Till Death DO Us Part

The Arrangement

Nikolai POV

The door opened, and Mikhail Sokolov stepped into my office like midnight itself had decided to wear a tailored suit.

My father never rushed. He never needed to. Time, like most things around him, had long ago learned how to bend.

At sixty-two, he still moved with the same measured precision that had built the Sokolov empire into something feared across New York.

Silver had touched his temples in recent years, but it had not softened him. Nothing softened Mikhail. Not age. Not blood. Not the existence of sons.

He wore a charcoal suit under a black overcoat, every line of him immaculate, every movement stripped of waste. His pale eyes moved from me to Viktor to the phone on the desk, taking in the tension in the room with the detached indifference of a man looking over an inventory sheet.

“If this is personal,” he said, “then I assume it can wait.”

Viktor smiled lazily from his chair. “Nikolai’s mistress betrayed him with Volkov. We were having a touching family moment.”

Mikhail did not blink. “Leave.”

“See,” Viktor said, turning to me, “this is why we never bonded as children.”

“Viktor.”

He stood with a sigh and pushed a hand through his damp hair. “Fine. But if Volkov ends up in pieces, I want details.”

“Get out.”

He grinned at me on his way past. “Try not to get engaged before I come back.”

The door shut behind him.

Silence settled over the office.

My father walked farther into the room, his gaze sliding over the skyline beyond the glass before settling on me. I had spent my entire life trying not to become the kind of man who could look at a city like that and see only leverage.

Some days, I was not sure I had succeeded.

“You allowed that woman to be too close,” Mikhail said.

I poured another whiskey, more for the movement than the drink itself. “I allowed her exactly where I wanted her.”

“And yet Volkov used her.”

My grip tightened around the crystal. Briefly. A flicker of irritation, nothing more.

It was enough.

My father noticed everything. It was one of the reasons he remained alive. It was also one of the reasons childhood in his house felt less like being raised and more like being sharpened against a stone. He did not teach with kindness. He taught by finding the place a thing hurt and pressing there until it stopped hurting or you stopped showing it.

I had learned early to stop showing it.

“Volkov will be handled,” I said.

“I am not here about Volkov.”

That pulled my attention fully back to him.

Mikhail clasped his hands behind his back and turned toward the windows.

Manhattan spread out beneath us, bright and glittering and full of people who would never understand how much of their safety depended on men they would cross the street to avoid.

“There has been progress with the Morettis,” he said.

The name cut cleanly through the lingering filth of the night.

Alessandro Moretti.

Italian. Old money. A man who had managed the impossible by building an empire without letting it rot his family from the inside out.

The Morettis were powerful, wealthy, and violent in the polished way old blood often was. They hosted galas, funded charities, and buried enemies with the same elegant efficiency.

I knew enough about Alessandro Moretti to respect him.

I knew enough about his family to know they were not ours.

“What kind of progress?” I asked.

“An alliance.”

“With Moretti?”

“With his daughter.”

The room seemed to be still around the words.

I stared at my father.

He turned from the window, his face unreadable.

“You will marry Valentina Moretti.”

Marriage.

The word should have meant something. To some men, it did. To men who believed in vows and devotion and all the softer lies people used to dress up ownership to Alessandro Moretti, perhaps. He had married a woman from outside his world and, by all accounts, loved her enough to turn grief into something permanent after she died.

I had never understood men who let love survive that long.

To my father, marriage was leverage when useful and weakness when emotional.

To me, it was simpler.

A contract.

A name.

A strategic merger between powerful families.

Tonight, I was not in the mood to pretend it was anything else.

“What does Moretti want?” I asked.

“The same thing we do. Stability. Expansion. Mutual protection.”

“He offers his daughter for that.”

“He offers the future of his family tied to ours.”

A polished answer for an ugly truth.

I took a drink and let the whiskey sit on my tongue for a moment before swallowing.

“And you accepted.”

“I approved the direction.”

“That was not my question.”

“It was the only answer that mattered.”

Of course it was.

Mikhail had never believed in the illusion of choice when a better option already existed. Sons were useful because they inherited. Women were useful because they could be placed. Marriage was useful because it made power look civilized.

My father’s entire worldview could be reduced to one ugly principle.

If a thing could strengthen the empire, it was worth taking.

I set the glass down. “What do you know about her?”

“Enough.”

I laughed once, without humor. “That means very little coming from you.”

“She is twenty-two. Educated. Private. The youngest Moretti child.”

“Protected,” I said.

His gaze sharpened. “Yes.”

There it was.

The image formed immediately in my head because men in our world only protected daughters one way. Silk. Security. Softness wrapped in steel bars and called devotion. A beautiful girl raised behind walls built by older, more dangerous men.

A daughter taught how to host a table before she was taught how to survive one.

A woman accustomed to being watched over, spoken for, guarded.

A princess.

Useful in public. Decorative in private. Untouched by the harsher realities of the world because the men in her family had been ruthless enough to keep them from her.

I already disliked the idea.

Not because I objected to marrying her. Marriage itself was irrelevant.

But because I had no patience for fragile things, and daughters raised under too much protection often mistook delicacy for power.

“She agreed?” I asked.

“My concern is the alliance.”

“Meaning no.”

“Meaning her opinion changes nothing.”

I leaned back against the bar and studied him. “That sounds like the kind of thing you would admire.”

“It sounds like reality.”

Maybe it did.

Maybe that was the problem.

There were nights when I looked at my father and understood too clearly the shape of the man he had built me to become. Cold. Controlled. Untouched by sentiment. A weapon dressed in restraint.

