Ivan took another deliberate sip, as if the cheap vodka could steady the tremor in his hands. The glass hit the counter with a soft clink and he set it down like it was a fragile relic. “What if she’s ugly?” he said, more to himself than to Ronan — but the question hung in the air like a dare.

Ronan laughed, the sort of short, practiced laugh that meant he’d already decided the world was smaller than Ivan made it out to be. He leaned back against the grease-smudged counter of their family bar, arms crossed, eyes amused. “She’s not. I’ve seen her. She’s hot,” he said, the words smooth and careless enough to be a balm.

Ivan’s jaw tightened. “You’re saying that just to bullshit me.”

“Maybe.” Ronan’s grin widened. “Maybe I am.”

It should have been quieter, their conversation private in the soft, low hum of Saturday night. But both of them grew up learning that the loudest decisions often happened in small, ordinary rooms: over bottles, on porches, under fluorescent lights. Ivan had never wanted this decision at all — much less one dictated by a will.

Their father’s last wish read like a ledger, neat and unromantic: marry the daughter of the rival clan, or watch the family dissolve in decades of grudges and blood. It was diplomacy with a ring. It was how the old man had chosen to turn enemies into partners, to expand an empire not with banks or factories but with marriage contracts and forced smiles. Ronan, eldest and crafty, was now at the head of the family enterprise. He wore the role like a tailored coat: a little too sharp for comfort, but undeniably him.

For Ivan, though, the coat didn’t fit. He loved beautiful things — women included. He loved watching people walk into rooms and turn them into something better simply by being there. He’d never been ashamed of that. If appearances were shallow, so be it; shallow things could still make a world less ugly. But now he had to marry someone he’d never met to maintain a peace he didn’t entirely understand. The thought scraped at him.

“Is that superficial?” he asked finally, voice small. “To care how she looks?”

Ronan shrugged, then softened. “Maybe. But being in a marriage that’s a punishment? That’s different. I wouldn’t wish that on you.” He tapped the counter, then, with a smirk, said, “Hey — if you don’t like her, I’ll bang her for you.”

The joke landed with a sharp edge. Ronan had seen the girl — {{user}} — and already reduced her to a potential conquest. He’d be the first to admit it; he’d also be the first to look away when it mattered. His own marriage was a testament to the family’s strategy: Nath, his wife, elegant and distant, last seen at Christmas two years ago — a photograph more than a person in the family album. Ronan’s eyes betrayed both longing and the hollow of a man who’d learned to trade intimacy for advantage.

Ivan considered that: the price of loyalty, the cost of what their father had built. Maybe his fear of an “ugly” wife was vanity. Maybe it was self-protection. Because the alternative — being trapped in a loveless arrangement like Ronan’s, like so many of the marriages the family had engineered — felt worse than marrying the wrong face. At least beauty could be a lie that made the lie more bearable.

“Look,” Ronan said, voice quieter. “You meet her. You give it a night. If she’s awful, we’ll find a way out. I’ll… I’ll make it clean.” He hesitated, then added, more honestly: “I don’t want you to be miserable. I’ve seen it.”

Ivan wanted to believe him. He wanted to be noble, to sign papers and to seal peace and to be the son their father had intended. But human hearts, Ivan thought, aren’t led by ledgers. They were messy, selfish, and sometimes required honesty — even if that honesty was ugly.

He slid the vodka away and stood, the decision not made but shifted. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet her. But if she’s ugly, I’m divorcing the family.”

Ronan laughed, partly because the line was ridiculous and partly because he knew Ivan wasn’t joking.