Till Death DO Us Part

The Proposal

Valentina POV

I sat at the breakfast table in my father’s house with my hands folded neatly in my lap and the distinct feeling that my life had just shifted without my permission.

The room itself looked almost offensively beautiful.

Morning light poured through the tall glass doors overlooking the back gardens, turning the silver coffee service bright and the white roses in the center of the table almost luminous.

Fresh pastries sat untouched on a porcelain stand. Espresso filled the air with warmth that did not belong to the room's mood. Somewhere outside, birds moved through the hedges like the world had not just tilted beneath my feet.

My family sat around me in tailored silk and dark suits, all elegance and control, as if this were an ordinary breakfast and not whatever it had suddenly become.

Only Rafael looked honest.

He had dropped back into his chair after hugging me, but his body still carried the restless violence of a man one wrong sentence away from standing again.

Adriano sat beside Rosalia, his coffee in one hand, tension hidden beneath the polished stillness he wore better than anyone I knew.

My father stood at the head of the table, one hand resting against the back of his chair, his face calm in the way only dangerous men ever managed.

Rosalia met my eyes once across the table and gave the smallest shake of her head, as if to say she had not known how to warn me.

I appreciated the effort anyway.

“What happened?” I asked.

No one answered immediately.

That irritated me more than I liked.

“Papa.”

My father’s gaze settled fully on me. “There has been a proposal.”

The word sat between us for one strange, suspended second.

A proposal.

My first absurd thought was that one of my brothers had somehow managed to drag me into the kind of conversation Rosalia usually handled with more grace than either of them possessed.

Then Rafael muttered something dark under his breath in Italian, Adriano pinched the bridge of his nose, and I understood at once that this was nothing so simple.

“A proposal,” I repeated.

“It is not a marriage proposal in the traditional sense,” my father said.

The cold realization arrived before the words did.

No.

No, absolutely not.

I set my coffee cup down very carefully.

“Who?”

My father did not look away from me. “The Sokolovs.”

The room seemed to sharpen.

I knew the name, of course. Everyone in our world knew the Sokolovs. Russian Bratva. New York power. Violence dressed in custom suits and old brutality. Men who built empires through fear and maintained them through colder things than fear.

Their name had always lived in the background of business conversations, whispered alliances, careful negotiations, and the kind of warnings fathers gave daughters without ever saying the word danger aloud.

“And his son,” I said.

“Yes.”

I leaned back in my chair before anyone could see the way my spine had gone rigid.

“You want me to marry Nikolai Sokolov.”

My father’s jaw tightened.

“Want is not the word I would use.”

“Convenient,” Adriano said coolly.

“Profitable,” Rafael muttered.

“Necessary,” my father corrected.

Silence fell again.

I looked at each of them in turn.

Adriano’s face was controlled enough to fool most people, but I knew him too well. His mouth had gone too flat. His shoulders were too still. He hated this.

Rafael looked openly furious, his coffee abandoned beside him, one hand flexing against the arm of his chair as if he needed to hit something and had not yet chosen what.

Rosalia’s expression was neutral in the polished way old-money women learned early, but sympathy flickered in her eyes when I met them.

My father looked tired.

That unsettled me more than anything else.

My father did not tire easily.

I should have been shocked.

Part of me was.

But another part of me, the colder part that had grown up in this world despite every effort to keep me gentler than it deserved, had always known this was possible.

Daughters in families like mine were adored until politics learned how to use that love against them. We were protected, treasured, and indulged, and then one day someone looked at the board and realized we could be moved.

I picked up my coffee and took a slow sip.

“What do we know about him?”

Rafael stared at me. “That is your first question?”

“It seems more productive than screaming.”

“I can scream if you’d like.”

“I know,” I said dryly. “That’s what worries me.”

Rosalia hid a smile behind her cup.

Adriano answered before Rafael could say something that would get him stabbed by our father’s glare.

“Nikolai Sokolov is twenty-eight. Eldest son. He handles strategy and enforcement for the Bratva. He is his father’s heir in everything but title.”

“Which means he’s dangerous,” Rafael cut in.

“All men in this room are dangerous,” I said.

“Not like him.”

I turned to look at him. “You’ve met him?”

“Once.”

“And?”

Rafael’s expression darkened. “He looks at people like they’re already dead, and he’s deciding whether the paperwork is worth it.”

That was not exactly reassuring.

I looked back at Adriano. “What else?”

“He’s disciplined. Private. Very good at what he does. There are no public scandals attached to him beyond the usual violence.”

“The usual violence,” I repeated.

Adriano ignored me. “He is his father’s son in the ways that matter.”

That told me more than the rest of it.

I knew Mikhail Sokolov by reputation. Cold. Brutal. Manipulative. A man who had never married and thought little of anyone who believed marriage should mean more than leverage. He had fathered sons with different women and raised them under rules, nannies, and discipline instead of anything resembling affection.

Men like that did not create warm households. They created weapons.

And one of those weapons was apparently about to become my husband.

I looked at my father. “What does he know about me?”

“Very little,” he said. “The same things anyone knows. My daughter. The youngest Moretti. Educated. Private. Capable.”

Capable.

Interesting choice.

Not beautiful. Not obedient. Not well-bred.

Capable.

I held his gaze for a second longer.

He knew exactly what he was doing with that word.

A strange laugh almost climbed up my throat. Somewhere in New York, a man I had never met was likely being told he had to marry me, and whatever image he had built in his head was almost certainly wrong.

I found that thought comforting.

“When do I meet him?” I asked.

“Friday night,” my father said. “At the gala.”

