Page 50 of Hating the Bratva

“But Ivan…”

He looks away from me. “It had to happen. Your marriage wouldn’t have saved him. Miami would have gotten to him in the end anyway.”

“If Gavril finds out you set up one of your own…”

He shakes his head. “Let me handle that. I need something from you tonight.”

He looks back and forth as if searching my eyes for a reaction.

“You want me to marry you?” I say the words as I realize them myself. Alek set up Ivan to be killed so he could marry me. He risked his own life so I can be free.

“You want to work as a nurse? I can give you that. You hate the Bratva and never want to come to Boston again? Fine. I’ll get you an apartment in another state. Don’t want kids? We won’t have them. But we will never get divorced. This is the only way I know how to give you freedom. I couldn’t stand by and watch you sign your life away like that. It’s not fair, and as long as I’m alive, no one will make you do a damn thing. If we don’t get married, they’ll find someone else, and I’m not willing to take that chance.”

I let his words sink into my skin. Freedom. The term is almost foreign for someone who has been told her whole life that she has no choice in her future.

“Talk to me,” he begs.

I run a hand over his shoulders, then down to his hands where I interlock our fingers.

“I will marry you, Alek Vasiliev, and I will never leave you. I don’t want to move to another state and get a place away from you,” I say. A smile pulls at his lips. “This is the freedom I want. The freedom to be with you. The man I love.”

He bends down and presses a soft kiss to my lips. The sound of a cough breaks us apart.

V stands back in the foyer. “The priest does have a bedtime.”

“Outside?” Alek asks me.

I shake my head. “Right here. In our foyer.”

V leaves to get the priest. When he comes back inside, Alek lets go of one of my hands, and we turn to face the priest.

“Ready?”

Alek raises an eyebrow at me.

I nod. “We’re ready.”

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