Then there were nights like this, when the resemblance felt less like inheritance and more like a threat.

“When do I meet her?” I asked.

“Friday.”

“At the gala.”

“Yes.”

Of course, it would be a gala.

The Morettis and the Sokolovs did not meet in back rooms like lesser men. We met in chandeliers and black tie, in rooms where criminals wore custom suits, and women dripped diamonds worth more than houses.

Power preferred beautiful stages. It made it easier to ignore the blood.

Mikhail reached into the inner pocket of his overcoat and withdrew a cream envelope. He placed it on my desk with the same care another man might have used to set down a loaded weapon.

“Do not embarrass this family,” he said.

I picked up the envelope and turned it over in my hand. Heavy paper. Gold embossing. Old money announcing itself in texture.

“Have I ever?”

“No,” he said. “That is why you are still useful.”

The insult was almost lazy in its precision.

Useful.

That was what my father had always demanded from his sons. Not happiness. Not loyalty born from love. Not even excellence for its own sake. Usefulness. We were raised to be sharp enough to cut and disciplined enough to know when.

I sometimes wondered whether he had ever looked at Viktor or me and seen children rather than investments.

Then I remembered he had never told us our mothers’ names and decided the answer was obvious.

He turned to leave, but paused at the door.

“Whatever irritation tonight has caused you,” he said without looking back, “bury it before Friday.”

“Irritation?”

His mouth curved faintly, too small to be called a smile. “You were never sentimental enough for heartbreak.”

No.

I was not.

He left.

The office felt colder after him. It always did. My father took something from a room when he left it. Warmth, perhaps. Or the illusion that anything living had ever occupied the space.

For several seconds, I did not touch the envelope.

Then I opened it.

Inside was a formal invitation printed on thick cream stock.

A charity gala hosted by one of Manhattan’s old-money foundations. Black tie. Private guest list. The kind of event where politicians shook hands with criminals and pretended not to know exactly whose money kept the champagne flowing.

Behind the invitation was a photograph.

I slid it free.

Valentina Moretti looked back at me.

Dark hair. Pale skin. A black dress that fit her like poured ink. She stood beside Alessandro Moretti, one hand resting lightly on his arm, a pose elegant enough to be expected and restrained enough to feel deliberate. Her face was turned slightly away from the camera, as if she had already decided it deserved nothing real from her.

Beautiful, yes.

That part was obvious.

But beauty was common. Beauty alone did not hold my attention.

Stillness did.

She was not smiling. Not performing. Not trying to charm the lens or soften herself for the people looking at her. There was composure in her expression, but not passivity.

Something in the line of her mouth suggested control rather than sweetness.

Something in her eyes, even in a still photograph, felt guarded enough to be intentional.

Not soft, then.

Not in the way I expected.

I stepped closer to the window, photograph in hand, and studied her face more carefully.

This was the woman my father wanted me to marry.

The woman Alessandro Moretti was willing to place beside me in exchange for power.

The woman I had already dismissed in my head as a protected daughter wrapped in old money and obedience.

And yet.

There was something in her expression I did not like.

Not because it was unpleasant.

Because it complicated things.

She did not look fragile. She did not look eager. She did not look like the kind of woman who spent her life smiling prettily while men decided things around her.

There was reserve there, yes, but not helplessness. Her stillness felt chosen.

Controlled.

Interesting.

I disliked interesting women in principle.

Interesting women were rarely convenient.

I set the photograph down beside my phone.

Lilian on one side.

Valentina, on the other hand.

One woman exposed.

One woman is unknown.

I preferred known things. Known appetites. Known weaknesses. Known lies.

Lilian had been easy because she had wanted exactly what I expected her to want.

There was comfort in that kind of greed. It had shape. Predictability. Limits.

Valentina Moretti, even in a photograph, gave me none of those.

That alone was enough to make me wary.

My phone buzzed again.

Roman.

I answered without taking my eyes off the photograph.

“It’s done,” he said.

“Any trouble?”

“None. She cried. Asked to speak to you. Asked if this was a misunderstanding.”

I looked out at the city, at the lights burning over streets where men like Volkov still believed they could humiliate me and live through it.

“And?”

“I said no.”

Good.

Lilian had always been smart enough to know when a door was truly closed. If she were crying now, it would not be because she missed me. It was because she had just watched access disappear in real time.

The apartment, the gifts, the protection, the illusion of security she had mistaken for affection.

I felt nothing.

“Keep an eye on Volkov,” I said. “I want a full account of where he is, who he sees, and what he does for the next seventy-two hours.”

Roman did not ask why. He knew better. “Understood.”

I ended the call and slipped the phone into my pocket.

Lilian was finished.

Volkov would soon learn the cost of performance.

And Valentina Moretti stood in my office now in the form of heavy paper and a carefully chosen photograph, her face calm and unreadable beneath the city lights.

Marriage.

If my father wanted a contract, I would sign it.

If Alessandro Moretti wanted an alliance, I would honor it.

If Valentina wanted protection, she would have it.

And if she expected softness, affection, or anything resembling devotion from me, she would learn quickly enough that I had none to give.

I picked up the photograph again.

My thumb brushed the edge of it once, absently.

Then I slipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket.

I should have left it on the desk.

I should have treated it as a business arrangement in printed form. A face attached to a contract. A daughter offered up in exchange for stability.

Instead, I kept it close.

Outside, the city glittered beneath the black weight of night, sharp and beautiful and merciless.

Friday suddenly felt much too far away.