"I don't belong here," she mumbles, and I hear the lack of confidence in her tone. But her shoulders stay erect and her smile stays fixed.
"No one has to know that." I set down my glass and meet her eyes, holding her gaze. "You belong wherever you decide you belong. That's the first rule of being a Donna. Act like you own the room, and everyone in it will believe you do."
We make our way to our assigned table near the front of the hall, where place cards mark our seats among a mix of businessmen and their wives. I pull out Vivika's chair, and she settles into it with the kind of grace I've been drilling into her for days. She orders from the menu so confidently, I almost don’t recognize her, nothing like the trembling woman I pulled through that window a week ago.
The transformation is remarkable, and I find myself wondering how much of it is acting and how much is the real Vivika finally finding her footing.
Dinner is served in courses, each one more elaborate than the last, and I keep one eye on Vivika and one eye on the room. The theater's busy tonight, tables filled with the usual mix of oligarchs and politicians and people who want to be seen in the right places with the right people. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that should set off the alarm bells ringing faintly in the back of my mind.
But something feels off.
I can't put my finger on it, but I've learned to trust my instincts over the years. They've kept me alive when smarter men have ended up in shallow graves. So I keep watching the room while trying to have a civil conversation with Vivika about the weather.She smiles, tilts her head right, and sips her wine occasionally, but my uneasiness never settles.
"Lev?" Vivika's voice cuts through my thoughts. "Is everything okay?"
"Fine." I force a smile as I say, "Just keeping an eye on things."
The main course arrives and we eat, maintaining the fiction of a casual evening even as my attention remains split between the woman beside me and the room full of strangers who are simply the audience for our play. And I'm reaching for my water glass when the world explodes.
The crack of the gunshot reaches my ears a fraction of a second after the tall window shatters. Glass sprays across the dining hall in a glittering cascade that has people shrieking and diving for cover. Vivika screams, and I'm already moving, throwing myself over her body and dragging her down under the table as chaos erupts around us.
People scream, running and knocking over chairs and tables in their desperation to get away from the danger. I keep Vivika pinned under me but no more shots come, only the cacophony of dozens of stampeding guests trying to get away. The shot came from outside across the street, but when I look toward the window, all I see is empty sidewalk and shattered glass.
The shooter is gone—vanished without a trace.
"Stay down," I hiss at Vivika as I clamber to my feet. And I see two men pushing through the panicked crowd toward our table. They're glaring, reaching for hidden weapons, and I know what they're here to do. They want Vivika, maybe to save her or to kill her, but I'm not going to let it happen.
The first one reaches me and throws a punch that I block with my forearm before I counter with a hook to his ribs that doubles him over. Then I bring my knee up into his face as he folds. Blood sprays from his nose and he goes down hard, but the second one's already on me, his fist connecting with my jaw in a blow that makes my vision white out for a split second.
I stagger but don't fall, muscle memory taking over as I duck under his next swing and drive my elbow into his throat. He gags and stumbles backward, hands clutching at his neck, and I follow up with a kick to his knee that drops him to the floor beside his partner.
Neither of them is getting up anytime soon, but neither of them is dead. Which means we need to move now or they'll eventually get up and attempt to take her from me again.
"Ana!" I grab her hand and haul her out from under the table. "We gotta bolt." She trembles as she climbs out from under the table, clinging to me like I’m her lifeline, and we take off.
We run through the chaos of the dining hall, weaving between overturned tables and panicked guests in evening wear, and I push through a side door into the backstage corridors of the theater where the staff are huddled in corners with faces pale from fear, but they part for us without a word as I drag Vivika toward the rear exit.
We burst through the stage door into the alley behind the Mariinsky, and thankfully, the car is parked at the curb where I left it. I shove Vivika into the passenger seat before sliding over the hood and into the car behind the wheel. The engine roars to life, and I pull away with a squeal of tires, my heart pounding and my knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"What the fuck was that?" Vivika's voice is shaking, her face so pale, she looks like a ghost.
"I don't know." And I hate that I don't know. No one warned me that this was a possibility, which means it materialized fast or Dimitri would've known. "But I'm gonna find out."
I pull out my phone and dial Yuri, keeping one hand on the wheel as we tear through the streets toward my townhouse. He answers on the second ring.
"What happened?"
"Someone tried to fucking kill me. A shooter took out a window at the Mariinsky during the charity dinner." Making it about me takes some heat off Vivika. I can't have her thinking they want to kill her or she'll back out. "Then two men came at us inside, but I put them down." I take a corner too fast and feel the car's tires skid on the wet pavement. "I think it was the Veches, but I don't have proof."
"Are you hurt?"
"No, neither is she."
"Good." Yuri always sounds so damn confident, but he's not the one with bullets flying at him. "Get her somewhere safe and stay there. I'll make some calls, see what I can find out."
"The men at the restaurant—I didn't recognize them." I know most of the hitters in that family, which makes this even more strange. Maybe Yaros hired outside help to hide his crimes from his family, or maybe it was someone else entirely. He's not the only person who stands to gain if Ana vanishes for good.
"We'll figure it out. For now, focus on keeping her alive. She's no use to us dead."
