I awoke to an overcast sky and wishy-washy light filtering through the windows of Leo’s bedroom, but now… Now it feels as if the universe is smiling down on us with big, wide-mouthed sunshine, coating everything in a fine golden film of fairy dust.
“Fairy dust?” Mel peers at my reflection in the mirror from over my shoulder, her mouth twisted into a lopsided grin. “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?”
“Did I say that out loud?”
“Yes, along with ‘Has anyone fed the dogs?’ and ‘I can see my nipples through this dress.’ For what it’s worth, I can’t see your nipples, so I don’t know what you’re looking at.”
I stare at my breasts in the mirror.
The vintage dress is floaty and ethereal with an ivory lace train over a cream-colored silk skirt studded with tiny gray-white pearls. I knew what I wanted—I had an image of it in my head from a fairy tale that I remember reading when I was a little girl—but it was Mel who helped me find it by trawling through every vintage boutique in Chicago until our legs ached and I had blisters on the soles of my feet.
It’s perfect.
Mel, as my matron of honor, is wearing another vintage dress with a scooped neckline and layers of frothy antique-ivory lace spilling from the waistband. She looks perfect too. Like a princess.
Mel has piled my hair on top of my head and fastened it with strings of pearls to match those on the dress, with long twisty curls framing my face. I hardly recognize myself in the mirror.
“You look beautiful, Gi.” Mel lowers her face so that our cheeks are touching, and her reflection smiles back at me. “Positively glowing.”
She’s right. My cheeks are rosy, my skin has a sheen that reflects the sunshine through the windows giving me an almost angelic appearance, and my hair is glossier than I’ve ever seen it. I mean, it’s been polished and curled to within an inch if its life by Mel, but I look like I belong on the cover of a magazine.
I can’t believe I’m marrying Leo today.
Every time I think about the Japanese pagoda covered in rose petals, my stomach clenches, and every part of my body squeals silently with joy.
“How did you convince Xander to attend the wedding?”
“I told him that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get to touch me for the next twelve months.”
“And he believed you?” I grin at her in the mirror.
“He’s a man. He couldn’t risk not taking me seriously.” She arches her eyebrows and slants her eyes mischievously. “Not when I started moving my stuff into one of the guest rooms.”
“Mel! You sly fox!”
“I promise I’ll get him to smile later too.”
I know it’s a lot to expect—a week ago, Xander and Leo were prepared to kill each other. But they’ve reached an amicable agreement to steer clear of each other’s territories and have, temporarily at least, accepted that there’s room in the city for both families.
Leo’s response to my announcement that I couldn’t get married without Mel and her family here, including Xander, was a thin-lipped smile and a flicker of resignation behind his eyes. “If it makes you happy, printzessa, then I will welcome him personally with a glass of champagne and a handshake.”
I didn’t see Xander arrive. Mel assured me that the handshake, while not exactly warm or accompanied by a toothy smile, was enough to satisfy the other guests that they could eat supper without fear of the two men challenging each other to a duel. It’s enough, for now. Mel and I have spent too long apart, and I want to share every step of this new chapter of my life with her.
“How’s Dad?”
Mel rolls her eyes. “You know Dad. He doesn’t know how to express his emotions, but I think he’s coming around to the idea of you marrying into a bratva family. He told me that Mom’s family was against her marrying him to begin with.”
Dad has never mentioned this to any of his children before.
“They sold their house and were prepared to move to the other side of the country until they realized that Dad would’ve followed them around the world to find her.” Mel swallows hard and blinks back tears. “I hope they didn’t regret giving them their blessing.”
I half-turn in my seat and cup Mel’s hand in mine. “They wouldn’t have regretted seeing their daughter in love. Mom was happy. She wanted us to be happy too.”
Mel scrunches up her face and sniffs loudly. “No tears today, Gi. Tears on your wedding day are a bad omen.”
A wave of nausea washes over me like a tidal wave, and when it passes, I have a desperate craving for pancakes and maple syrup. “Mel, will you go to the kitchen and ask Olga to make me pancakes? I’m starving.”
“Did you skip breakfast?”
“No. It’s nerves. I always eat when I’m anxious.”
She flashes a suspicious look my way from beneath lowered brows but goes to the kitchen anyway.
