Owned: A Mafia Menage Romance (16 page)

 Roman starts to drift away from me and I tug him back forcibly. His eyebrows go up in surprise. Alek pops up over his shoulder.

“Receiving line,” I explain.

“Ah yes,” Alek says. When Roman shoots him a questioning look, Alek shrugs. “You just stand there and let everyone congratulate you, one by one. It’s a tradition.”

“It’s a tradition for the bride and
groom
,” I say meaningfully.

Alek snaps his lapels. “Yes,” he agrees. I want to kick him, and if he doesn’t knock it off, I will. I don’t care who’s here.

“You need to not be here.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re cute when you’re bossy.”

I glance at Roman, looking for some help, and he just shrugs. “I don’t find you all that cute when you’re bossy,” he informs me. “That’s Alek’s thing.”

“I don’t find
either
of you cute right now!” I hiss urgently. Gianna looks over at me and I pivot discreetly so she can’t read my lips or anything. “Listen,” I say in a low voice, “I think you heard the priest, Alek. Man and wife.
MAN
. Just the one.”

“Not the deal, Princess.” Alek says in a bored voice like he’s tired of repeating himself.

I try out a kittenish frown at Roman to see if that gets me anywhere, but he just looks confused.

“All right, all right,” Alek sighs loudly. “Do you want me to kiss you too? Is that what it’s going to take?” He comes toward me with his arms out and I automatically flinch away.

“Don’t you dare!” I stage whisper. I can see people are starting to take notice of our weird threesome and I want to run out of the room.

But still he comes closer, stopping with his cheek next to my ear.

“All right, Princess. I’ll wait until later,” he whispers. His breath is hot and fragrant with something like honey. A line of chills race down my arm and I curse my skin for being so obvious. “Don’t forget, now.”

“Just get away from me,” I manage to mumble as he leans back. His eyes sparkle with mischief in a way that Roman’s eyes do not sparkle. Alek is truly enjoying this, I can tell.

Alek shrugs and shakes his head and begins to move away again with Roman falling in right behind him. I tug at Roman’s arm forcefully to make him stand next to me as people behind us form a fairly organized queue.

“Not you!” I hiss. “
You
 stay with
me
!”

“All right,” he sighs as he reluctantly takes his place beside me. “What is this?”

“You just stand here and smile and let people kiss you,” I tell him. He's never seen a receiving line before? Was he raised in a cave?

“This sounds stupid.”

I shrug one shoulder. Is it? Maybe. “It doesn't matter. This is what we’re doing. Now smile!”

Roman makes a low sound in his throat like a pouty growl but stands next to me anyway. The line of people files in front of us slowly and I clasp everyone's hands over and over again, accepting hug after hug. After a little while, it sort of becomes amusing to watch my tiny, wrinkled aunties and grandmas grabbing giant Roman around the middle and giving him a big, Italian squeezes.

At first, his hands went up in alarm when Auntie Adina pinched his cheeks like he was four years old or something. He shot me a disgruntled look but I just shrugged. He wanted an Italian bride, he gets the whole family treatment. But by the 67th time he seems to have gotten used to it.

For my part, I find his beet-scented relatives to be alarming in their own right. Some have strange accents that mix Russian and southern US into an interesting combination. Some sound southern, and some sound Russian. None sound exactly like Roman though. I cut my eyes toward him sideways during a gap in the line.

“Why don’t you sound like that?” I ask him.

“Why don’t I sound like what?” he answers gruffly, releasing a chubby 12-year-old toward the dessert table.

“You don't sound Russian. You don't have an accent or anything.”

He shrugs. “What am I supposed to sound like, some cartoon character?”

“You’re supposed to sound like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, I think.”

Roman scowls and purses his lips in disgust. “He's Austrian.”

Uncle John T takes me and kisses me full on the mouth, releasing me with a large smacking sound and exclaiming, “Excellent! Excellent!” while I try not to cringe in revulsion.

He throws his arms open wide to embrace Roman but Roman snatches one hand out of the air and shakes it firmly instead.

“Austrian? You’re sure?” I continue, amazed.

“You must think I was raised in a cave or something,” he grumbles. I flinch, wondering how he picked up on that. “I sound like this because I went to school Pennsylvania.”

“So, your supposed language barrier… That’s just when it’s convenient, right? Did you learn that at Penn State too?”

“Philadelphia, actually.”

“You don't sound like a Philly boy either.”

He sighs for a long time. Here he is, only about a hundred-fifty hugs in and he's already exhausted. Poor guy.

“I've been a lot of places. Nowhere long enough to pick up an accent, I guess.”

“Well it’s just sort of weird, okay? You look like a gangster but you sound like a newscaster.”

He makes a sound. I look up at him in alarm, but that I see his lips are stretched wide over his teeth. That's laughter? He's laughing? That is probably the weirdest sound I've ever heard.

“Newscaster,” he repeats, nodding. “That's a good one, Marie. I like that.”

His arm is up around my shoulder and before I know what's happening, he's pulled me toward him and dropped a kiss onto my forehead. I flinch in surprise.

His eyes narrow suspiciously. “Don't pull away from me,” he says in a warning tone.

“You just… You are full of surprises, is all.”

I want to explain further, but a half-dozen cousins from my mother's side are here, all squealing at once like a bunch of schoolgirls. They want to know when the bachelorette party was and how they missed it. They want to know who Roman is and how I met him. They want to know all sorts of things, and I can't say a damn word.

But just to be a jerk, I gesture toward my new husband and send them his way. He glares at me in dismay as six gibbering Italian girls descend on him all at once. I laugh quietly to myself at the look of horror on his face.

