An Heir to Blood and Power (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #2)
Chapter 1
kostya
NICOLAI ROMANOV
This is the second book in the
Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir series.
If you haven’t read
A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors,
make sure you read that first.
GET IT HERE:
A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors
Konstantin stood in the door of the tavern area, swaying on his feet, glaring and grinding his teeth, as I and my brand-new, ill-advised, complete-stranger wife, Lexi, walked into the Billionaire Sanctuary private club in Las Vegas. “Nicolai, introduce me to your wife.”
Dammit, I didn’t think my brother would ambush me right out in the open, right in front of our friends and relatives who’d swiveled on their barstools in the darkened pub area of the private hotel to eyeball us.
Lexi halted beside me, her soft footfalls ceasing like she’d vanished, like she’d been taken, like she’d fallen to the ground.
I spun and caught her small hand in mine, a spark zipping up my spine until my eyes found hers.
She was still there, the sunlight from the still-open front door glowing on her blond hair but not reaching into the darkness of her deep brown eyes as she looked up at me with growing trepidation.
Her posture shifted as her gaze whipped back to Konstantin, and then she was shrinking, stepping back.
I moved in front of her and stared down my dumbass, drunken baby brother.
Konstantin had always had a penchant for theater.
His arms were wound tightly over his chest, a highball glass of whiskey held at his broad shoulder, as he glared at us from the bar, swaying slightly.
Yep, my brother had been drinking, there with his newly minted American driver’s license showing that he was officially twenty-one years old and thus legal, which meant he was thoroughly pissed, and pissed off at me, well before noon.
While my own hangover raked my brain with glinting silver fishhooks.
Kostya’s eyes burned with an alcoholic blue flame.
As I was still slightly mellow and yet had a bit of a bastard behind the eyes from last night, I might not have complete control of my temper if he pushed the sibling buttons.
Dammit.
I fixed him with a glare, trying to pin his baby ass to the wall with just my force of will. “Not out in the open. Come upstairs.”
I caught Lexi’s hand and towed her toward the elevator.
Kostya’s footfalls clomped over the thick carpeting behind us, each stomp a little-brother tantrum. “I didn’t see the livestream of your wedding last night. Fifty people sent me the replay link. When were you going to tell me about her?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lexi’s head rotate as she looked back and forth between us.
I dropped her hand for a minute as I plucked my black Billionaire Sanctuary membership card from my wallet, holding it aloft as we passed the concierge, who was already looking the other direction and waving us past. “We’ll talk in my suite.”
“Famous last fucking words.” His footsteps ceased with one last stomp. “Nicolai, we need to talk about it right here.”
The hell we were. Kostya had no sense of propriety or security.
I should have prepared him better to be an adult of our lineage, but I’d graduated from our boarding school when he was eleven.
Texts, phone calls, and videochats were not adequate media for teaching political survival skills. I’d failed him.
I grabbed Lexi’s fragile little hand again and turned my head as I steered her toward the elevators. “Ueli, bring Kostya upstairs with us.”
With a two-fingered salute, Ueli directed two of our security entourage toward Kostya.
Lexi whispered to me as we were waiting for the elevators, “You can go talk to him in the bar. I’ll just head upstairs with the guys. I don’t mind.”
“Absolutely not. Kostya and I will discuss this matter in private.”
As the elevator doors slid back, I hustled Lexi inside. A scuffle behind us assured me that Ueli’s operators had secured my brother and were bringing him along.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“My younger brother, Konstantin. Nickname is Kostya. He’s twenty-one and in college.”
“Oh, he’s the same age as me.”
The swirling thoughts in my brain screeched to a record-scratch stop.
I hadn’t needed a reminder of that this morning. The throb piercing my eyeballs grew. “You’re the same age as my much-younger brother. Smashing.”
The elevator crawled up to the fourth floor, where we emerged. The RFID chip in my Sanctuary membership card clicked the lock as I waved it in front of the only door on the right side of the hallway.
As my security team operator Nechtan bustled us inside the suite, I glanced back.
The digital number above the other elevator’s door changed from two to three. Kostya was close behind us.
Inside, everything in the suite’s living room was as I’d left it before I’d been driven over to John’s suite at the Waldorf, though tidied, of course.
Lexi turned like she was about to make a run for the stairwell. “I left my gym bag in the car.”
I slid my suit coat off my arms and held it out on one finger.
A roving domestic staff person unhooked the jacket from my hand as she walked by, presumably having seen me doffing it, and headed for the closet and hangers.
“Don’t worry about your bag. The parking valet will give it to the club’s porters.
They’ll bring it up. They always check the vehicles for luggage and shopping bags. ”
Lexi turned back to me, her forehead wrinkling in consternation. “Are you sure that’s okay?”
“Our security detail does not carry packages or luggage, ever. They can’t respond to a threat if they’re juggling shopping bags.” I picked up an apple from the customary fruit bowl on the coffee table. “It’s their job. You have to let people do their jobs.”
“So, what’s my job?” Lexi asked me.
Sitting on my lap and looking pretty was definitely the wrong answer, but I wasn’t sure what the right one was just yet.
Luckily, I was saved by a pounding on the door and Kostya’s voice yelling, “Nicolai! What the fuck is going on with you!”