by Maura Rose
Mikhailov, the old man himself, was sitting on the edge of the desk. He didn’t look too happy.
He looked over at Pavel as Pavel entered, and Pavel had the distinct feeling that he was being x-rayed.
“So. You are the man who was supposed to marry my daughter.”
“Yes, sir,” Pavel replied, giving a slow nod in Mikhailov’s direction to show his respect.
Mikhailov looked over at Irena, whose mouth was pinched. “I trusted my daughter to select you. I did not meet you myself, thinking that she would choose wisely. I listened to her counsel when she advised me to ally with the Sokolov family and that a lieutenant would do just as well for my daughter as an heir.”
Pavel sensed there was a major ‘but’ coming here. He kept his mouth shut and glanced over at Kate and Ivan.
Kate looked a little sick, but Pavel figured that could just as well be from the morning sickness. Ivan was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. To most people, Ivan probably looked tense. But to Pavel, who had known him for so long, he could see by the slope of Ivan’s shoulders and the lack of tension in his fingers that he was actually a bit relaxed. Like this was a normal meeting with normal stakes instead of something insane.
That gave Pavel hope.
“It seems that this was fortunate,” Mikhailov continued. “My daughter’s intuition about having you as allies was correct.”
Irena looked pleased. It wasn’t a look that Pavel would have expected from her. Smug, sure. But she looked soft and surprised about it, happy in an unexpected kind of way. He remembered the things that Natalia had told him about her father and he figured it wouldn’t surprise him if this was the first time Irena had heard her father praise her.
“If any of you ever go behind my back again,” Mikhailov finished, “there will be consequences. Painful ones. But seeing as this was what saved us… I will let it slide this one time.”
Pavel nodded. He wasn’t sure what Ivan had said to convince Mikhailov to go easy on them as far as going behind his back was concerned, but it must have worked.
“I appreciate your assistance in saving all of us,” Mikhailov said, addressing Pavel directly. “It appears that I have you and my daughter to thank directly for your intervention.”
Pavel inclined his head again. “Of course.”
“The wedding will have to be rescheduled,” Mikhailov added. He looked over at Saito, who nodded.
Irena and her intended husband both looked a little irked at this rescheduling, but neither said anything. Pavel felt that if he was in their shoes, he’d be impatient as well to just get this whole thing over with.
Pavel waited, but nothing more was said—not about Natalia and not about the wedding. “What—what about the planned union between myself and Natalia, sir?”
Ivan shot Pavel a what the hell are you doing look.
Mikhailov raised an eyebrow. He looked quite a lot like Irena in that moment, despite the difference in their hair and eye color. “That is done with. I will still be allying with your family but we will find another way to express our new partnership.”
Pavel bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, so hard that he tasted a burst of iron and realized he’d drawn blood. He wanted to yell that Natalia wanted to be with him, that he wanted to be with her, and so nobody could keep them from each other.
Ivan was giving him a huge warning look now. Irena didn’t look too happy with him either—probably angry that Pavel had slept with her sister, probably thinking Pavel had tricked Natalia somehow. As if anybody could get Natalia to do something that she didn’t want to.
“We appreciate your generosity,” Ivan said, helping Kate to her feet. Kate gave him a stern look and Pavel had a feeling that Ivan was going to get a big lecture on how ‘just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I’m helpless’ once they were home. “Come along, Pavel.”
It was the usual tone that Ivan took with Pavel, the tone that any head of the family would take with a subordinate. It was the tone of ordering, the tone of ‘do as I say right now’. But Pavel, for once, found the tone grating. He didn’t want to follow Ivan. He wanted to stand his ground and tell Mikhailov that he could shove his opinions where the sun didn’t shine.
How was it fair to either him or Natalia that Mikhailov basically ignored her and thought she was inconsequential for her whole life, her and all her sisters, and then when Natalia was happy he decided to take that happiness away?
Not that—well, it was a pretty big assumption of him to say that Natalia was happy to marry him. But she’d said that she was glad they’d gotten paired together. She was looking forward to the wedding.
That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“Pavel,” Ivan repeated.
Years of loyalty won out and Pavel followed Ivan, resisting the urge to punch Mikhailov in his overbearing face. Now what was going to happen? Natalia would marry someone else? Someone she didn’t like?
“You just allowed him to do that?” Pavel hissed once they were outside and walking towards the car. “After all of that teasing you gave me? Saying you knew that I felt for her? You still decided just to let him call it off?”
“The man was steaming mad about how we went behind his backs and how we roped his daughter into it, we’re lucky he still wants to ally with us. I thought he was going to cut us off completely.”
“Natalia isn’t an object. She can marry who she wants to marry.”
Ivan and Kate both froze and looked at Pavel. “Are you saying she wants to marry you?” Kate asked. “As in… with or without her father’s blessing?”
“I…” Pavel’s voice died in his throat as he realized that he actually didn’t know for certain. If he went up to Natalia now and asked her to marry him, what would she say? Especially if it was against her father’s wishes?
