I see her as she is now, flushed and furious and hurt, a binder clutched to her chest like armor, her coat open over the soft lines of her body. I see the strain in her face, the effort it takes to keep herself upright while a room full of people watches. And then, because memory is a vicious thing, I see something else layered over her all at once.
Her on the plane, head tipped back, mouth open on a gasp. My hand spreading her thighs wider while I fuck into her slow and deep, making her shake for me, making her take it while the cabin trembles around us.
I shut the memory down at once.
Not here. Not now. I have just walked into my son’s rehearsal dinner to find her being humiliated in front of a room full of guests, and whatever else this is, whatever she was to me for those hours in the air, it can wait.
My voice lands flat and cold across the table.
“That’s enough.”
Silence falls so quickly it feels unnatural.
Ethan turns first, then stills when he sees me. “F-Father,” he says.
I take another step into the room and look from him to Camille, then to the place card, then back to Sienna. Her fingers are white around the binder. She’s holding herself together by force, and the sight of that does something ugly to my temper.
“What exactly,” I say, “is going on here?”
No one answers.
Camille opens her mouth, thinks better of it, then says, “There was a problem with the seating.”
I don’t look at her. “Was there?”
Ethan clears his throat. “It’s handled.”
I let my gaze settle on him. “No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
His jaw tightens.
The room has gone still in the way rooms do when people realize something entertaining has turned dangerous and they are no longer sure which side of it they are standing on.
I stop beside the table. “Apologize to her.”
Ethan blinks. “What?” The word comes out thin, as if he’s buying time.
I don’t give him any. “Apologize,” I repeat. “Now.”
Camille says, a little too quickly, “Viktor, really, this is just a misunderstanding.”
I turn my head and look at her.
That’s all it takes. She falls silent.
Then I look back at my son. “You do not insult a woman in public,” I say. “And you do not stand there smiling while other people do it for you.”
His face hardens. Embarrassment, resentment, the first stirrings of anger. None of it interests me.
“Father, I didn’t?—”
“You did.”
A beat passes.
Then another.
I can feel every eye in the room moving between us, but I keep mine on Ethan.
