Page 139 of Vow to Claim You

Ayanna nods, exhaling a long, shaky breath that seems to carry all the tension she’s been holding. She descends the stairs slowly, walks through the hall, and stops in front of me. Her eyes search mine, looking for something—doubt, maybe, or hesitation.

“He’ll come for you now,” she whispers. “For us. This isn’t⁠—”

“Let him try.”

I pull her closer. One arm around her waist, the other hand tilting her chin up so she has to look at me.

“Whatever your father is planning,” I say, “whatever he thinks he’s going to do, I will protect you. Both of you. No matter what it costs.”

She rises on her toes and kisses me.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Ayanna

The next weeks pass in a whirl of caterers and florists and invitation designers and venue tours (we settled on the Vold estate itself, because apparently my husband owns a ballroom I didn’t know existed until the second week of planning), color-palette debates (champagne and black and deep magenta), and menu tastings that have left me with strong opinions about canapés and an unexpected hatred for goat cheese foam.

Weeks of building something from nothing, and I have never felt more alive.

Back in Monsera, my charity work was always filtered through the royal machinery—committees and advisers and publicists who turned every idea I had into something unrecognizable by the time it reached the public.

Not here. Here, I am the committee. The adviser. The publicist. The woman making decisions and watching them become real.

It’s terrifying and exhilarating and mine.

The gala is set for Saturday—two weeks away—and the house has transformed into carefully orchestrated chaos.

Ingrid has taken charge of household logistics with the efficiency of a military general, coordinating staff schedules and delivery windows and the thousand small details that separate a successful event from a disaster. She’s in her element, clipboard in hand, reading glasses perched on her nose, occasionally muttering in Norwegian at vendors who don’t meet her standards.

I’ve learned to stay out of her way when she gets that particular look in her eye.

The event coordinator Aric hired (at my request because I know my limits and floral installations are firmly one of them) has turned the ballroom into something out of a dream. Crystal and candlelight. Black silk and champagne roses. A string quartet will play in the corner. A silent auction will line the walls. And at the center of it all, a dance floor where the most powerful criminals in the world will waltz with their wives and pretend to be civilized.

Hosting a charity gala for a children’s hospital with money earned from organized crime is not something I ever pictured myself doing.

Baby steps. One moral compromise at a time.

“You’re staring at the seating chart again.”

Naomi’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts. She’s curled on the sofa in the library, a book in her lap she hasn’t turned a page of in twenty minutes. I know because I’ve been watching her pretend to read while she actually watches the door. Waiting for a certain blond Vold brother to walk through it.

“I’m not staring,” I say, dragging my attention back to the papers spread across the desk. “I’m strategizing.”

“You’ve rearranged the same three tables six times.”

“Seven, actually. And it’s important. You can’t seat Bobby Thorne near anyone with a wife he might try to seduce, which eliminates approximately ninety percent of the room.”

Naomi snorts. “He sounds charming.”

“He’s a disaster.” I tap my pen against the chart. “But his wife is lovely, and I need them there for appearances.”

“Appearances.”

“Politics.”

“Mafia politics.”

“Is there any other kind in this house?”