Mafia Boss’s Arranged Bride by Bella King

Chapter 12

Nikolai

Ihaven’t spoken to my father since I attacked him at the house. I had to leave after that, to drive far away and make rounds about the city until I was too tired to keep going. Annika’s face was seared into my vision, and it hasn’t left since then.

I had to come back, of course, to help prepare for the wedding. I’m supposed to be there, if not just as a guard, in case someone should decide to pull a gun and kill one of the other guests. Weddings like this have a habit of turning sour.

Part of me wishes this one would too.

Watching Michail be handed a perfectly good woman on a silver platter has created a tinge of hostility in me. I won’t lie about that, as everyone in the family seems to have realized this. I’m the bad guy, as usual.

As much as I have strived to be the bigger person, to try and overcome my crippling loneliness and resentment, it creeps out of me like a weeping infection, seeping through my clothes and exposing me for the rotting, angry person that I am.

Before Annika, I was one of those people who overstated the significance of brain chemistry involved in the process of falling in love. I didn’t believe or understand the spiritual gravity that someone can have when you truly love them, like they were made just to love you.

Annika has that quiet grace about her that every other woman I’ve met lacked. Her disposition reminds me of a meadow before a sunrise. Every other woman was white sand on a beach in mid-June, beautiful and soft but scathing, reactionary.

No other women that I have known have made such an impression on me, and I have hardly just met Annika. I’ve wondered about her more recently, about where her mind is when others around her refuse to stop talking and take a breath. I know she’s observant, and I wonder how she stores away what she learns about other people, how she chooses to use the information they seem so eager to give up.

People love to bleed out information about themselves to the point that they become walking targets without knowing it. My father, of all people, was the one who taught me that, somehow existing under the impression that this concept doesn’t apply to him.

I’ve been a lurker my whole life, masquerading as a socially incompetent loudmouth while withholding things that would make me more visible to those who would want to hurt me. Fortunately, having rumors about mafia involvement surrounding your family makes it easier to be left alone.

I believe that Annika could be more like me than she lets on. If she were given the chance to lead instead of acting as a puppet for her mafia family, she could probably reach places in life that few people do.

I just have a feeling about her. I’m not sure if it’s just that she contrasts so heavily with my other experiences with women, but she has wormed her way into my brain, and I just can’t seem to figure her out. In time, as she grows with Michail and they develop a true love of sorts, maybe I’ll learn. Maybe the entire idea of her will be disillusioned for me.

Or maybe not.