Page 64 of Doctored Vows

He jerks up his chin before telling her he will forward a job offer to her inbox later today.

She smiles like she has the world at her feet before she gallops down the jet’s stairs.

I don’t wait a second before stating the obvious. “You hired Zoya?”

Again, he lifts his chin. His reply is so nonchalant it seems as if it is only a big deal for me. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” I immediately answer. “I just…” With words eluding me, I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “It makes me wish we still had hours left in the air.” When I stray my eyes to the back of the plane, Maksim’s eyes follow their route. “The bedroom has a bed, right?”

“It does,” he answers as the front of his pants tighten. “And enough aviation fuel to get us halfway across the globe.” My skin flushes with heat when he smirks. “But I think my wife”—he growls my title again as if he’s aware of how wild it makes me—“would rather be ravished in an empty hangar than thirty thousand feet in the air.”

He doesn’t wait for me to confirm his assumption. He thanks the pilots for a smooth flight before he shows them the way out.

I’m naked and sprawled across the queen bed in his private jet not even thirty seconds later.

It is dark by the time we enter the apartment building where I reside with my grandparents. Although not quite dark enough to mistake the look of surprise on the doorman’s face when Maksim guides me through the main doors of the building instead of down the cracked walkway I usually take.

The shocked looks continue when we enter the elevator, and the attendant is told to take us to the penthouse suite.

I already feel like I’m dreaming, and Maksim makes my beliefs worse. “I had originally purchased the penthouse for us, but better ventilation could be installed on the top floor. Your grandfather will be more comfortable there.”

“Thank you.” My praise is not enough, but it is all I have to offer him right now. Once my grandmother is no longer eyeballing me, I will find a more sufficient way to thank him.

“Darling, you look so refreshed.” She tugs me out of the elevator that opens directly into the penthouse apartment before wrapping me up in one of her famously warm hugs. “I’ve missed you. You haven’t been away this long since…” She inches back, adjusts the collar of my shirt, and then brushes off her reply like she wasn’t about to say my last absence was when I sat in the morgue with my badly battered and mutilated mother’s body.

She was no longer there—I like to pretend her soul left her body seconds into her assault—but I promised my father I would stay with her, so I remained at her side until she was placed in her final resting place.

With haunted memories holding my responses hostage, it takes Maksim coughing to remind me I’ve yet to offer an introduction.

“Gigi, this is Maksim Iv?—”

“I knew you’d be back.” She greets Maksim like they’re long-lost friends.

Their hug doesn’t last as long as the one we shared, but she speaks to him freely in Russian, making me envious of her fluency. I’d give anything to know what they’re discussing. I catch portions of their conversation but nothing that makes any sense. Something about needing sleep and hoping I will never find out.

Maksim laughs during her last sentence before promising her that will be highly unlikely. “A man knows ways to encourage his wife to sleep.” I’m grateful he’s returned to using English so I can keep up, but he needs to keep the desires of my lust-driven heart out of the conversation when he’s talking with family. “She slept like a baby for almost three hours in the plane.”

He fails to mention I slept so long because he forced so many orgasms out of me I either collapsed from exhaustion or died—thank god.

“Wife?” Gigi questions, forever only hearing what’s important.

A tingle spreads across my chest, and my stomach clenches before I sheepishly nod.

You can’t miss the size of the diamond on my hand, but I raise it in the air as if you can.

Gigi gasps before stumbling back.

I prepare my ears to be slaughtered, and although they’re hammered by hundreds of words spoken in seconds, they don’t follow the path I’m anticipating. She isn’t upset I married without a single family member present. She’s delighted.

What the?

“Come.” She waves us into the apartment she’s made homely with the trinkets she’s collected over the years. “We must update Grampies. He’s been waiting for this for some time.” She cranks her neck to Maksim. “He knew it would be only a matter of time before someone snatched up his beautiful granddaughter. He just didn’t want it to be one of those ???? she works with.”

“Capre? Più che altro dei codardi,” Maksim answers as his hand flattens against my back instead of hovering above it. I don’t know if he’s gauging my response to him being multilingual or ensuring I don’t stumble like my grandmother did when he spoke in her native tongue. “Codardi che stanno per ricevere una lezione.”

My grandmother peers at me and then back at Maksim before she spits out, “Good. Anche dopo anni di studio, la trattano ancora come facevano con sua madre. Come spazzatura.”

The only part of her reply I understand is mother, and it is enough to spring tears to my eyes, much less what Maksim replies, “That is done with now.” He isn’t looking at my grandmother. He is staring straight at me and speaking in a language I understand. “No one will ever hurt her again.”

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