Page 26 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
“I’m fine,” I interrupted, suddenly exhausted by the weight of everyone’s concern and guilt and barely controlled rage. “Shaken up, but fine. Sasha’s in an ambulance, but the paramedics said she’ll be okay.”
“This ends now.” Maxim’s voice had gone dangerously quiet, the kind of calm that preceded volcanic eruptions. “You have two choices, Anya. Marry Lev and move into his penthouse where he can protect you properly, or get on a plane to Italy tonight and stay there until this is over.”
The words hit me like a physical blow, each option more impossible than the last. Marriage to a man who thought I was a mistake, or exile to a foreign country, while everyone I cared about remained in the line of fire.
“Those aren’t choices,” I said, my voice rising with panic and frustration. “Those are ultimatums. I have a business to run,a life. You can’t just say the first thing that comes to mind and expect everyone to run with it!”
“Your life won’t mean much if you’re dead.” Maxim’s voice softened slightly, but the steel underneath remained unmistakable. “I’ll talk to Lev, and I’m sure he’ll agree to this. It’s for your own safety. I’m not negotiating on this, little sister. Choose, or I’ll choose for you.”
I looked around at the destruction of my home, at the blood on Drew’s clothes and the flashing lights that turned everything surreal. At Lev, who stood watching me with an expression I couldn’t read, waiting for me to decide between two different kinds of surrender.
The choice, when it came, felt less like a decision and more like gravity—inevitable and irresistible.
“Fine,” I said, my voice steady despite the chaos in my chest. “I’ll marry him.”
***
The courthouse was sterile and impersonal, all fluorescent lights and beige walls that seemed designed to drain the romance out of any ceremony conducted within them. Which was fitting, really, because there was nothing romantic about what we were doing.
I stood in front of a bored-looking clerk dressed in a polyester suit, still wearing the same clothes I had on when my house was attacked—jeans and a blouse now wrinkled and stained with dust from hiding behind furniture. My hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and I hadn’t bothered with makeup. This wasn’t a celebration. It was a transaction.’’’
Lev stood beside me in his usual armor of expensive tailoring, looking like he’d just stepped out of a board meeting rather than the chaos we’d left behind. Only the tightness around his eyes betrayed any emotion at all—exhaustion, maybe, or resignation to a future neither of us had planned.
Maxim and Drew served as witnesses, both of them wearing expressions that fell somewhere between grim satisfaction and concern. My brother had moved heaven and earth to make this happen within hours of my agreement, pulling strings I didn’t want to think too hard about to expedite the marriage license and find a judge willing to perform the ceremony after regular hours.
“Do you, Levente Mikhailovich Antonov, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Lev’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “I do.”
The clerk turned to me, his voice maintaining that same monotone quality that suggested he’d performed this ceremony a thousand times and would perform it a thousand more. “Do you, Anya Maksimovna Voronov, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
I looked up at Lev, searching his face for some sign of what he was feeling. But his expression remained carefully blank, those steel-gray eyes giving nothing away. This was the man who’d held me through the night after his father died, who’d touched me with a hunger that had felt like salvation. And now he was marrying me out of obligation, because my brother had demanded it and circumstances had left us with no better options.
“I do,” I whispered.
“By the power vested in me by the State of Illinois, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The clerk closed his book with an audiblethump. “You may kiss the bride.”
For a moment, neither of us moved. The air between us felt charged with all the words we weren’t saying, all the things that had led us to this moment—grief and desire and a single night that had complicated everything.
Then Lev’s hand came up to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone with unexpected gentleness. Heleaned down slowly, giving me time to pull away if I wanted to. I didn’t.
The kiss was brief and chaste, nothing like the desperate claiming from that night in his bed. But I felt it everywhere—the warmth of his lips, the familiar scent of his cologne, the way my heart stuttered in my chest like it was trying to remember how to beat.
When he pulled back, his eyes held something that might have been regret or longing or some combination of both. Then the moment passed, and his expression shuttered closed again.
“Congratulations,” Maxim said, his voice carrying none of the warmth the word should have held. He pulled me into a brief, fierce hug. “You’re safe now. That’s what matters.”
Safe.The word echoed in my head as Lev signed the marriage certificate with bold, confident strokes. As Drew clapped him on the shoulder with careful neutrality. As we walked out of that courthouse into the Chicago night, we were legally bound to each other but felt more like strangers than ever.
I was safe. Protected. Sheltered under the shield of Lev’s name and reputation.
But as I climbed into his car and watched the courthouse disappear in the rearview mirror, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just traded one kind of danger for another—this one far more insidious because it lived inside my own heart.
Chapter 7 – Lev
The silence that settled over my penthouse after everyone left felt heavier than the weight of my father’s casket. Crime scene photographers had finally finished documenting the destruction at Anya’s mansion, paramedics had carted Sasha off to the hospital, and even the cops had wrapped up their preliminary questions. Now it was just Anya and me, standing in my living room like strangers who’d accidentally ended up at the same funeral.
She looked smaller than usual, swallowed up by one of my shirts that hung past her thighs like a dress. Her hair was still tangled from the chaos, and there were smudges of mascara under her eyes that she probably didn’t even realize were there. She looked fragile and breakable and absolutely fucking beautiful, and I had to shove my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching for her.
