Page 34 of Bedazzled
“Sister, this has nothing to do with you. This is Bratva business,” I’d never spoken so sharply to my - usually - sweet sister-in-law, but the scar on my face was throbbing and the searing ache in my damaged shoulder that never really went away was increasing every minute I spent arguing with her.
Blyat’!I realized, I just told Ella something is not her business. She is seconds away from stabbing me with the fireplace poker…
“That is bullshit!” She was shouting, her face red and her eyes teary. “This is you being a coward! Tania was there for you - she was always there for you and you’re throwing her away for some twenty-year-old Bratva princess?”
She was pacing in front of me and stopped to jab a finger in my chest. “You just want to suffer? Fine. Go put on your hair shirt and give yourself a thousand lashes or whatever. Suffer! Because you’re not only killing your heart, you’re crushing Tania’s, too.”
Her chest was heaving and she stared at me, waiting for… what? I couldn’t withdraw my offer for Ksenia without starting a war between our families. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and walked away.
“Gentlemen, it’s time?”
The wedding planner clearly felt the tension in the air and looked like she would rather be anywhere else, it ended the standoff between Maksim and me and I nodded to her. “We will be out in a moment.”
He straightened my lapels and forced out a smile. “I’m by your side, Yuri.”
I nodded my thanks and we walked out of the room, our men falling in behind us.
The Kazan Cathedral was packed full, and representatives from nearly every organized crime group in the world were here to pay their respects. Chikao Nakamura from the Japanese Yakuza, Thomas and Lauren Williams representing The Corporation, Dario and Giovanni of the Toscano Mafia, Alexi and Lucya Turgenev, our closest Russian allies, and a hundred more.
I took my place with Maksim and scanned the crowd, a grim sort of resignation hardening in my chest. Ksenia Balabanov was approaching the altar and it was time to forget everything else if I wanted to get through this ceremony.
Goodbye, Tania.
It was during the betrothal ceremony when the Archbishop’s droning voice was interrupted.
“I object!”
Tania…
Patrick was extremely helpful in many ways; having the MorozovObshchakin my corner was definitely making the most suicidal, irrational rescue plan ever devised take shape.
“You’re going to be taken into the back of the cathedral in a weapons container-”
“Seriously? You guys are bringing Kalashnikovs into God’s house? Wow. Eternal damnation. I mean-”
He leveled me with a glare. “My corner suite in hell is already spoken for. Now shut up and pay attention.”
It turns out that the Morozov Empire has no less than four private jets, and Patrick and I are on one of them. He had me all dressed up and in a wig and a bunch of other stuff to confuse the flight crew into thinking I was his date for the wedding. But now that we were landing in St. Petersburg, the complete dumbassed-ness of what I was about to do hit me,
“Um, would your guys or the Balabanov guys actually shoot me in the cathedral?”
“No,” he said absently, poring over the schematics, “they’d drag you outside first.” Glancing up to see my expression, he grabbed my hand. “No one’s going to hurt you. I give you my word. If the worst happens, I will get you out of there.”
I squared my shoulders. “Then let’s do this. Yuri is going to kiss my feet for the rest of our lives together to make up for his ridiculous beliefs and his overdeveloped need for self-sacrifice.”
“Ar fheabhas!”Patrick rubbed his hands together. “Excellent! Let’s go.”
I would have thought infiltrating a huge Bratva wedding wouldn’t have been so easy, but Patrick didn’t makeObshchakwithout deserving it, thanks to his attention to detail and a level of sneakiness I could not help but admire.
Once in, I walked into the restroom dressed as a groundskeeper and walked out as a wedding guest, wrapping a scarf over my hair the way I’d seen Ella do at church.
The iconostasis of the Kazan Cathedral made the word ‘majestic’ seem too feeble to explain it. The massive gold arch guarded the doors to the Sanctuary, and exquisite, centuries-old paintings of religious icons covered the walls. A gargantuan chandelier lit the room, reflecting off every gilded surface.
Wedding guests were streaming in through the four massive bronze doors, passing under the dome. For a minute, I let myself stand under it, looking up as expensively dressed people moved around me like a stone in a stream. The dome soared up twenty-one stories high, and it felt like it reached high enough to catch the attention of the Almighty. I said a small prayer, hoping that being Catholic wouldn’t make the Russian Orthodox God strike me down with a bolt of lightning.
I made my way to the far left of the women’s section behind the icon of the Virgin, planting my feet every time someone tried to get me to move over.
“Weak bladder,” I said to one extremely pushy lady in broken Russian, “you really don’t want to be between me and a bathroom.”