“She wanted to marry me,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to trust Natalia,” Ivan replied. “If any of us are allowed to kick up a fuss about this, it’s her. But unless she manages to change her father’s mind, I’m afraid you won’t be seeing her again. The old man will make sure of that.”
Pavel felt sick. He wanted to punch something until it broke underneath his knuckles.
Ivan’s face softened and got a little sad, and he reached out to clap a hand on Pavel’s shoulder. “I understand, truly I do.”
“Your brother would understand better than you would,” Pavel replied.
It was a low blow, and Pavel almost regretted saying it—almost. The look of anger and hurt on Ivan’s face sure made him want to take it back. But he’d meant it, and what he said was true. Ivan hadn’t fallen for anyone he couldn’t have. He and Kate had bickered, sure, but they’d never been star-crossed. Ivan didn’t know what it was like to have someone in authority say no to his relationship.
For a moment, Ivan’s eyes went dark with anger and Pavel thought Ivan was going to punch him. He could see Ivan make the conscious choice to hold himself back, his fists slowly unclenching, his jaw relaxing.
“You may have a point,” Ivan said, his face and voice carefully neutral. “But that doesn’t change my sympathies being with you. And it doesn’t change my lack of power over the situation. I am sorry. But my feelings on the matter are inconsequential. It’s out of my hands.”
Kate reached out and gave Pavel’s hand a soft squeeze. Pavel followed them as they walked to the car, and tried not to look back—or worse, turn back and storm in and demand that Mikhailov listen to him.
Natalia wasn’t an object. He’d said so himself. He couldn’t go in and fight her father over her like she had no say, like she wasn’t capable of sticking up for herself. Natalia had been clear from the start that she was her own person and that she was going to do things her way as much as possible. He had to trust in that now, and he had to trust that she’d meant it when she’d said she was glad that he was the one chosen to marry her.
He had to have faith in her.
&n
bsp; Chapter Twenty
Natalia was steaming. If Anastasia, Lana, and Vasilisa thought that they could distract her or talk her into being calm, they had another think coming.
“This is ludicrous,” she shouted. “I saved Father’s ass back there. The Sokolovs saved his ass. And he has the gall to lock me up like some kind of maiden in a tower—”
“You’re hardly locked up,” Vasilisa pointed out.
“I was put in a car and driven back to my home, it’s the same thing.”
She wanted to pick up every expensive item in the house, like the vases on the mantelpiece, and smash them on the floor. The only thing that stopped her was that they belonged to Mother. She wouldn’t destroy that memory, no matter how angry she was.
But boy, was she angry.
“Father’s talking like they’re the ones who betrayed him.”
“It was just a faction of the Saito family,” Lana replied. “Father can’t afford to piss off the rest of them.”
“He sure as hell can,” Natalia snapped. “They allowed a full-on coup to occur and their heads were so far up their asses—”
“Language!” Anastasia warned.
Natalia flipped her off. She didn’t much care about language right now or anything else besides the fact that her fate was being changed on her yet again and she wasn’t having any of it. “If Father thinks that he can just break off with them and sell me to someone else as a bride—”
She could hear the front door opening and the murmur of voices. Father and Irena, good.
“Oh, Natasha, don’t, please…” Lana begged.
Natalia ignored her. She stormed down the stairs to the front door, glaring. Father and Irena both turned, but neither of them was fast enough to stop her.
She slapped Father full across the face.
Irena gasped. Father looked thunderstruck, his eyes wide and angry. Natalia noticed with pleasure that there was now a red mark on his cheek.
“That’s for treating the men who saved your life with such disrespect,” she spat. “And for not giving me so much as a ‘thank you’ for my involvement!”
“You disobeyed me, you spoke to a man—our reputation would have been ruined if people saw you, if they thought we were marrying you to cover up for your indiscretions—”
“It’s the twenty-first century, Father. Women have indiscretions! We have sex! If I had been having a fling with Pavel, what the hell does it matter? Not everything has to be about politics! You married Mother for love, or so Irena always told me, unless she was lying about that as well as letting me be thrown to the wolves.”
Irena didn’t look angry, as Natalia had expected. She looked hurt.
“You arrange for me to marry someone I’ve never met, and then when I do meet him and like him and I want to marry him, you take him away from me. I’m not your toy to play with.”
“You serve the family!” Father roared, his face going red all over.
Natalia stood her ground. She could see her other three sisters out of the corner of her eye, standing on the staircase, watching in fear and fascination. “But the family is supposed to serve me too. You get something out of what you do for the family and so do your men. They get salaries, promotions, perks. What do I get?” Her ears were hot as she flushed with anger. She swallowed hard, glaring at Father, then continued.
“I’m not just a part of the ‘family’. You are not just my boss. You are my father and I am your daughter, and it is your duty to let me be my own person, to let me do what I love, what makes me happy. Isn’t that what every parent wants for their child? Isn’t that what you want for me?” Natalia felt tears welling up in her eyes and her rage grew. She took a breath and went on.
