I turned onto my side, away from him, and looked at the window.
Behind me, Viktor shifted. The warmth of his body was present at my back, not touching, the distance preserved.
He was giving me the space. Even now. Especially now.
I hated him for that too, in the small, specific way I was beginning to understand was not entirely hatred.
I can never uncross this line.
Chapter Twelve
Viktor
The reception was a performance, and I had staged it carefully.
Every element was calculated: the venue, the lighting, the guest list arranged in concentric circles of significance—innermost family and trusted associates, then the broader network of casino operators and business contacts whose goodwill was structural, then the outer ring of Las Vegas figures whose presence was itself a statement.
The statement that the Golovin Bratva is not destabilized; the Golovins are celebrating.
The message required display, which required an occasion. And that required Sofia in a dark red dress standing beside me at the entrance to the Grand Ballroom of the Golovin Casino while the Strip blazed through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind us and three hundred people made the calculation that this family had already made.
She wore it well. That was something.
Sofia had been performing composed for three days in the penthouse, which I had observed with the attention I gave everything and the specific restraint of a man who had decided that the space between them was hers to manage at whatever pace she required. The night of the wedding had changed something—I knew this, she knew this, neither of us had named it in daylight—and the days after it had been a negotiation conducted entirely in proximity and silence and the deliberatechoices of two people deciding how much ground to hold and how much to yield.
Tonight she stood at my side in dark red and received guests with the composure I had noted over days of footage: the controlled smile, the direct eye contact, the chin at its characteristic angle. She was performing, and the performance was excellent, and only I was close enough and had studied her carefully enough to see what was underneath it—the alertness of a woman doing two things simultaneously, the public face and the private assessment running beneath it, taking the measure of every person who shook her hand and offered congratulations she had not asked for.
She was magnificent, which was not a word I used about people.
“My wife,” I said, for the seventh or eighth time that evening, to a casino operator from Henderson whose name I retained without effort. The man smiled, offered something about lasting happiness, and moved on.
The words settled into my chest the way they had been settling all evening. Heavier each time. More specific.
My wife.
Sofia’s hand was at my side, her back slightly toward me as she spoke to Elena, and my hand was at the small of her back—not for the guests, or not only for the guests—and I felt her weight shift incrementally toward me, the small unconscious lean of a body that had decided something her mind was still negotiating.
I did not press the advantage. I kept my hand where it was and looked over the room.
The security configuration was tight.
I had arranged it personally, with Sergei running the floor team and two additional men covering the external perimeter. Every entrance mapped, every sight line accounted for, the guest list verified against threat assessments, and the plus-ones cross-referenced with Cruz’s known network. I had given this the same attention I gave every operational environment, which was total.
The Cruz problem had been quiet for six days. Too quiet.
I had weighed deploying a preemptive strike before the reception. Had considered it with Mikhail at 4 am three days ago, both of us in the command center, the threat mapping laid out on the table. We had concluded, jointly, that the reception could not be cancelled—cancellation was retreat, retreat was weakness, and weakness in this world propagated. The reception would proceed under maximum security.
“Alexei.”
He materialized at my elbow silently like he’d always been there.
“North perimeter reports clean,” he said before I asked. “Sergei’s running checks every fifteen minutes. Nothing unusual on the feeds.”
“Cruz is quiet.”
“Cruz is always quiet.” Alexei accepted a glass from a passing server without looking at it. “That’s what makes him interesting.” He glanced at Sofia, who was now speaking to Katerina across the room. “She’s holding well.”
“Yes.”
