me admire her tenacity, and her selflessness even more.

At home, we ate lunch that Olga had waiting for us, then her boxes arrived. Katie directed a small one to go to the kitchen, and the rest I had put in the guest bedroom next to mine.

"Am I not sleeping with you even now?" she blurted out, turning red.

"You're sleeping with me," I growled. "I thought you could use this as a dressing room, or a place to read or get some quiet time. The glamorous surroundings suit you, but you can have it redecorated if you like."

"Me? Glamorous? Okay." With that, she happily started tearing into the first box, which was labeled pictures.

I never thought I'd be the kind of man who'd find so much enjoyment in helping someone unpack, but I was fascinated by Katie. I yearned to know everything about her, and every framed photo she pulled out of the box held a story.

"Look, here's Jenna on her graduation," she said, showing a picture of a young woman who looked similar to Katie, only without the vibrant red hair. Katie's face beamed with pride, while Jenna looked sheepish, holding up her diploma. An older woman stood between them, carrying only a vague resemblance to the two girls she had both arms slung around. "That's my aunt. Jenna and I look more like our mom, and she's my dad's sister."

"If you weren't so young-looking, the pride in your eyes would make me think you were her mother," I said.

"Oh, gosh, was I ever proud. You don't know how hard she worked to get to the top of her class. And she had her acceptance letter to Penn State already, and we were just about there with the first-semester tuition. Yeah, this was a great day."

I studied Katie as she smiled down at the picture. "What about you? Didn't you want to go to college?" I wanted to ask why her dreams got put on hold, but by now I knew that was just her giving nature.

"I would have gone to culinary school if I could have." She shrugged, pulling out another picture. "I still might be able to, one day. There's no time limit."

"That's true," I told her.

As soon as things calmed down, I'd arrange for private lessons with whatever top chef she desired. Right now, I needed to keep her to myself, but I was determined to make all the dreams she'd set aside come to life.

Katie chattered away as she pulled out picture after picture, finally dragging out a tattered album that looked like it was older than she was.

"This was my aunt's," she said with the first hint of a frown brought on by her memories. She opened it to show wedding pictures. "This is my mom and dad's wedding. It was shortly after they got married that he struck it rich." Her face twisted into a scowl. "I have no idea if it was legitimate or just one of his many scams. Anyway, then I was born, and Jenna two years later."

She hurriedly flipped the pages to show various baby pictures, but her mood was too darkened to ask her to slow down.

"What about your mother?" I asked, curious if she held as much bitterness toward that woman as she did her father.

"Mom loved us, that much I know for sure," she said with a wistful sigh. "But she also loved our lux life. Everything, designer, everything the best. It was divided in the trials if she knew anything about what he was up to. I like to think she didn't, but I'm not really sure."

"But you and Jenna never had any inkling?"

Her face shot up, fierce with anger. "None. Totally blindsided. It crushed both of us, and was humiliating on top of that. I thought he loved us—"

"I'm sure he must have," I interjected.

She shook her head, sending her ponytail whipping across her cheek. "No. He didn't. He chose money over us." She grabbed her sister's graduation picture. "We were struggling when this picture was taken. Barely scraping by. But we were happy. We could have been happy without all the money, but my dad didn't think so. Neither did my mom, I guess. They chose big houses, fancy cars, and a private plane over honest happiness." She paused to wipe away a tear. "And then they died in their stupid jet on the way to Barbados."

I pulled her close, knocking some pictures she was hiding in the folds of her dress onto the floor. She patted her cheeks and tried to grab for them, but I had already seen and picked them up.

They were of her and Nataliye. One of them in their St. Ambrose uniforms, on the grounds of the academy. Another was much more recent, maybe even taken that year, with their heads close together as they grinned at the camera.

Katie's already grim face turned darker as she tried to take the pictures from me.

"You don't have to hide these," I said. "It doesn't bother me."

"It doesn't?" she asked incredulously.

"It will be fine. Nataliye will come around to accept us being together."

"And what if she doesn't?" Her eyes welled with fresh tears. "What if our relationship drives her away from both of us?"

I wanted to assure her that wouldn't happen, but I remained silent too long to make it sound as if I believed it. As I struggled to make a promise I wasn't sure I could keep, my phone buzzed insistently in my pocket. I took it out to silence it, but it was Lev.

He wouldn't call unless it was important, so with a scowl, I apologized and left the room to take it. Of course, our rivals didn't know it was my wedding day, or that I was in the middle of something important. There had been another attack. I told Lev I'd meet him and the others at the scene to help take care of it.

"I'm sorry," I said, leaning into the room. "But this is urgent."

"What's going on?" she asked, concerned. "Is everyone okay?"

"It's business," I told her. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

She wilted but didn't ask any more questions and reached for another box to unpack.

I stormed out of the house, pissed that I couldn't promise her the one thing she really wanted. To know for sure that she wouldn't hurt her best friend or destroy my family. Our family now.

I couldn't even tell her what I did for a living.