Naomi reached across the seat and gathered my hand in hers. “That was good, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, brushing my thumb over her still-frigid knuckles. “It was good. Katya would have liked you.”
“I’m not sure that we would have been friends,” Naomi replied, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t do love triangles.”
Chuckling, I leaned back on the seat. “You know what I mean. You are both strong women. I think you would have found resemblances in each other.” Now I would have picked Naomi flat out between the two of them. She was, well, I felt like she was someone who made me stronger in the end. Naomi called me out on my shit where Katya never would have.
“Perhaps,” my wife murmured, resting her hand on her stomach.
I grinned, unable to help it. Naomi was showing more and more each day, and while we had decided not to find out what the sex of the baby was, I knew it was a boy. I could feel it in my bones. “You hungry?” I asked casually, already knowing the answer.
She looked over at me. “You know it.”
“Good,” I answered. “Because I have breakfast waiting on us when we return.”
Her eyes lit up at the thought of food, something I had grown accustomed to over the last few months. “With pancakes?”
I nodded, remembering what I had instructed the chef to prepare. “Both kinds.”
“God, Gavril Kirilenko,” she moaned, causing my cock to jump at attention. “You sure do know how to impress a girl.”
I hoped she would be doubly impressed with this day then.
When we arrived, I escorted her to the breakfast room, where the meal was already laid out. “Wow,” Naomi exclaimed as she stripped off her outer layers. “You weren’t lying.”
Before she could sit, however, I took her hands in mine, feeling suddenly nervous. Fuck, I never got nervous about anything. “Naomi.”
Her eyes found mine, and a spark of concern threaded through her expression. “What is it?” she asked. “Is it your family?”
I shook my head, trying to find the right words. Hell, I had rehearsed them in my head from the moment I had decided I was going to do this, and still they didn’t sound right.
“You look like you are about to be sick,” she stated, her eyes wary. “Did I push you too far, Gavril, by going to the cemetery?”
“No,” I rasped, clenching her hands in mine. “You didn’t.” That was something that had to happen for us to close that chapter in our lives.
“You are scaring me,” she said in a quiet voice.
Fuck. I lowered myself to one knee, and her eyes widened.
“You,” I started out, gazing into her eyes. “You have been the one thing I thought I could do without. When I took you, I was hell-bent on revenge. I married you for revenge, to prove a fucking point that my Bratva was coming out on top. What I didn’t expect was for you to turn my entire world completely upside down.” She had ruined me, given me the biggest slap in the face by not being Sveta, and no matter what I had tried to do to her, she hadn’t broken. Naomi had taken it all, my fucking asshole tendencies, my Bratva ways, my fucking heart, and I didn’t want it back.
I wanted her to keep it for all time, to be the one who guarded it like I knew she would, with or without making this official between us.
“Gavril,” she whispered, her eyes shining with tears. “What are you doing?”
I released one of her hands to pull out the ring that I had tucked into my pocket this morning, holding it up for her to see. “Last time I married you, I gave you another woman’s name. This time, I want to marry you, Naomi Spencer. I want it to be fucking official that you are mine, that you carry my last name.” It was something I had wrestled with, knowing that Naomi really didn’t care either way. In her heart, we were married, and in mine, she was mine for the rest of my life.
But I wanted her to have the wedding day she had dreamed of. I wanted her to know that there was no doubt in my mind who I wanted as my wife, my partner, the mother of my children. I wanted to erase the farce that had brought us together and replace it with happy memories. “Will you marry me?”
A tear slipped down her cheek as she nodded. “Of course I will marry you.” She let out a little laugh. “This is so crazy!”
I removed the rings that I had placed on her finger all those months ago, during a time when I hadn’t seen her as nothing but a means to get what I wanted, and slid on the solitaire diamond instead, pressing a kiss to her hand. “That was what was wrong with me.”
She let out a happy sob and I rose to my feet to encircle her in my arms, breathing out a long breath in the process. “Oh my God,” Naomi whispered against my chest. “This is—I can’t believe this, Gavril.”
“You are mine,” I told her, pressing my lips to her temple. “You have always been mine. I just hate that it took so long for me to come around.” I had nearly lost her a dozen times and given her good reason to walk away from me.
But she hadn’t. She had stayed when everything had seemed so bleak for her, when I had been fucking difficult to deal with.