Leonid stumbled out of the lavish casino, his vision blurred and his mind hazy from the endless stream of vodka shots and who knows what else his men had convinced him to inhale. The neon lights of the Las Vegas strip flickered before his eyes like distorted stars as he made his way down the crowded sidewalk, the fabric of his expensive suit feeling foreign against his overheated skin.

His security detail, equally inebriated but still vigilant, flanked him on either side. They had been celebrating a successful week of business meetings, securing new deals and consolidating the organization's power in the region. Leonid was the boss, and his word was law. When he wanted to party, they partied hard.

As he pushed his way into a packed nightclub, the bass of the music thumping through his chest like a second heartbeat, Leonid's eyes fell upon a man across the crowded dance floor. The stranger was just as drunk, his hair a wild mess and his shirt half-unbuttoned. But there was something about him that drew Leonid in against his better judgment.

What happened after was a blur of tequila shots, loud music, and reckless laughter.

---

Leonid groans and rolls over in the unfamiliar king-sized bed, his head pounding and his mouth feeling like he'd swallowed a bucket of sand. As scraps of memory from the night before flash through his mind—the blurry dance floor, the shots, the laughter—he glances down and notices an unfamiliar glint on his left hand.

A gold ring.

Leonid's brow furrows as he struggles to sit up, his body protesting the movement with every muscle screaming in protest. He glances around the opulent hotel suite, his eyes landing on the person laying beside him, and it all comes rushing back in a terrifying flood. The stranger from the club, the wild laughter as they stumbled out of the chapel, the enthusiastic officiant in his Elvis costume. Leonid and that stranger, who he now recognizes with horror as being his biggest rival, getting married in a drunken fit of passion under the neon lights of Vegas.

Leonid curses in Russian under his breath, running a hand through his disheveled blonde hair. This was going to be a problem. A big problem. Two titans of the underworld, now legally yoked together like a pair of oxen... he needs to wake his new spouse up and find a way to fix this immediately.

He jolts the man awake with a firm shake, hands gripping his shoulders tightly enough to leave marks.

"What the fuck happened last night?" Leonid growls, his Russian accent thick with fury and hangover-induced pain.