While she’s gone, I stand in front of the full-length mirror in Leo’s dressing room and admire my dress.
I wonder who wore it before. Did another bride look at her reflection wearing this dress, turning sideways to get a full view of the lacy train, butterflies tracing crazy patterns inside her stomach? Did that bride feel the same way about her future husband as I feel about Leo?
It’s hard to imagine anyone else experiencing the kind of crushing, knee-trembling emotions I feel whenever I’m with Leo, like these feelings belong to us only. Everyone’s different, right? But I hope she was happy, whoever she was. I hope that her husband smothered her with love and made her smile and laugh and dance.
I hope that he was the husband she wanted him to be.
Mel returns shortly after she left with a covered plate piled high with steaming pancakes. “Olga must be a mind-reader—she was already preparing food for you when I got to the kitchen.”
I laugh. I might not have been Olga’s favorite person when I first arrived, but I think she’s happy now that I’ve taken the dogs off her hands. She still eyes Marvel up from a distance like she’s worried he could take her whole hand off with one bite, but when she thinks no one is looking, she prepares the best cuts of meat and feeds them under the breakfast island.
“She’s a feeder. I ate two breakfasts yesterday, so she was preempting me being hungry again today.”
Mel doesn’t say anything. She watches me tuck into the pancakes, careful to catch any crumbs with my hand so that I don’t stain my dress with maple syrup. I’ve eaten two before I think to offer her a pancake.
She shakes her head. “I think your need is greater than mine.”
“Were you like this on your wedding day?” I lick syrup from my lips, glad that I haven’t yet applied my lip gloss.
“No, but I was like this when I was pregnant with Lucian.” She tosses the comment into the dressing room like a hand grenade and stands back while she waits for it to take effect.
The food gets stuck in my gullet, and I start coughing and spluttering, tiny particles of food flying from my mouth and splattering the mirror. My eyes water, and Mel hands me a tissue.
Leaning close to the mirror so that I don’t have to look at her, I dab my face carefully, trying to salvage as much of my makeup as I can. I’m stalling for time while I mentally calculate dates, and it dawns on me that I’m a week overdue. I lower my eyes to my breasts which choose this exact moment to start tingling, my nipples swollen and prominent underneath the bodice of my wedding gown.
The bodice that is considerably tighter than it was a week ago when I bought the dress.
“It’s the extra helpings of toast,” I murmur to myself.
“That’s what you’re going with?” Mel’s eyebrows slide upwards. “The toast?”
I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak. Not yet.
I’m still trying to figure out what this will mean to us, to me and Leo, with the refuge that we’re planning on opening within the next twelve months. We’ve already found a building. A huge, three-story, red-brick property in a leafy Chicago suburb with a massive backyard and planning permission to extend outwards and upward into the roof. The instant I stepped inside the building, I knew it was the right one; it had such a positive vibe, that I walked around with Leo telling him how I planned to utilize each room.
And how will Leo react to me being pregnant?
I want to believe that he’ll be ecstatic about having a baby, but I’ve seen too often how a child can alter a relationship. Heard too many horror stories from the women at the refuge. But this is Leo, I remind myself. He isn’t like other men. He would protect me and our child with his life, I know he would.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Mel’s gentle voice penetrates my reverie.
I turn around slowly to face her. I can’t even ask Mel how Xander reacted to the news that he was going to be a father, because Lucian was six before he discovered that he had a son.
I throw my arms around her and hug her tightly, wincing and releasing my grip a little when my breasts complain about being crushed. I ignored the soreness when Leo was sucking on my nipples, but it’s harder to ignore now that I’m being forced to confront the truth. I wish that I could turn back time and tell Xander that my sister was pregnant with his baby. So much time wasted because he’d just taken over the family business and everyone said it would be for the best that it makes my heart ache to think of Mel going through this alone.
Best for whom?
“Mel, I’m so sorry.” I shake my head, fresh tears collecting on my lashes.
She smiles and dabs my face with a fresh tissue. “Raging hormones; you’d better get used to this. But you have nothing to be sorry for. I’m happy for you, Gi. Both of you.”
“But you had to do this alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had you, remember?”
“Did I… Did I help?” I peer at her face through my tears, praying that I gave her some small comfort when she was taken to Montenegro to raise Lucian without his father.