“Or are we just tools to you, things that you can order around and use for your own benefit. Your financial benefit, your political benefit. If you respected Irena, if you loved her, you’d name her heir! She acts as though she is! She helps you with everything, she knows everything, she runs this family almost more than you do. And I should think that you would want me to be happy and that you would want your family to be successful and you can’t really have one without the other.”
Father looked a bit purple around the edges now, as if he was holding all of his air in and it was poisoning him. “You—you dare—”
“I dare a hell of a lot more than to simply yell at you,” Natalia snapped. “What good is there for us if we stay here? You aren’t giving us any benefits. You aren’t rewarding us. You barely raised us. Irena raised us. And we’re, what, going to go and be with a family we know next to nothing about?” Natalia found her boldness growing the more she spoke. She could no longer stop the words from pouring out of her mouth—her soul—and onto her father.
“The Sokolovs are people you should be thanking, Father. They went out of their way to help you. They knew that it would risk your anger but they did it anyway. The smart thing to do once they realized you were weak would be to walk away. Especially when they learned that there was someone else sniffing around who might attack you.
“Even worse than that, they might have attacked you instead of Giichi Saito. They knew your weaknesses. Or they could have attacked you on top of Giichi. Can you imagine what a bloodbath that would’ve been? But no, they chose to help, despite knowing you would be upset.” She paused for a moment, gathering her next words carefully.
“I’m giving you two choices here. You can either let me and my sisters live our lives the way we want or you can watch me walk out of this door. I have a degree, I have friends, I can make my own way. I don’t need you. I can’t make you declare Irena heir the way she deserves. I can’t make you do anything. But I can control my own life and if you try to control it anymore, then you’re going to have one less daughter. And if my sisters had any backbone, they’d do the same.”
She looked up at her older sisters, who were all gaping at her like a bunch of fish except for Irena. Irena looked—Natalia couldn’t tell how she looked, actually. Her lips were pursed, but she didn’t quite look angry.
“What’s it going to be?” she asked, turning back to Father. “Are you going to let me do what I want like an actual human being or am I going to have to be disowned? Because I’m happy to let that happen. I will accept those consequences.”
Father gave a growl that was simultaneously angry and dismissive, turning away from her for a moment. Natalia folded her arms and waited. She was dead serious about her declaration, and she knew that he knew it. She had to be. Father would see through a bluff, he was good at that sort of thing. How else had he managed to grow their family into such an empire?
She meant this, though. She’d lucked out with Pavel. She lo—she liked him. She wanted to be with him. But what if she hadn’t liked him? And she certainly wasn’t going to let Father have her married off to someone else. She’d spent her life just sitting around waiting to do what Father said, to be useful to the family, and she was done. Other people could live lives the way that they wanted while still serving the family. Look at Kate Sokolova. If Kate could do it, then so could Natalia.
And if her father didn’t see it that way, then fine. She would call one of her friends, couch surf for a while, get a job as an art teacher or at a museum or something. Her degree had to help somehow, right? And she’d find her own place and give Pavel a call because she still wanted to date him, dammit.
She wanted to do a lot more than date him.
Had he been angry when he’d heard the news? Disappointed? Frustrated? Had he put up a fight as well? Or had he just accepted it and moved on? Pavel the puppy, so loyal, so gentle-hearted. Had he just decided that well, what the boss says is what the boss says, and accepted it all without complaint?
She hoped not. She hoped that he would fight for her.
But she’d fight for herself, too.
“What’s it going to be?” she asked her father.
He turned to look back at her, and there was still a part of him that was angry. She could see it in the l
ines of his face, in the way his skin was still unnaturally red. But there was a gleam in his eye as well. It took her a moment to recognize it.
Could it possibly be pride?
Father looked her up and down. “You were spoiled too much as a child,” he told her. “It has made you think that you can have whatever you want. It has made you stubborn.”
Natalia simply raised her eyebrow at him. Father sighed.
“But those are the qualities of a strong person, a person who should be in the family. The world does not give us what we want, does it? We have to believe that we can have it, and therefore, we take it. We have to be stubborn. We came to this land and were treated as the lesser creatures, and so we fought our way into becoming this.” Father looked Natalia dead in the eye before continuing.
“You have my spirit in you, Natasha. I cannot help but be proud of that. I will… consider what you have said, in regard to the Sokolovs. And I will not force you to marry anyone else. You may do as you wish and live your life as you wish. If yours sisters would like to speak to me about any issues they have, then they may do so.”
Father glanced up at Anastasia, Lana, and Vasilisa, who all stood silently. Natalia couldn’t tell what they were thinking, since all three took care to look blank-faced and neutral. But she hoped that they would follow her example and speak to Father if they had any qualms about their impending marriages, or anything else.
“Thank you.” Natalia hoped that she could get more from him, but she had pushed quite far enough already. He would need time to change his mind about things. She could respect that. “I’ll be going out, then. Just on a walk. I need to do some thinking.”
Father nodded. “Very well. Be safe.”