Mafia Boss’s Arranged Bride by Bella King
Chapter 21
Annika
It’s 12:06 AM. Nikolai fell asleep about an hour ago.
James came up a while ago and told us that we need to avoid being up too late to prevent lights from being seen by outsiders, but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight. I’m shocked that Nikolai is able to sleep at all.
The shipping container we’ve been cordoned into is larger than I had expected it to be but much colder than I imagined. Nikolai managed to scrounge a few extra blankets, but I feel like my toes are going to fall off the later the night gets.
Nikolai gave all the sheets to me, but I didn’t keep them for myself. After he fell asleep, I draped them over his shoulder, content to lay shivering under the last one. I wrap myself tightly in the sheet, trying to remember how I would keep myself warm at sleepovers when I forgot a blanket. It was never this cold.
My head is still vibrating with the aftermath of the massacre. I try desperately to remember the events as they happened, to remember if I saw my mother or father gunned down. I try to remember what I was thinking in those final moments before the first shot rang out.
There’s nothing there, not a thing in my head except blankness and static.
I close my eyes and try to think myself into a warmer state, imagining a hot sun above me or warm water below me. It works in bursts, just long enough for me to drift to sleep before the effect wears off, and I am jolted awake by the freezing air that slips through the seams of the shipping container.
I watch Nikolai sleep for a bit. Even in sleep, he appears so guarded and defensive, like he’s ready to attack or that he’s pretending to even be asleep. It makes me wonder what his life was like before now to instill those traits in him.
Clearly, his father is a monster and a tyrant. I’m saddened to think that he has endured the threat of something so catastrophic and life-altering for his entire life.
Of course, I will grieve forever. I will cry and scream and beg God to bring my family back, but when I think about the Ivanovs, I’m overcome with gratitude at the memory of a family who loved me, even if it was with gritted teeth and a fake smile.
My mother always loomed over my shoulders, quick to correct me as though she was living her life through me. Maybe now, that’s reality. If she’s gone, then I’m the last woman in my family to carry on through this cold and bitter world.
I hate Dimitri Ivanov for what he has done. I hate the entire mafia for existing. I hate guns, and I hate Russia, and I hate money more than anything in the world right now.
But I don’t hate Nikolai, no matter how much of his father’s blood he has. Nikolai chose to save me. He chose to defy his own family, and now he lies asleep in a freezing cold shipping container just so he can keep me safe. There is nothing to hate there at all.
Michail’s face appears in my mind as I attempt to fall asleep again, and I can only see him as the enemy.
Nikolai says that Michail would never have done such a thing if he knew that this would be the aftermath, but I’m not sure if I can believe that. Michail was so obedient, the perfect heir of such a corrupt empire.
I never liked people like that, people who were groomed for a position and landed there perfectly. They hand over their life to some other person’s desires, as though they have no brain to make their own decisions with, no free will to live an authentic life.
And that’s what it is – fake.
Nikolai’s defiance of his father’s wishes would have given him more romantic favor than Michail had I been given the chance to choose. I would’ve chosen to marry Nikolai in a heartbeat, and now he’s here beside me. I guess I didn’t have to choose.
I picture my poor mother’s face, her harried and tense expression being the last of her I would likely ever see. There is so much regret in my heart for her, for her choices and the things she was forced to do to survive in America. Before she was a bored drunken socialite married to a criminal, she had aspirations to be an art historian.
The face of the woman in the pink dress flashes through my mind, the image of sticky black blood pouring from her chest as she gazes up helplessly at me, then through me as her life is stolen from her.
She attended a meaningless wedding to die a meaningless death.
The cold shakes me out of my hopeless thoughts, and I realize I am shaking with rage and sorrow once again. I try to stop myself to avoid being any more of a burden to those who are caring for me. They don’t need some hysterical stranger awakening them and making herself the center of attention.
I curl myself up and hold the blanket tight to my face as the sobs come back in waves. My breathing is labored because my grief has chosen to hold my lungs captive until it has had its time.
Nikolai wakes up a bit when he feels me moving, and at that moment, I wish I would just fall through the floor and disappear. Without a word, he turns toward me and embraces me, pulling me into his chest under the blankets, and I completely let go.
He keeps me close as my muscles go limp, and I concede to the waves again. I forget everything before today, because as of right now, there is nothing except today. I’m not guaranteed a future, but I do have this moment with Nikolai, and I cling to it like it’s my final hour.
