Page 80 of Bratva Bride
"Ready?" Ivan asked, though we both knew the answer.
I stood, smoothed the horrible black dress, and forced my face into the blank expression my father preferred. The transformation was complete. The woman who'd colored at three AM and named stuffed animals and cried "Daddy" while coming apart under Ivan's hands—she was buried under wool and hairpins and twenty-six years of conditioning.
"Ready," I lied, and followed my husband downstairs to meet our fate.
TheCouncilmetinthe same church basement where we'd been married, and the symbolism scraped against my ribs like broken glass. Just weeks ago, I'd walked down these same stone steps in white lace, terrified but hopeful. Now I descended in black wool, knowing exactly what waited below.
The air hit thick with cigar smoke and barely leashed violence. Fifty men in expensive suits, each one armed, each one calculating angles and exits and potential kill shots. The samevaulted ceiling that had witnessed our vows now curved over what might become our dissolution.
I walked between Ivan and Dmitry, Alexei having entered first as Pakhan—protocol demanding the strongest show of leadership. Every eye tracked my movement. Some with pity. Some with calculation. Most with the particular disinterest men reserved for women in their world—useful objects to be moved around the board, not players themselves.
The room's geography told the story before anyone spoke. Five families, five territories, carefully maintained distances between each camp. The Kozlovs held the north corner, and Sergei Kozlov's expression made my stomach clench. Satisfaction radiated from him like heat from a forge. His thin lips curved in something that wasn't quite a smile but promised to become one. Two of his lieutenants whispered behind raised hands, shooting glances at the Morozov contingent that said they knew something. Maybe everything.
The Sokolovs occupied neutral ground near the center, their patriarch's ancient face unreadable as carved stone. They'd weathered fifty years of bratva politics by picking no sides until the winning side became obvious. Today they watched and waited, crows on a fence counting corpses that hadn't fallen yet.
The Besharovs, who'd married us with such gravity, looked actively troubled. Mikhail Besharov kept touching the leather-bound book of the Code like it might offer absolution for what was about to happen. His wife—they'd been married forty years, I'd heard—sat beside him with her mouth pressed into a line that said she knew exactly how this would end and hated it.
And then there was my father.
Viktor Morozov had positioned himself like a king holding court. The south wall at his back, sight lines to every exit, his personal guard arranged in a semicircle that violated every protocol about neutral ground. I counted twelve men—shouldhave been four maximum. No one challenged it. That told me everything about how this would go.
He'd dressed for victory. The charcoal suit I recognized from corporate takeovers, the silver tie he wore to funerals of enemies. His pale eyes tracked my movement with the satisfaction of a spider watching something stumble into its web.
Documents spread across his table in neat stacks. Color-coded tabs. Multiple copies. This wasn't reactive scrambling after yesterday's bombing. This was weeks of preparation waiting for the right moment to deploy.
His lawyer—new, someone I didn't recognize—leaned close to whisper something that made Viktor's mouth twitch toward a smile. Bad news for us, then. Another card to play, another interpretation of ancient law to twist into chains.
I took my seat beside Ivan at the Volkov table, and his hand immediately found mine beneath the aged wood. Our fingers interlaced with desperate pressure, both of us holding on like the other might evaporate. The table's surface bore carved initials from decades of meetings—AS + EV, dated 1987. Someone else's tragedy etched into wood, now witnessing ours.
Alexei sat to Ivan's other side, his face carved from ice. Dmitry flanked me, radiating barely contained violence. We looked strong, unified. We looked like a family that would fight for what was theirs.
It wouldn't matter.
I made the mistake of looking up at the icons. Christ Pantocrator stared down from the central dome, his eyes that followed you everywhere but offered nothing. The Virgin Mary, hands raised in perpetual blessing that never quite reached the room below. Saint Michael with his sword, frozen mid-battle with a demon, neither winning nor losing for eternity.
The icons stared down with gold-leaf indifference. Byzantine eyes that had watched a thousand tragedies and would watcha thousand more. Saints who'd been martyred for their faith, immortalized in gold and tempera, but couldn't spare one miracle for a girl about to lose everything she'd just learned to love.
"Please," I whispered, quiet enough that only Ivan heard. His hand squeezed mine harder.
Above us, afternoon light filtered through stained glass, painting the smoke in jeweled tones. Red like blood not yet spilled. Blue like the Maldivian water we'd never see again. Purple like the walls of a room where I'd learned to be small and safe and his.
The wooden chairs creaked as men shifted, adjusted weapons, prepared for whatever violence might erupt. Someone coughed. Someone else lit another cigar, the scratch of the match sharp as breaking bones. The basement held its breath, waiting for someone to light the fuse.
Mikhail Besharov rose from his position, the Code heavy in his hands. His voice, when it came, carried the weight of tradition and the exhaustion of enforcing it.
"The Emergency Council of the Five Families is now in session," he announced, each word falling like a stone into still water. "We gather in the sight of God and our ancestors to address the crisis that threatens our peace."
Our peace. As if peace had ever been more than a three-week pause between catastrophes.
"Let us begin," Besharov continued, and I felt Ivan's hand tremble in mine. Not from fear—from rage he couldn't express, not here, not yet.
Viktor rose from his chair with the fluid grace of a man who'd practiced this moment in mirrors. Every movement calculated for maximum impact—the pause before speaking, the way he touched his chest as if holding back emotion, the slight tremor inhis hand as he lifted his water glass. Performance art in a custom suit, and everyone in the room was his captive audience.
"Six more people are dead," he began, letting the words hang in the smoke between us like bodies on display. His voice carried perfectly pitched grief—not overwhelming, not understated, just enough to sound like a father genuinely concerned rather than a strategist executing a plan.
He produced photographs with the timing of a magician revealing cards. Glossy 8x10s that he spread across his table, then held up one by one for the room to see. The bombing site from aerial view—twisted metal and pulverized concrete where our construction site had stood. Close-ups of the blast radius, the distinctive scarring that suggested military-grade explosives. Body bags being loaded into coroner's vans, black plastic hiding what remained of six lives.
"Three of my people," he continued, voice catching slightly on 'my people' like they'd been family rather than expendable soldiers. "Three Volkov workers. All of them with families. Children who won't see their fathers again. Wives who are planning funerals instead of Sunday dinners."
