The honesty seems to catch her off guard.
“Challenge me, and I will always remind you who is in charge here.”
She laughs bitterly. “You really are an asshole, Nikolai. No wonder you had to kidnap yourself a wife. Because no woman in her right mind would willingly put up with your psychotic, controlling, narcissistic bullshit."
The words hit like a gut punch.
But I won’t let her see it.
"Feel better?" I ask.
"Actually, yes."
“Good.”
She scoffs. “You’re a lost cause, Nikolai Morozov.”
Again, her words rip through my armor and strike me in my weak spot.
What I feel for her.
"Better a lost cause than a fool who thinks this ends any other way than me getting what I want," I say, my voice cold.
She shakes her head. “I’m done with this tonight. I’m going to bed.”
She walks past me but stops at the base of the staircase and looks back. "You know, every time you force my hand, every time you threaten or manipulate or cage me in, you prove exactly why you're alone. That you'd rather have control than connection. And deep down I think you know it."
She runs up the stairs to her bedroom, and the door slams a moment later.
I drain my vodka and pour another.
And lie to myself that she is wrong.
17
HOLLY
I wake to music drifting through the darkness.
Soft at first. Almost dreamlike. Piano notes floating up through the floorboards, weaving through the silence of the sleeping lodge.
I lie there for a moment, feeling disoriented, my heart still aching from our argument earlier. From whatever I said that made something flicker behind those unreadable blue eyes. Something that looked almost like pain.
The music continues. Haunting and beautiful and so achingly sad it makes my chest tighten.
The lodge is dark as I make my way along the landing that overlooks the great room where Nikolai plays the piano and pause to listen in the soft glow of the Christmas tree lights we strung together.
Nikolai sits at the grand piano in the corner, his back to me, shirtless, in nothing but his dress pants. The fireplace casts flickering shadows across the broad expanse of his shoulders, highlighting every ridge of muscle, every line of his powerful back.
A bottle of vodka sits on top of the piano, half empty.
His fingers move over the keys with a fluidity that shouldn't surprise me but does. Each note is precise yet filled with emotion. Raw and vulnerable in a way I've never seen from him.
I should give him his privacy and go back to my room.
But I’m too mesmerized by this unseen side of Nikolai. Raw and unguarded. Stripped of his armor as he wrestles something invisible with every note he plays.
I see him clearly. A man who feels everything but keeps it hidden behind a carefully curated mask.