“More than you could ever believe, Gi. I couldn’t have done it without you. Even if you did refuse to change a soiled diaper.”
I chuckle and promptly start choking on the combination of laughter and slowly erupting sobs. “I still don’t think I can change a dirty diaper.”
“You’d better learn quick then, Gi, because I’m not doing them. It’s payback time.”
When our tears and giggles eventually dry up, Mel applies another coat of mascara to my eyelashes and watches while I smooth nude gloss over my lips.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Ready.”
Tamara and Ivana are waiting outside the door to escort me and Mel through the gardens and down to the pagoda. They’ve ditched their customary goth look for simple white shift dresses with rows of colored gemstones embellishing the square necklines. Ivana still has the green flicks elongating her dark eyes, but they both appear softer, like watercolor paintings compared to bold abstracts.
Tamara smiles when she sees us, and for the first time, it feels genuine. I’m not sure that we’ll ever be best friends, but I hope that we can at least learn to live together. I know how important they are to Leo, and I don’t want to be the cause of any animosity.
“You look beautiful, printzessa.” Tamara leans in and kisses my cheeks.
“Does that mean that you’ll call me by my real name going forward?”
“Nah.” Her curls bounce around her face when she shakes her head. “You’ll always be the printzessa.”
She and Ivana exchange glances, and Ivana averts her eyes. The only time we ever made eye contact was when she tried to drown me in the cold room, and that feels like a lifetime ago. I vowed then to get her back in my own way, but I think I already have. She respects me for standing up to her, and I think this is the reason why I have her approval to marry the pakhan.
Strangely, Tamara is still the one I’m wary of.
“I just want to apologize,” Tamara says out of the blue, “for lying to the pakhan about you.”
I sense Mel’s bewildered frown. I haven’t told anyone what happened in the woods that day, not even Mel, and I don’t intend to. I don’t know what went down between Leo and Sergei after he betrayed him to Xander, but I saw how badly it affected Leo, and I never want to put him through it again. If he believes Tamara, then I’m happy for it to remain that way.
“And I want to thank you,” she continues, “for not telling him the truth.”
I smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
It takes her a couple of beats to catch on to what I’m saying, but the frown lines are still there between her eyebrows. Ivana gives her an encouraging nod. “I apologize too for lying to you about the pakhan and Elena.”
This one still stings. Tamara lied to me about Leo cheating on his fiancee, knowing that the situation was the complete reverse. When Leo and I were reunited, he told me that Elena cheated on him, and that he vowed, afterwards, never to allow another woman into his heart.
Until he met me.
“Can you forgive me?” Tamara asks.
Deep breath. “For Leo’s sake, I will try.”
She nods, and her gentle smile lights up her face. “Shall we?” She offers me her arm, and I take it, while Mel intertwines her arm with Ivana’s. “The pakhan is waiting for you.”
“It’s acceptable for the bride to be late.” Mel links her other arm with mine, and I wonder if the irony of her wedding being six years too late is playing on her mind today.
But I don’t have a chance to dwell on it.
The garden is filled with the fragrance of loose rose petals, and I can hear the hum of conversation reaching us from the guests already gathered around the Japanese pagoda.
My legs tremble, and my stomach churns as we make our way towards Leo.
When I see him, my breath hitches in my chest. He is even more handsome than usual in a dark-silver suit and an ivory lace cravat that coordinates perfectly with my dress; Mel must’ve helped him choose it.
His eyes lock onto mine, and my heart swells with love for this beautiful, strong, sexy man. I almost can’t believe that he is mine, but his smile is all that I need. His gaze doesn’t waver. He watches Tamara hand me over to my father before she and Ivana join him inside the pagoda as his best women.
And then I’m standing in front of him. He kisses my father’s hand, thanking him for blessing our marriage. I barely register my father kissing my cheek and placing my hand in Leo’s, or saying our vows, or the celebrant announcing that we are husband and wife.
I think that all I’ll ever remember of that day is Leo pressing my body against him and kissing me on the lips in front of our families and friends.
“I love you, my printzessa,” he whispers into my ear, his breath tickling my neck and sending shivers down my spine.
“I love you, Leo. I always have, and I always will.”
