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“I have not met her yet.”
“You know,” I say, “you do have the right to object.”
Anton gives me a look that is almost amused.
“Do I?”
“You have more influence than you think.”
“That is easy for you to say. You just walked out of my father’s office after telling him you would burn down your entire career before you gave up Maksim.”
“I was prepared to.”
“And I am prepared to do what is necessary for my family.”
The answer is immediate.
Honest.
I understand it, even if I do not like it.
“You deserve the chance to choose,” I say.
Anton’s expression softens slightly.
“As the first grandchild of the Petrov family, choice is rarely clean.” He pauses. “But I will not make the mistake you did. If there is something I cannot carry alone, I will tell the people who are capable of helping.”
“Good.”
He studies me again, then extends his hand and I clasp it. His grip is firm, steady, familiar.
“I’m always here if you need me, Anton.”
“Likewise.”
Chapter 39
MAKSIM
The kitchen looks like a war zone.
Not an actual war zone, obviously. Nobody has been stabbed, nothing is on fire, and there isn’t a body hidden under the kitchen island. So, by our standards, this is a remarkably peaceful evening.
Still, there is flour on the counter, on the floor, and somehow on Lucas’s refrigerator, and a suspicious streak of tomato sauce across my Betty Boop apron that I refuse to take responsibility for. There are bowls scattered across the marble island, shredded mozzarella piled in a dangerously large mountain beside a bowl of pepperoni, cookie dough waiting to be shaped on a baking tray, and three different utensils currently being used for purposes they were not designed for.
And somehow, despite all of that, Tyler is maintaining control.
Barely.
“If either of you touches that chocolate mixture with a wet spatula again, I am calling your respective mothers and telling them you were swapped at birth.”
Tyler points a silicone spatula directly at my nose, his painted almond-shaped red nails catching the bright light from the kitchen pendant.
“I didn’t touch it with water, you hysterical queen,” I snap, leaning over the marble counter and snatching a generous pinch of shredded mozzarella meant for the pizza. “I touched it with my finger to taste it.”
“With your bare, unwashed mob fingers,” Tyler gasps, swatting the back of my hand with the flat of the spatula. “Gross. Cross-contamination. Food poisoning!”
“You literally made us wash our hands and scrub the living daylight out of them before we even tied the aprons,” I shoot back, popping the cheese into my mouth anyway.
