Page 110 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
I had thought, walking into Lily's kitchen, that today would be the day I learned I was carrying a new life. It was. I had not known it would also be the day I learned what it looked like to make room at the same table for one more person without anyone losing their seat.
29
DANIIL
The maps were down. That was the first thing I saw when I walked into the war room. The wall where the Marchetti territories had hung for months was bare plaster, two stray pieces of tape still clinging to the paint where the corners had been. A coffee pot sat on the long table in place of a sidearm. Alek had his sleeves rolled to the forearm. Mikhail had his boots up on a chair and a mug balanced on his knee. Ivan stood at the window with his back to the rest of us, watching the drive, because Ivan was Ivan even on a quiet morning.
I poured my own coffee. I sat. Alek walked us through the week the way he always did. The remnants of the Marchetti crew had been finished or had run. Two of the businesses we had pulled back online were already turning a clean number. No new chatter from the docks. The week, in plain Russian, had been boring. I had not known I was waiting to hear that word until it landed.
I watched my brothers' shoulders drop by a finger's width each. Alek closed the folder. Mikhail finally took his boots off the chair. Ivan turned from the window and accepted a mug from his older brother without looking at it.
I set my coffee down.
"Good," I said. "Now we plan a proposal."
Three pairs of eyes. The silence had a shape to it.
"May I be excused from this part?" Ivan said, deadpan.
"No," I said.
Mikhail was already laughing, low and ugly. "Oh, this is going to be terrible."
"I have ideas," Mikhail said, when the laughter settled. He put his mug down so he could use both hands. "Hear me out. Chartered yacht. Out on the lake. Sunset. Four-piece band on the lower deck. You go down on one knee at the bow. Photographer, drone shot, the whole production."
"She gets seasick in a rowboat," I said. "She is also pregnant. You want me to put my pregnant fiancee on a boat at sunset in late autumn?"
"I am a romantic," Mikhail said.
"You are a menace," I said.
Alek leaned back. He had the calm of a man who had thought about this for forty seconds and decided he had the answer. "Candlelit dinner. Compound. Long table, the good linens. String quartet in the next room, soft. Just the two of you. Tasteful."
"That is the dinner she eats every other week," I said. "I am proposing, not feeding her a weeknight meal."
"I voted not to be in this meeting," Ivan said. "But since I am here. Call a priest. Take her to the church. Skip the production entirely. It is more honest."
"You want me to ambush her with a wedding instead of a proposal," I said.
Ivan shrugged one shoulder. "She likes you. She would say yes either way."
"That is the worst sentence to ever come out of your mouth, and you have said many things." I stood. I lifted my hands. Themug stayed where I had left it. "I am wasting my morning. I am going to talk to Lily."
"He says we are wasting his time," Mikhail said, delighted.
"We would be insulted if we were better at this," Alek said, mild, not offended.
"I voted priest," Ivan said. "Note it."
I left them in the war room with the bare wall and the coffee pot and the sound of Mikhail starting in on Ivan's church plan with the dedication of a man who would not let it go.
Lily kept a sitting room off the east hall, the one with the window seat and the small fire that always seemed to be lit whether anyone was in there or not. I knocked once. She was already on the couch with a cup in her hands and a closed book on her thigh, as if she had known I was coming. She probably had. Alek probably texted her between sentences.
"I want to propose," I said. "My brothers are useless."
"Yes," she said at once. "Tell me what you have."
I sat across from her. I told her what I had, which was an antique ring in a velvet box and a woman I would die for and a date inside the next two weeks before the weather turned hard. I told her the suggestions my brothers had floated. She did not laugh out loud. She did smile into her tea.
