Everyone was so silent, listening to me speak about something that I'd kept a secret for so long.
“I really didn’t have anyone to talk to.” I looked at Amara and saw the hurt on her face. “You had a life, sorellina. I didn’t want to burden you when you were making your own path and were finally happy for the first time in your life.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, and Nikolai wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling his wife in close to comfort her. She gave me a watery smile in return.
“And then as time went on, he wrote to me again, after my eighteenth birthday. I realized something.” I licked my lips, looked down at the ground, trying to gather my courage because I’d never uttered these words out loud to anybody.
When I looked up, it was to stare at my Russian.
“I realized that I had fallen in love with him, a man I really didn’t know, who I had only seen a few times in my life.” A part of me felt foolish for saying that, admitting those words, feelings a young, naive girl had felt. But now they were out in the open, with everybody able to dissect them, to tear them apart. “But I still knew we could never be, not with…” I glanced at the court clerk, knowing I had to watch my words. “Knowing our families didn’t exactly get along.”
I stared at Dmitry just as he stepped toward me. I could see his hands clasped into fists at his sides, and I knew without him saying anything that he wanted to embrace me.
“Fuck me,” Gio murmured under his breath and went to stand on the other side of the room, where Tatiana leaned against the wall. “I can put two and two together.” Gio glared at Dmitry, letting him know without verbally saying it that he figured it out about Dmitry coming to me, probably about Fredo too.
Tatiana eyed Gio, that same strange expression on her face I’d seen earlier that told me there was definitely something going on there.
And if that was the case, Gio was playing with fire.
My brother was focused ahead, acting as if she wasn’t even there. But I noticed the subtle tightening of his shoulders, how his hands clenched into fists in front of him, his jaw tight.
And a part of me had a feeling it had nothing to do with what I’d just said or what was happening right now, and everything to do with the young woman standing beside him.
And then brawny arms wrapped around me, and the familiar scent of Dmitry filled my lungs. I rested my forehead on his chest and closed my eyes, laughing shakily because yeah, I really said all that.
I’d really been honest. Finally.
He smoothed his hand over the back of my hair and murmured, “You’re the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.” He gave the shell of my ear a kiss, and I could feel the tightening of his muscles pressed up against me. “And I think I fell in love with you, too, detka.”
My heart was pounding so hard in my chest it felt like it filled the entire room. He pulled back, cupped either side of my neck, his thumbs brushing the spots right under my ears as he stared into my eyes.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before. This obsession goes far deeper than anything I could even name, anything I could ever explain. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
He pulled back and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a light blue box. He opened the top, revealing the biggest diamond ring I’d ever seen.
I didn’t know what to say, how to react. So I just stared at it like an idiot, my jaw slack.
“I’m sure this isn’t how you saw your wedding going, and I swear to fucking everything I’ll give you the biggest one after all of this, if that’s what you want. But I need you as my wife. Today. Right now.” He took my hand and slipped the ring onto my finger.
“Pretty sure you put the ring on after she agrees to marry your stubborn ass,” Nikolai murmured and then grunted when Amara elbowed him in the side.
He wrapped me in another hug, then led me to where the court clerk was waiting.
The next few moments seemed to happen in a blur, with the man presiding over the ceremony going through the legal jargon to make this all possible. Everything else faded into the distance as I looked into Dmitry’s blue eyes.
“I do,” I whispered with a smile.
Dmitry was looking at me with so much passion, so much… love, that I felt it wrap around me in this protective cocoon.
I knew this man would tear down the world to protect me.