Page 61 of Ruined By Sin

"What about the venue?" Kira asks, scrolling through something on her phone between bites. "Dugan found this place outside the city with gardens and a terrace. It does fall weddings."

"Does it have adequate security access points?" She has no clue, but this is how I get her off the scent. I start talking logisticsand safety and she gets annoyed. We're already an old married couple and our wedding is still months out.

"Timur."

"I'm serious. If we're putting both families in one location, I need to know I can cover the perimeter. Send me the floor plan."

"You're not turning our wedding into an operation," she snips, jerking her hand away when I try to reach for her phone. But I still have that stupid smirk on my face because I can't ever truly piss her off. She's too special to me.

"Every event is an operation. That's literally my job."

Both eyebrows peak in the center as she sets her phone down and looks at me. "You look exhausted."

"I am exhausted." I sit back and sigh, glad she recognized my misery.

"We can finish the guest list tomorrow."

"Thank God." I push my plate forward and rub both hands over my face. What I want right now is my study, my chair, and about three fingers of whiskey. Maybe four. Definitely four. "I'm going to head to my office for a bit to wind down. You good?"

"Not yet." She holds up a finger. "Dessert first."

"I'll skip it tonight... I don’t have the appetite. And I?—"

"No, you won't," Kira snaps, cutting me off. It isn't often she gets pushy, but it appears on a night I really need to relax is right when she feels the need to dance on my boundary line.

"Kira, I love you, but I'm so tired I can barely taste anything right now. Whatever Sonya made will be wasted on me."

"I made it, not Sonya... Please..."

And now she's fidgeting, rearranging the used silverware and shifting her glass. She's been like this all evening, actually. Little things I chalked up to wedding stress. Adjusting her hair, checking her phone, bouncing her knee under the table when she thought I couldn't see it.

"You're being weird tonight," I tell her.

"I'm not being weird."

"You've reorganized the salt and pepper three times since we sat down."

"Maybe your salt and pepper needed reorganizing." She pushes back from the table. "Sit. I'll get it."

She disappears into the kitchen and when she comes back, Sonya follows behind her carrying a plate with a single cupcake on it. Chocolate, from the look of it, with some kind of dark frosting swirled on top. Sonya sets it in front of me and I swear she's about to vibrate out of her skin. Her eyes are bright and she's pressing her lips together like she's physically holding back words.

Kira sinks back into her chair, and her eyes are misty. I look up at the maid, then at my wife-to-be, and wonder what these two have cooked up.

"Thank you, Sonya," I say, and I stare at the cupcake. I don't love cupcakes. I've never loved cupcakes. They're too sweet and they're too small to be a real dessert and the frosting always gets everywhere. Kira knows this. She's watched me turn down cupcakes at three different events since we've been together.

"I know you don't like them," she says, reading my face. "But I made this one with my mother's recipe. The chocolate is from the good shop on Lenina, and the ganache inside is the same one my mom used to make for my dad's birthday every year. It's perfect, I promise."

"I appreciate the effort, but I'm really not?—"

"Please." She puts her hand on my arm and her palm is sweaty. "Just cut into it—one bite. If you hate it, you can go to your office and drink whiskey until you pass out. I won't say a word."

Kira seems nervous now, but I'm getting annoyed. If she insists I take a bite, I'll take a bite, but my God, I need a drink. And with Sonya standing over us, the last thing I want to do is argue with her over a stupid cupcake.

"Alright," I say, picking up my fork, "one bite."

I press the fork into the center of the cupcake and it sinks through the cake easily. When I pull the fork back, the center splits open and a thick, glossy chocolate ganache oozes out across the plate in a slow, dark river. It looks incredible, I'll give her that. My mother couldn't have done better.

But sitting in the middle of the ganache, resting on the plate where it fell from inside the cupcake, is a tiny porcelain figurine. I set the fork down and pick it up between my thumb and forefinger and hold it up to look at it.