From across the circle of conversation, I can tell she’s settling in, adapting. The nerves are still there, hiding under the surface, but she’s learning how to use them.
After a few minutes, I murmur an excuse and step away to grab a drink. The crowd parts easily, but I still feel her presence like a pulse at the edge of my vision. Mikhail’s across the room near the bar, half-listening to one of Luciano’s men while his eyes follow me with that same smug amusement. He knows the game, sees more than I want him to. I can already feel his grin forming, waiting for me to slip, to look at her again. I ignore him and focus on the glass in my hand instead, but it doesn’t help. The taste of her is still somewhere on my tongue.
The bartender nods when I approach. “Whiskey?”
“Neat,” I say.
When I turn back, she’s not where I left her. At first, it’s just the absence that hits—a flash of empty space where she was standing. Then I find her across the room, a few steps away, cornered between the bar and a tall man in a charcoal suit I don’t recognize.
He’s leaning in, one elbow braced casually against the counter, his glass tilted in her direction. Too close. The proximity is meant to look accidental but isn’t. His smile is slow, practiced—the bastard thinks he can get away with anything.
My pulse spikes before I can stop it.
Kira’s trying to stay composed, her body caught halfway between politeness and retreat. She’s holding her champagne like it’s a prop, the rim brushing her lip but never reaching it. Her other hand is pressed against the bar, fingers curling slightly, nails faintly tapping the marble. Her shoulders are straight, her chin tilted in that way she does when she’s trying to pretend she’s fine, but her throat moves when she swallows, quick and shallow.
He says something. I can’t hear it over the noise, but I see the way she forces a small smile, the kind that doesn’t reach her eyes. It’s enough to tell me everything.
The glass in my hand feels heavier. My grip tightens until the stem creaks, so I set it down and the sound makes the bartender flinch.
The man shifts closer. His body angles toward hers, his head dipping like he’s trying to speak privately. I can see the faint twitch of irritation pull at her mouth as she leans back, just an inch.
Something inside me snaps taut. Heat floods my chest, sharp and immediate, a warning shot fired straight through my veins. By the time I reach them, I can already hear his voice.
“So you’re the new fiancée,” he says, tone dripping with lazy arrogance.
He’s standing too close, leaning in slightly, his drink tilted toward her like he’s showing off. I catch the faintest slur in his words. Drunk, maybe, or just stupid.
My hand finds Kira’s waist before I say a word. I feel her flinch, but then she goes still. My palm fits against her hip easily, and I let it stay there, firm enough that no one mistakes what it means. The man’s grin falters for a second before returning, sharper.
“Artyom Morozov,” he says, stretching my name out like a joke, his voice full of that fake politeness that begs me to punch him. “Didn’t realize your girl was so friendly.”
My tone comes out calm, but it doesn’t sound like me—it sounds too even, too sharp around the edges. “And I didn’t realize how rude some people can be.”
His smile flickers, just for a second, before he hides it behind another sip of whiskey. “Relax, Morozov. I was just being polite.”
“Polite,” my voice is flat. I take a step closer, enough that he has to tilt his head up to meet my eyes. “That what you call cornering a woman?”
He laughs under his breath, a soft, taunting sound. “Didn’t look like she minded.”
Kira’s breath catches beside me, barely audible but it’s there, that small sound that tightens something in my chest. I don’t look at her. I’m watching him instead—the lazy smirk, the raised brow, the hand that keeps playing with the rim of his glass like this is all a game.
He leans back on one heel, all that easy arrogance folding into the set of his shoulders. “You’ve got a temper lately,” he says, the words smooth as oil. “Maybe Boris is right—New York’s made you soft.”
The name lands like a thrown stone; it knocks loose something quiet and ugly in the room. His smirk is slow, practiced, the small lift of the lip that says he expects me to flinch, to nod, take the humiliation and hand it back to him like a polite favor.
Everything else recedes: the laughter at the far table becomes a soft varnish, the clink of ice in his glass a distant metronome. The world narrows to the space between his wrist and my fist, to the color draining from his face, to the sudden awareness of my own hand moving as if pulled by a string. My breath is a thin, steady thing in my chest. The blood at my temples drums loud enough to drown people out. My body goes very still, but the stillness is taut, the silence before something breaks.
The last of my control snaps, and my fingers close around his wrist with a force that surprises me, a sharp, mechanical motion. The sound is an impossibly final snap, a sound that marks a line you can’t step back over. His glass explodes at his feet, and for a second the bright, glittering shards look obscene under the chandelier light.
Conversations stop midsentence, laughter cuts off, everyone’s attention slides to us like hands drawn on a map. I hold him there for a heartbeat longer because I want to make sure the message lands. His eyes are huge now, white around the iris, pure shock and the color leaves his face in streaks.
“Next time,” I tell him, voice low and even, the words stripped of irony, “think twice before touching anyone’s fiancée.”
I let go and he stumbles back, clutching his hand, gasping through clenched teeth. The silence stretches. Then, somewhere near the bar, someone laughs under their breath. The tension breaks like a knife sliding off glass.
I turn to Kira. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, chest rising fast. She looks at me like she doesn’t know whether to slap me or run. Maybe both.
I should walk away and leave it at that. But driven but some invisible force, I take her face in my hand and kiss her hard.
