Page 104 of Midnight Wedding

This family is littered with secrets.

He can say I’m not being haunted all he wants—but there are ghosts all over this house. Some are still waiting for me to find them.

Chapter 37

Arsen

The war grinds to a halt.

It’s an uncomfortable truce. Baltimore feels like it’s about to explode at any second. More than once over the next week, I have to put out a fire when some of my younger and stupider soldiers nearly broke the agreement and reignited the fighting.

Everyone’s on edge. I want to get this fucking deal done and so do all my captains and lieutenants.

Everyone except for Garen.

The old prick’s acting like this is no big deal. Every time we meet to discuss terms, he comes up with some fucking excuse to drag things out.

And to make it all worse, Lena’s avoiding me.

She’s not running away every time I see her, but it’s like she’s hiding in plain sight.

There’s no spark. No excitement.

And she’s sleeping in the fucking guest room.

It’s driving me crazy, but I can tell she needs some space. I won’t force her into anything she doesn’t want to do, but I wish she could understand.

I care about her.

Way more than is fucking healthy.

I was watching her in the walls because I had to be near her, but I didn’t want to suffocate her either. She’s the kind of woman that needs a little space and freedom to thrive.

And it felt like she was growing and blossoming, at least until lately.

Now she’s pulling into herself, and it’s stressing me the fuck out.

But as the clock runs out, the war takes precedent.

The back room of the Brotherhood-owned laundromat smells like chemicals and cleaning solvents. Huge, industrial cleaners hum and groan as clothes spin around and around in the fancy mixtures. Pants hang in neat rows, and suits are draped in plastic. Six men sit around a table groaning under the weight of alcohol bottles and decent cheese.

Tigran’s scowling at everyone. The uncles are acting like nothing’s going on, but there’s an ugly undercurrent to the whole proceedings. I smile and nod and talk as if nothing’s going on, but we all know we’re pretending. We all know what’s happening here.

Uncle Narek’s the one to finally broach the subject. He lights a cigar and grips it between his hairy knuckles. I’m thinkingsmoking around dry-cleaned clothes is probably a bad idea, but it’s not my problem.

“At the start of all this, we gave you a month to figure it out.” Narek’s staring at me with that almost amused smile of his. He’s good at making it seem like this is no big deal. “And now, that month is over.”

“We wanted more,” Uncle Levon says. The wiry fucker crosses his arms.

Sevan and Razmik exchange looks with each other, but they’re cousins and not ranked high enough to have a fucking opinion right now.

“We delivered,” Tigran says. He leans forward. “We have Aunt Sona. Garen’s in the process of negotiating. The ceasefire holds.”

“Ceasefire is not a truce.” Narek gestures with his cigar. “We wanted the war to be fuckingover, like it was supposed to be before Arsen here decided to marry some random fucking Russian girl.”

My hands curl against the table. “You will be respectful of my wife,” I say with a dagger edge.

Narek’s lips curl. He’s about to say something that will get him killed, but clearly thinks better of it and deflates.

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