“You’re such a beautiful bride,” comes a soft, oily sound in my ear. I wince and take a half step back as Stosh strokes the sides of his mouth thoughtfully.

“Um, thank you, Stosh. Er, Mr. Menkov,” I correct myself.

“You can call me Stosh now, my dear! We’re family, after all.”

He smiles, but there's something about that expression that doesn't travel all the way to those dead wolf eyes. They remain as icy as buttons. Marbles.

“Well, thank you, Stosh,” I respond politely.

He nods and slides closer to me again. Too close. So close that I can see the lines on his stained teeth as his tongue traces the ridge of his bottom lip.

“Yes,
family
,” he breathes. “I want you to think of me as family, Marie. As close to you as your own husband…”

My mouth drops open in surprise and I step backward, coming up against a brick wall and stopping short. Roman’s arm circles my shoulder and he holds me steady. Stosh’s eyes leave mine and snap up toward Roman. Maybe it's my imagination, but Stosh seems to shrink a little bit where he stands.

“I was just congratulating your new wife here, Roman,” Stosh says evenly.

I see Roman nodding slowly out of the corner of my eye. Despite myself, I'm glad for his strong arms around me, glad for someone else to stand against Stosh’s creepy advances.

“Well… I wish you every happiness,” Stosh mumbles as he edges away. Roman holds me until Stosh is overcome by that group of my cousins who giggle and roll their eyes at the big blond Russian among them.

“Thank you,” I mutter, staring up at Roman. I want to be happy, to be satisfied. I want so much for this day to be a joyous one. Can I stare at his scarred and strange face for the rest of my life? Can I really?

I don’t know. It seems like… I really don’t know.

He looks down on me thoughtfully, his expression quickly changing to a scowl. I get the distinct feeling he is thinking almost exactly the same thing. “You're going to take a lot of work, Marie. I hope you're worth it.”

My mouth opens to say something else but someone grabs my hand, pulling it away, shaking it enthusiastically and smiling through bleary eyes. Another relative, somebody older than dirt. I can't even remember her name, but she does seem pretty pleased about the entire operation.

“Thank you, thank you,” I say for the hundredth time. The well-wishers keep coming, one after another. I shake hands until my arms are numb, and when the first waiter passes me with a tray of champagne flutes, I make sure to grab two.

It's a new life, I guess. Time to start drinking.

ROMAN

Crowds are unpleasant. In particular, this crowd is like a nest of vipers. Not so much the grandmas and grandpas, more the people in the middle. The young guys with their eyes shifting from side to side, checking each other out. The old guys with not as many ties anymore, whose families have been whittled down to just a few remaining. Those guys can harbor a grudge.

There's too many people here to keep track of, and I don't like it one bit.

Not that Marie would notice. There she is again, giggling with her friend Gianna like a couple of high schoolers. She has absolutely no idea what's going on. No idea how much danger she's in. Put her in a pretty white dress and her brains turn to smoke.

You would think that this week had never happened. She's just standing there in the middle of the room where everyone can see her. Look at that dress, that flowing hair. That rosy blush in her cheeks. Everyone is staring at her, and she seems to love it.

Stupid.

If she was smart, she would lay low. Yes, we had to do the ceremony, but we certainly could have snuck out before dinner. Now we’re stuck here in the middle of a few hundred people of which at least a few have decent enough reasons to want to see her or her father dead. At least twice that many would like to see my head on a plate.

Stupid. Stupid.

Alek comes up to me with his arms crossed and jerks his chin to pull me away from the two babbling grandmas who are standing in front of me, just gushing some kind of grandma nonsense. I fake a language barrier and walk over to Alek near the caterers’ entrance.

“Many happy returns!” Alek says, his smile big and stupid.

“Hilarious.”

He shrugs and looks around. “Aw, come on, give up the Shrek act for just one day, would you? It's a wedding. It's
our
wedding. Try to look a little happy.”

I shake my head. I'm not in the mood for his jokes.

Alek takes a deep breath and sighs out his nose. He squints at my… our... Bride? Yeah, I guess that's what she is. He checks her out for a minute and then nods.

“Well, we could've done a lot worse. I think you should be thanking your lucky stars they didn’t marry you off to one of those bull-looking ladies over there.” He jerks his chin toward the big round table of cousins who all look like they must be part oxen.

“She’s small.”

He frowns and then raises his eyebrows. “Small could be good. Small can be fun.”

“Small could be a fucking liability, Alek,” I remind him. “I'm not a babysitter. And I'm not good at handling, you know…”

“Delicate things, I know,” he interrupts me. “Or maybe you underestimate her. Maybe she’s tougher than you think.”

“I doubt that,” I growl, watching her take another glass of champagne off a passing tray. That's five glasses if I'm counting right, and she hasn't even touched her dinner yet. She's going be passed out in short order. Which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing. Less talking.

“We're going to have beautiful children,” Alek chuckles.

“Did you have something you wanted to tell me?” I ask sharply. Enough of this time wasting.

“Yeah, yeah… Keep your pants on, Roman. You physical guys are all so itchy with the trigger finger, you know?”

I just glare at him. Alek and I may be twins, but he took a different path, studying finance back in Philadelphia and never getting his hands dirty. Alek manages books for at least seven lines of business and somehow manages to always still have a suspicious amount of free time. I swear that he graduated college with a calculator installed up his ass.

But frankly, he seems to be loving this and for the thousandth time today, I want to punch him right in the mouth. The way he’s looking at her… It’s like there’s not a doubt in his mind. He’s sold.

“Hey!” I bark at him, jolting him out of his girlie daydream. “Focus, okay?”

“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on. I didn’t find out much of anything, anyway,” he says finally. “I'm looking at a bunch of people and nobody seems to know anything.”