Page 111 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
"There is a harvest carnival in the next town over," she said. "It runs to the end of the month. String lights, a small Ferris wheel, a band by the cider tent. Public, but big enough that we can stand in one corner of it and have it be only ours. Family can drift in like normal carnival-goers. Your men can do the same."
"Ferris wheel is out," I said. "I am not putting her up in the air."
"I was not going to put a pregnant woman at the top of a Ferris wheel, Daniil. Give me some credit." She set her cup down. "There is an apple-bobbing booth on the south end. Next to it, a small oak with a string of white lights wound up throughthe branches. Quieter than the main strip. You can walk her there and it will look like you wandered."
"That is the spot," I said.
"I'll handle the family," she said. "I'll bring her grandmother. I'll call Jacob. The brothers and the wives will be in place by the hour you set. You handle Chloe. You handle the ring."
"Done."
She looked at me. Her head tilted a little. "Show me."
I took the box out of my coat. I had been carrying it for six days. I opened it on her coffee table.
The ring was small. A single old stone in a setting that had not been new even when my mother had worn it, two thin curls of gold like leaves on either side of the stone. It was not the kind of ring a man bought to be seen with. Chloe's hand was small. Chloe did not like flashy. I had thought about it for a long time before I went to the safe and lifted out the box that had not been opened since the last time my mother took the ring off in a kitchen in a city neither of us would name.
Lily looked at the ring. She looked at me. "Your mother's?"
"Yes."
She pressed her fingers to her mouth for a second. Her eyes went bright. She did not let them spill. "She would have loved her."
I did not have a thing to say to that. I closed the box and slid it back into my coat pocket, and Lily let me have the silence for as long as I needed it.
I told Chloe that night, in our bedroom, with Rhea standing on the foot of the bed in her pajamas because she had been told she could be there for the announcement. I did not say the word proposal. I said the word carnival. I said the word cider. I said the words caramel apple.
Chloe lit up the way she did when she could not pretend to be a grown-up about a thing. Rhea launched off the bed with Beom-Beom in a fist over her head.
"Beom-Beom votes yes," she informed us, breathless. "I asked him. He voted yes."
"He gets a vote now?" I said.
"Always," Rhea said. "You just didn't ask."
She climbed back onto the bed and bounced. The mattress took it. So did I.
"Will there be cotton candy?"
"Probably."
"Will there be one of those games where you knock down the bottles?"
"Probably."
"Will there be a Ferris wheel?"
"Yes."
"Can I ride it by myself?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because the answer to that one is always no until you are tall enough to drive."
She thought about it. She accepted it. She bounced one more time, then crawled across the comforter and laid her head on Chloe's stomach the way she had been doing for two days, very gentle, very serious, the bear tucked under her chin.
