Champagne Venom (Orlov Bratva, #1)(82)

“Protect me?” I laugh in her face. “I don’t need your protection, Nikita. Have you forgotten who I am?”

But she’s not fazed by my venom. “You may have buried your only brother, but more often than not, it’s like I buried both of mine. Nowadays, it feels like you died with Maksim.” She takes a deep breath and seems to soften. “You know I don’t like saying it, but… I miss you.”

I miss me, too.

“I’m not fun to be around anymore, Niki.”

“You seem to be comfortable enough with your new wife,” she points out. “Why else would you give her the family ring?”

“That ring belongs to the don’s wife.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the rules.” She nudges my arm and forces me to pass her the cigar. She inhales, blows a thin line of smoke into the air, and smiles distantly. “Remember when Maksim stole a box of these from Otets’s goodie drawer on my sixteenth birthday? We smoked them around the koi pond, and I almost threw up.”

“Of course I remember,” I whisper. “I remember everything.”





60

PAIGE

I slip off my dress and grab one of Misha’s white t-shirts from his side of the closet. “Your mom is nice.”

Misha followed me upstairs when his mother and sister left, though he still hasn’t said a word. I can hear him moving around in the bedroom, but I don’t know if he’s planning to stay tonight.

“I think she liked me,” I continue. Each word feels like tapping my foot against an icy pond, unsure if the ground will hold or if I’ll plunge into the deadly water below.

“It’s not hard to win my mother over,” he mutters.

I roll my eyes. When I walk into the bedroom, Misha is standing by the windows in his boxer shorts.

“So how much does your sister hate me?” I ask bluntly, standing next to him. It’s dark outside, so I can see our full bodies reflected in the glass. His is chiseled and unyielding. Mine, less so. It might just be my imagination, but I could swear the lines of my silhouette are starting to soften and spread as this baby comes to life inside of me.

He looks at me and then does a double take when he notices what I’m wearing. “What’s that?”

I finger the hem of the shirt. “A t-shirt.”

“My t-shirt.”

“I like sleeping in old t-shirts,” I retort. “To keep things fair, you can borrow anything you want from my side of the closet.” Eyeing the huge bulge clad in the black silk of his boxers, I add, “I don’t think my panties will fit you, though.”

His eyes linger on my body like he’s trying to decide whether to ask me to take it off or just let it go.

Finally, he looks away. “My sister doesn’t hate you.”

“She doesn’t like me, though.”

“She doesn’t know you,” he corrects. “It takes her a while to trust new people. She’s worried we rushed into this marriage.”

“I explained why.”

“She understands why I needed to marry you,” he says. “She’s trying to figure out why you said yes.”

“Oh.” My skin prickles with discomfort. “She thinks I’m just some gold digger who cashed in on an easy life. Got it.”

He doesn’t rush to correct me this time, which says more than enough.

I reach up and grab my pendant, wondering what exactly the two of them talked about when they were out on the terrace smoking a cigar. I tried to stay focused on Nessa since she was obviously making an effort to bond with me, but I would have given anything to be a fly on the wall behind the last remaining two of the Orlov siblings.

“I’m not a gold digger,” I say at last.

“I wouldn’t have married you if I believed you were.”

So being pregnant wasn’t the only thing that qualified me to be Misha’s wife; there’s also the fact that he’s reasonably certain I’m not a soul-sucking, money-grubbing whore. How lovely. I’m not sure if I want the rest of the list of qualifications or not.

“Would it make a difference if I called your sister and invited her out to lunch? Maybe she just needs to get to know me better.”

“Is her approval so important to you?”

My face heats, but he’s not wrong. “I was watching the two of you tonight, Misha. You may disagree, you may not speak for a while, you may even hate each other sometimes—but at the end of the day, you love each other.”

“That doesn’t mean I need her to approve of my wife.”

“Well, it’s important to me,” I admit. “Because she’s important to you.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that. It will go straight to her head.”

I smile and decide now is as good a time as any to drop the next bomb. “Your mother was talking to me tonight, and… she wants us to have a proper wedding. And she wants to plan the whole thing.”

He doesn’t fly off the handle like I expect. He just sighs and rests his forehead against the cool glass for a moment. “I figured.”

Sighing again, he peels himself back to upright and walks over to the bed. I shadow him over there, eyes darting anxiously to the door and back like he’s going to make a run for it at any moment. I can’t help but wonder… Is this the night he’ll finally stay with me? Will I wake up next to him?