LIAM
Viktor and Caterina’s second wedding is as grand an affair as the first. And, as expected, Saoirse is here as my date. She’s waiting for me in the car when I come down, dressed elegantly in an emerald green silk gown that’s gathered at the breasts to show off her cleavage to its best advantage, thin straps holding it up over her pale, slender shoulders. Her reddish-blonde hair is done up in some elaborate updo and secured with gold and emerald pins, and her makeup is flawless. She smiles sweetly at me when I slide into the car, adjusting my tailored jacket, and I know the message that her father is sending through her is clear.
She’s an Irish vision, a shamrock princess dressed in green. Graham O’Sullivan couldn’t have been less subtle about it if he’d hit me over the head with the Catholic catechism and poured a pint of ale over me to follow it while singing Galway Girl. And she’s beautiful tonight, I can’t pretend otherwise. The dress makes her already green eyes even brighter, a match for mine, and she’s glowing, radiant as a candle on a windowsill.
Niall’s words come back to haunt me.Any man would be lucky to wed her.Any manwouldbe grateful to be handed a lass like Saoirse O’Sullivan—any man except me, apparently. Because despite how lovely she looks, how prettily she smiles, or how soft her hand is in mine when I raise it to my lips, I can’t feel anything for her. No affection and no arousal. It’s been months now since I’ve taken a woman to bed. I should be at half-mast just from the sight of her breasts wrapped mouth-wateringly in that silk dress, but I don’t feel so much as a twitch downstairs. My cock is well and truly asleep, and not even her soft intake of breath when my lips brush over the back of her hand is enough to wake him from his slumber.
“It’s sweet, don’t you think?” Saoirse asks, her voice light and musical, and I look at her quizzically.
“What is?”
She blinks at me as if I’m a bit slow. “The wedding, of course. Their second wedding, now that they’re in love.” She puts some emphasis on the last word, and I wonder what she means by it. Is it her acknowledging that the union her father is trying to arrange for us isn’t a love match, and that she doesn’t expect it to be one? Or is it her hinting that she wants more from me, some sign of affection and romance?
I hope it’s not the latter because even if I accept the betrothal contract the way Luca and Viktor have urged me to, I can’t love Saoirse. Maybe in time, if I wed her, I’d come to feel the warm affection that I imagine any decent man must feel for the woman who warms his bed, keeps his house, and gives him children. But passionate love, the kind that burns hot and bright and pushes men and women to make choices that they might not otherwise make, the kind that drives a person mad with need, the kind that makes a man burn down the world to get to the woman he loves—I can’t give her that. I can’t picture it with her, not ever.
She’s been raised to be a good daughter of the Kings, an Irish princess, the closest thing to royalty we have left. I don’t think she’d expect it. And yet—I can see out of the corner of my eye the way her breathing quickens as she pulls her hand respectably away from mine, folding them together in her lap as she looks out of the window at the scenery passing by.
I know she wants me. I’m not so modest as to not be aware that I’m a handsome man. I’m far from the playboy Luca once was, but I’ve had my fair share of women pass through my bed, and not a single one of them has been coerced there or left unsatisfied. I’ve never had any trouble finding a woman eager to bed me.
I’m sure Saoirse would be no different. And if I married her, I’d do my best to please her. But I know that my heart wouldn’t be in it, perhaps even less so than the other women I’ve had sex with.
Because now, there’s someone else on my mind—a specific woman, one that I can’t shake. And I know, deep down, that would hurt Saoirse far more than simple detachment on my part. A husband that doesn’t love her—every high-born crime lord’s daughter knows that’s likely her fate. A husband in love with—even obsessed with—a woman he knew for only a few days? That would cut more deeply, I know.
But it’s where my thoughts are lingering as I open the door for Saoirse, taking her hand as we walk up the steps of the Russian Orthodox church where Viktor and Caterina first exchanged their vows and now will do so again. Vows that Caterina was coerced into taking the first time and does so willingly now. It’s all very sweet and romantic, just as Saoirse said, and I’m happy for them.
I’m glad that they’ve found their peace with each other. But I’ve never been further from feeling peaceful.
I sit next to Saoirse as the ceremony starts, Luca and Sofia on the other side of me. Viktor and Caterina have skipped playing outeverypart of the wedding over again, opting out of a wedding party, for which I’m grateful if only because it means I have someone to carry on a conversation with besides Saoirse.
“Oh, she looks lovely,” Saoirse breathes rapturously, and I turn my head in time for us all to stand for the bride’s entrance.
I’m not one to know much about wedding dresses, but Caterina does, in fact, look beautiful, if only because she’s practically glowing in the lacy gown that she chose. It has soft, flowing sleeves off her shoulders, letting her skin glow in the candlelight, but with enough coverage that her scars are pointedly hidden. From what Viktor has said, I know that she’s self-conscious of them still, but no one in the candlelit church would have noticed if she’d worn a strapless gown with plunging cleavage. She looks too beautiful, her dark hair loose over her shoulders, her eyes only for Viktor.
It’s incredible to me to see the change in them. I remember seeing her stiff and frightened at their first wedding, Viktor tense and cold, how clearly it had been a marriage of convenience, a means to stop the bloodshed between the Italians and the Russians. Now Viktor is looking at her with a soft, warm gaze, the desire and love for his wife plain in his face. And it stirs something in me, something that I know I can’t have with Saoirse.
Something that makes me all the more eager to leave tonight and go after Ana.
It’s a stupid decision. I know that, down to my bones. The wise choice—the one my father and brother and Niall and every man whose advice I’ve ever listened to or would want to take into consideration—would be to stay here. Let Viktor and Levin use their connections to send someone else to find her. Or, alternatively, to trust that a man who paid a hundred million dollars of good money for a woman would treat her with some kindness and gentleness, more, perhaps, than Ana has experienced recently at the hands of others. To marry Saoirse, cement my place at the head of the Kings, and carry on with the life that I’d begun to settle into before the day that I met Anastasia Ivanov.
And yet, I know just as deeply that Ican’t.It’s irrational and reckless, the kind of romantic, passionate choice that makes fools of men like me, but I can’t let her go. I can’t forget about her, and I can’t abandon her.
For her, I’m willing to lay everything on the line, no matter what it means.
I want something that I’ve never wanted before, up until now.
I want to feel the kind of love, the kind of passion, the kind ofdevotionthat makes a man like Viktor look at his wife the way he’s looking at Caterina now, as they exchange new vows.
I vow to hold you close to me always, to love you for who you are, to always see the best in you. To give you my body, my heart, and my soul—
These aren’t the traditional vows. I hear Saoirse sigh next to me, hear her sniff a little as she dabs a handkerchief to her eyes carefully. They’re romantic, passionate, written by Viktor and Caterina themselves.
They’re the kind of vows a couple truly in love makes.
I’ve never felt that. I’d never expected to. But now?
Now I want to know what that could be like. To experience a kind of devotion that would send a man across the world searching for the woman he loves. That would make a man wreak the sort of violence that I watched Viktor exert when he cut Alexei apart.
I’d helped too, a little. But Viktor had done the bulk of it. Not for his business, not for the loss of profit that Alexei had cost him. He’d taken Alexei apart piece by piece, exacting a slow and horrible death, because Alexei had dared to touch his children and his wife. Because he’d wanted to avenge what he loved.