Chapter 15 Victoria #2
Then my door opens, and it's Alexei standing there instead of the driver or security.
His expression shifts the moment he sees my face. Green eyes sharpen with concern, and his usual grin falters at the edges.
"Everything okay?" he asks quietly, voice pitched low enough that only I can hear.
"She's fine," Maksim answers before I can speak, his tone flat and final. "She knows her part for tonight."
I want to scream. Want to tell him exactly where he can shove his condescension and his warnings and his assumptions about my sheltered life. Want to list every scar I carry that he can't see, every wound that healed crooked, every battle I fought alone while he had brothers to bleed beside him.
Instead, I take Alexei's offered hand and let him help me out of the SUV.
His fingers squeeze mine once. Brief, grounding, a moment of connection that steadies the spinning in my chest, before releasing.
Zakhar emerges from the second vehicle, and the three of them form a loose triangle around me as we approach the entrance. Protection. Possession. Both at once, and I can't decide if it makes me feel safer or more trapped.
Ramiz Krasniqi himself opens the door before we reach it.
He's shorter than I expected. Stocky, with slicked-back hair that gleams with too much product and an expensive suit that still looks cheap on him.
Like putting silk on a pig and expecting it to pass for a racehorse.
Rings gleam on every finger. Gold and diamonds and rubies that catch light like warning signals.
His smile is too wide, showing too many teeth. The expression of a predator who's decided to be friendly for now but could change his mind at any moment.
"My friends!" He spreads his arms with exaggerated enthusiasm, voice booming across the entryway. "Welcome, welcome! Come in, come in! So happy you could join us tonight!"
The house is filled with people. Music plays, driving bass that vibrates through the marble floor. Groups cluster in corners, glasses of expensive liquor in hand, conversations that rise and fall in waves. Laughter that sounds more like dominance displays than joy.
And just like Maksim warned, the guests are segregated.
Women by the pool in the back, visible through floor-to-ceiling windows. Silk dresses and expensive jewelry, cocktails in hand, arranged like decorations around the turquoise water scattered with floating candles.
Men gathered in darker corners of the main room. Suits and cigars and the particular posture of violence barely restrained by civilized pretense.
Ramiz's eyes land on me. A look that makes my skin crawl.
He steps closer. Too close. Invading my space with the confidence of a man who's never been told no, who's never faced consequences for taking what he wants.
Then his hand rises. Touches my face.
Fingers rough with rings scrape against my cheek, and the contact makes my stomach turn. This is violation disguised as admiration, threat wrapped in compliment.
"So beautiful," he says, accent thick, breath smelling of whiskey and rot underneath. "Not much of a hardship for Maksim to marry you so I wouldn't kill your father."
The words are barely out of his mouth when Maksim moves.
His hand shoots out faster than thought, grabs Ramiz's wrist, twists it away from my face with controlled violence that stops just short of breaking bone.
The music doesn't stop, but conversation does.
Every head in the room turns toward us. The air goes still and heavy with the promise of bloodshed, with the particular tension that precedes violence.
This is it. This is the moment where everything fractures. Where Maksim's control snaps and we're all drowning in the bloodbath he warned me about.
Unless I stop it.
"Maksim didn't have to marry me to keep you from killing my father," I say, voice carrying across the sudden silence.
Clear. Amused. I inject just the right amount of dry wit into the words.
"I'm sure you're an intelligent man, Mr. Krasniqi.
You understand that dead men don't pay their debts. Bad for business."
Silence stretches for three heartbeats. Four.
Then Ramiz throws his head back and laughs. Loud and genuine, the sound breaking tension like a hammer through glass.
The room exhales collectively.
"Clever!" He pulls his wrist from Maksim's grip, shaking it out with exaggerated drama. "So clever! I like her, Severyn. You chose very well."
He turns, gestures to a woman hovering nearby. She's beautiful in the way expensive things are beautiful. Polished, maintained, empty behind the eyes. Trophy wife written in every careful gesture.
"My wife, Valentina," Ramiz announces. "She will take care of your lovely wife while we discuss business. Come, gentlemen. Whiskey and cigars in the game room. We have much to talk about."
Maksim's gaze finds mine. A warning.
Then he's moving, following Ramiz deeper into the house. Zakhar and Alexei go with him, along with several other men I don't recognize. And I'm left watching them disappear down a hallway lined with expensive art and implicit threat.
Valentina smiles at me. It doesn't reach her eyes.
"Come," she says, accent softer than her husband's but no less foreign. "The men will be boring for hours. We have much better conversation by the pool."
I follow her outside to where a dozen women lounge on expensive patio furniture arranged in careful clusters.
Cocktails in hand, jewelry catching light from underwater pool illumination, conversations that flow around nothing of substance.
Fashion. Vacations. Whose husband bought them the bigger diamonds.
I accept a glass of champagne I have no intention of drinking. Let the conversations wash over me while my mind stays elsewhere.
With three men walking into a room controlled by someone who sees them as threats.
A waitress approaches carrying a tray of drinks. "Would you like something different?" she asks. Her accent is thicker than Valentina's, less polished by time and immersion.
"No, thank you," I say absently, not really looking at her. My thoughts are still in that game room, imagining scenarios I can't control.
The waitress shifts. Places herself between me and the other women. Subtle. Deliberate.
Alarm triggers in my spine.
I glance up at her.
And recognition hits like ice water.
I know her. What is she doing in Ramiz Krasniqi's house?
She leans closer, voice dropping to barely a whisper that gets lost in the music and laughter surrounding us.
"Rrezik."
The word is Albanian. I don't speak the language fluently, but I know that word.
Danger.
Her eyes flick toward the hallway where the men disappeared. Where Maksim and Zakhar and Alexei walked with Ramiz into his game room, into his territory, into a space where he controls every variable.
Understanding crashes through me.
The men are in danger.