So, I wait. I stand there with my glass, ignore Kai’s look, and watch the room the way men watch battlefields when they already know where the bodies are going to fall.
“Nikolaj.”
Kai’s voice cuts in hard, and I drag my gaze off the dance floor to look at him.
His expression is the exact opposite of helpful. Calm, dry, exasperated in a way that would be funny if my blood didn’t feel like it was trying to burn straight through my skin.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” he says quietly, “the answer is no.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to. Your face is practically a manifesto.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I say.
Kai glances at me. “No, you’re not.”
The certainty in his voice annoys me almost as much as the truth of it.
I set the fresh glass down untouched before I put it through a wall, too. “He wants to see how far he can push.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to teach him not to.”
Kai exhales slowly through his nose. “By doing what, exactly. Causing a diplomatic incident at a charity gala full of cameras and old money?”
“No,” I say. “By reminding him that he doesn’t get to wave my own history in my face and then pretend he’s shocked when I react.”
That earns me one of those long, suffering looks only Kai can manage without it turning theatrical. “Your issue is not that he’s pretending to be shocked.”
“No,” I say, too calm now. “It isn’t.”
My body moves before I consciously decide to.
The corridor is quieter than the ballroom by design, a spillover space dressed in soft gold lighting, framed mirrors, and rich carpet meant to absorb sound and scandal in equal measure. The bathrooms are farther down, but I don’t head there directly.
There’s a side salon halfway down the corridor used for private donor meetings and emergency storage when event staff needa place to hide flowers, gift baskets, or badly behaved board members.
Tonight it’s empty—I know because I checked on the way in.
Vincenzo slowly rounds the corner near the salon entrance, and I’m already there waiting. His eyes meet mine for one second, and he has just enough time to look pleased with himself before I catch him by the arm and haul him through the nearest door.
He doesn’t resist, and that nearly drives me through the fucking floor.
The room is dim compared to the corridor, lit by one low lamp and whatever light sneaks in from under the door to the hall. Small. Private. A sofa. Two chairs. A narrow drinks cart nobody has touched. Enough space for the kind of conversation respectable men deny ever having.
The second the door shuts behind us, Vincenzo turns in my grip. “You’re in a mood,” he says.
I let go of his arm only to shove him back against the closed door hard enough to make it rattle. “You think?”
His dark eyes move over my face, taking inventory. I’m close enough to smell the expensive cologne on him, mixed with champagne and the faint trace of Arabella’s perfume at his collar. That last part almost sets me off all over again.
“I think,” he says carefully, “that you’re in a mood.”
I bare my teeth. “A mood.”
“Mhm.”
