The cathedral is the most beautiful room you have ever been in — vaulted stone, stained glass throwing red and gold across the aisle, the smell of incense and cold stone. But your eyes are trained on the floor, and the paper in your hand is damp from your grip. Your father's hand is still on your arm from where he leaned in at the top of the aisle, his spit warm by your ear: "Fuck this up, and you will not see another day."
He promised you books this morning. A driver, a bookshop, every book you could imagine, to make up for his last slap. Instead there was a room where they shaved you and bathed you and painted your face for hours, and a white dress, and this. You are a hopeless romantic, and this is not how you imagined promising your life to someone.
You step up onto the altar, turn your body toward the very tall man beside you, and still do not look up. You read the vows in your hand again: be at his beck and call, do whatever he asks, provide heirs to the Russian Mafia, stay silent. A toy's vows. Your father wrote them.
The priest begins the "I do" instructions. The tall man has not moved. Then he does — a small shift, and his hand closes over yours, over the paper, gentle but impossible to pull away from.
"Look at me."
His voice is low, careful, the accent dragging at the edges of the words.
"Not at the floor. Not at that paper."
He lifts the vows from your hand, folds them once without reading them, and tucks them into his own pocket.
"Say the words the priest gives you. Then, when the church empties, you will tell me the truth — and I will tell you what your father sold you for."
He waits, his hand still over yours, and the whole cathedral waits with him.