Of course, it would be a gala.

Not in an office. Not in a private meeting room. Not in the cold honesty of a house full of family and bodyguards and too much coffee.

No, this would happen in black tie and diamonds and carefully arranged smiles, with the city’s elite looking on as if arranged marriages between dangerous families were just another charity event to clap politely through.

I could already feel the headache.

Rafael leaned toward me, his expression suddenly serious in a way that made me pause. “You do not have to say yes.”

The room changed.

My father’s gaze sharpened immediately. “Rafael.”

“No.” Rafael sat forward, planting both hands on the table. “No, I mean it. We can find another way.”

“There is no other way that gives us what this does,” Adriano said.

“There is always another way.”

“Not one without cost.”

Rafael looked like he wanted to put his fist through the wall.

I reached over and touched his wrist.

He went still immediately.

“Rafa.”

His eyes dropped to my hand, then lifted to my face.

“I know,” I said softly.

It was enough.

He leaned back in his chair, jaw tight, and looked away before anyone could see too much on his face.

My father watched the two of us in silence. Maybe there was guilt in his expression. Maybe resignation. Maybe grief. I could not tell.

My father loved with the whole of himself, but he had spent thirteen years folding that love into something quieter and harder after my mother died. He had never stopped protecting us. He had simply learned how to do it with one hand wrapped around mourning.

I should have hated him for asking this of me.

I did not.

That was the problem with loving your family. It made anger inconvenient.

“What happens if I refuse?” I asked.

The silence that followed lasted one beat too long.

“The alliance fails,” my father said. “And if it fails publicly, it will not fail quietly.”

There it was.

Not a threat.

A truth.

I looked down at the dark surface of my coffee and watched my reflection waver there. My life had always looked beautiful from the outside. Wealth. old money. family dinners and security, and a father who adored me enough to burn cities. But beauty had never meant freedom.

Not really. It meant comfort. It meant privilege. It meant a softer cage.

At nine years old, I learned that love could not stop violence from reaching into the backseat of a car and changing your life forever.

At twenty-two, I was learning that violence did not always arrive with screaming tires and shattered glass.

Sometimes it arrived in a tailored suit and a marriage contract.

I looked up at my father.

“Do you trust him?”

That changed the room.

Adriano’s eyes moved to our father. Rosalia set down her tea. Rafael went still beside me.

My father held my gaze for a long moment before answering.

“No.”

The honesty of it struck me harder than a lie would have.

“Do you trust the alliance?” I asked.

“Yes.”

That was somehow worse.

I let out a slow breath and looked toward the windows. The gardens beyond the glass were bright and immaculate. Roses. Gravel paths. Security moving at the edges of the property with the practiced discretion of men who carried weapons beneath tailored jackets. The whole estate looked safe.

I knew better.

“What is he like?” I asked after a moment.

Rafael let out a humorless laugh. “You ask that like there’s a version of the answer you’ll enjoy.”

“Humor me.”

“No.”

“Rafael.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “He’s cold. That’s the first thing. Not in the charming, brooding way women in bad novels pretend to enjoy. Actually cold. Controlled. The kind of man who walks into a room and everyone around him remembers their own mortality.”

I arched a brow. “You’re making him sound dramatic.”

“I’m making him sound Russian.”

Adriano gave him a look.

Rafael ignored it. “He doesn’t speak more than necessary. He watches everything. And if half the things people say about him are true, he doesn’t just order violence. He handles it himself when he wants to.”

That, unfortunately, sounded believable.

I looked at Adriano. “And you’re willing to hand me over to him?”

Adriano’s gaze met mine, steady and unreadable.

“I’m willing to put this family first,” he said.

I held his stare.

Then, more quietly, he added, “If there were another way, I would take it.”

I believed him.

That did not make it easier.

Rosalia reached under the table for my hand and squeezed once. Warm. Steady. Present.

I squeezed back.

For a moment, I let myself sit there in the middle of the people I loved most and feel the weight of what they were asking without pretending I was unaffected by it.

Nikolai Sokolov.

I did not know his face. I did not know his voice. I knew only a reputation, a surname, and the fact that somewhere in his world, men obeyed him because they were afraid not to.

He probably thought I would be easy to manage.

That irritated me on principle.

I looked back at my father.

“All right.”

Rafael’s head snapped toward me. “Vale.”

I held up one hand without looking at him. “I said all right, not yes.”

That quieted him.

I folded my hands around my coffee cup and straightened in my chair.

“I’ll meet him.”

Relief moved through the room so quickly and so quietly that it almost made me angry.

My father nodded once. “That is enough for now.”

“For now,” I repeated.

I wondered how many women had heard those words right before walking into the rest of their lives.

Rafael muttered something obscene under his breath.

Rosalia’s fingers brushed mine again before she let go.

Adriano picked up his coffee as if his hands were steady enough for it.

My father sat down at last, though he still had not touched the breakfast in front of him.

I looked around the table at all of them.

At my father, who would kill for me and still ask this of me.

At Adriano, who looked like he wanted to lock every door in the house rather than let another family claim me.

At Rafael, who would probably try to stab Nikolai Sokolov on principle if given enough time.

At Rosalia, elegant and observant and kind in the quiet way that mattered most.

I loved them enough to do many stupid things.

This, unfortunately, might be one of them.

I took another sip of coffee and stared out at the gardens again.

Friday.

A gala.

Nikolai Sokolov.

If he thought he was getting some soft, sheltered little mafia princess too delicate to survive his world, he was going to be disappointed.

And if I were being forced to stand beside a man like him, then the least he could do was learn exactly who he was marrying.