Chapter 2 - Beatrice
I found myself standing so close to him that our chests almost brushed. He was leaning up against the bar, devastatingly handsome in how confident he looked, and I? I found myself in no hurry to leave.
Viktor’s eyes caught on mine, lingering just a second too long to be casual. I couldn’t help the smile spreading across my face, my heart fluttering like I was sixteen again, not twenty-four.
There was something about him—the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes when he smiled, the slight silver at his temples—that made my stomach do somersaults.
“So, you mentioned your brothers drag you out here often?” he asked while we waited for my drinks. He remembered.
Of course, he remembered the little details.
I knew he wasn’t just some boy trying too hard to impress me by talking about himself. This was a real-ass, grown-up man who knew exactly who he was, and god help me, I was finding myself smitten.
“Yeah. They love family nights.” I smiled as I thought of them.
“But they aren’t here tonight?” he asked curiously.
“No. Tonight’s girls’ night!” I grinned. “They’re busy working.”
“How sad for them,” he chuckled. “So, how many siblings do you have?”
“Seven,” I admitted, waiting for the usual reaction of shock or disbelief.
But he did none of that. In fact, he looked pleasantly impressed. “Big family. Must be nice, always having people who have your back.”
“It’s… complicated,” I said, surprised by my own honesty. “They’re protective. Very protective.”
He made me want to open up. He wasn’t creepy like the other men who had hit on me in the past. He showed me how tastefully a man could strike up a conversation with a woman. He was genuinely curious and made no game of hiding his interest.
And I was sold.
“Well,” he shrugged, a darkness coming over his eyes. “I can’t blame them, honestly. It’s a dangerous world out there. I’ve got sisters too. I like to keep an eye on them, you know? It’s not you we don’t trust, it’s the world out there.”
A shiver ran down my spine, a strange awareness. This man wasn’t just charming; there was depth there, experience. It made me wonder what he’d seen, what he knew that I didn’t.
“Anyway.” I changed the subject. “What about you? Family?”
“My parents passed away.” A sadness flickered over his eyes.
“Mine too,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes met mine, and for a moment, a brief understanding passed between us, bridging a strange gap between strangers.
“But yeah.” His voice was hoarse after the silence stretched too long. “We’ve got a big brood of siblings. None of them is married yet, though.”
“Oh damn!” I squealed, moving to lighter territory. “Family weddings are a drama of their own. Wait until they start. It’s the ride of a lifetime.”
“Oh yeah?” he grinned, leaning forward. “I can already imagine my sisters being bridezillas.”
“Hey!” I protested, swatting at his arm. “In the name of sisterhood, I defend their right to keep their brothers on their toes!”
“Lord save us,” he laughed and shook his head.
I laughed too.
“Four cocktails for the beautiful lady,” the bartender announced just then, placing the drinks on the bar. “That’ll be eighty-four dollars.”
I reached for my clutch, but Viktor slid a hundred-dollar bill across the counter before I could even open my wallet.
“Oh no, you don’t have to do that!” I protested.
“Please,” he said. “Allow me.”
“But we just met!”
I wasn’t used to strangers being this generous. In my experience, men who paid usually expected something in return.
Viktor waved away my concerns with a warm smile. “Consider it a thank you for brightening up my otherwise dull evening.”
His smile reached his eyes—dark blue, gorgeous eyes I could stare at all night. I felt my cheeks warming as Marek returned with Viktor’s change, which he immediately left on the counter as a tip.
Generous, too. Damn those butterflies, again.
I reached for the drinks, already imagining Elena’s proud high-five when I returned with free cocktails from a stranger.
“Hold on.” Viktor placed a gentle hand on my arm. “You’ll spill in this crowd.” He turned to the bartender. “Marek, can we get someone to deliver these to the lady’s table?”
“Of course, sir,” Marek nodded.
The bartender flagged down a waitress who quickly gathered the drinks onto her tray and took off in the direction of our table.
Viktor leaned close to me, his breath warm against my ear. “Do you have to go back just yet?”
There it was, an invitation to stay just a little longer. My brothers would have a collective aneurysm if they ever found out I’d been chatting up a stranger, but for some reason, Viktor made me want to throw caution to the wind.
“Maybe in a bit,” I suggested, settling against the bar to take a sip of my margarita. “Oh my god, this is so good!”
I closed my eyes, letting my imagination whisk me off to a beach somewhere.
“Hey, Marek?” I heard Viktor call out to the bartender and opened my eyes. “The lady said you did a good job on her drink.”
“Gee, thanks!” Marek beamed like he’d won the lottery, and my heart melted at Viktor’s small act of kindness.
“These bartenders.” Viktor leaned closer again, the ghost of his breath sending shivers down my spine. “They work too damn hard and get cursed way too much.”
“You’re right about that,” I said softly.
In that moment, I hated every cocky guy I’d been on a date with, who blew a fuse if they had to wait five minutes too long.
Seeing this man, this full-grown, clearly successful man, judging by the Patek Philippe he wore, be so patient and humble, solidified my decision to linger for some more conversation.
Viktor was still talking to Marek. “Can you bring me some water, please? Sparkling, with lime.”
I felt a strange relief, a sense of security around him. Most men I met in clubs were three shots deep before they even approached me.
Once Marek brought over the water, we moved slightly away from the bar, finding some quiet against a wall.
Every atom in my skin prickled with the awareness of how he positioned himself—angle perfect to shield me from the jostling crowd, close enough to hear me over the music but not so close to be called creepy.
“So, Beatrice,” he started. “What do you do when you’re not being escorted around by your seven bodyguard brothers?”
I laughed. “I actually work for the family business. Accounting department.”
“A beautiful woman who’s good with numbers. One hell of a dangerous combination.”
His voice lowered to a husk of a whisper toward the last of that sentence, and I felt the heat crawl down my neck at the way he looked at me. In that moment, for the first time around a man interested in me, I felt seen.
Truly seen.
And it made my legs go all wobbly.
“What about you? What are you working on so hard tomorrow?” I asked, feeling giddy in my chest, needing to steer back to safe territory before I did something stupid like ask him to dance dirty with me.
“I run my own business,” he said. “Tomorrow, there’s some real estate to be looked at.”
“Sounds boring,” I teased.
“And accounting is so much fun?” He hitched his eyebrow, and we both laughed.
It was so easy being around him, something so freeing about speaking my mind and being heard.
“Honestly?” I confessed. “Sometimes, I wonder if there’s more I should be doing with my life other than working in the family business.”
“What do you mean?” He frowned, tilting his head.
“I mean, I love my family. I love working with them. But they can get…too much at times. It’s the same thing day after day. The same conversations. The same rules and they’re so very overbearing…”
“It’s hard to discover yourself when there are people constantly reminding you of where you come from,” he said.
“Exactly!” I said, too loudly, then laughed at myself. “Sorry. It’s just… no one gets it. They think I’m ungrateful because I have everything and still complain.”
“Well, everything you have isn’t because you worked for it. It was a path laid out, and it’s normal to wonder what would’ve happened if you’d chosen your own.”
I stared at him, startled by how easily he’d distilled my entire existential crisis into one sentence.
“Yes,” I whispered. “That’s right.”
Viktor’s eyes darkened, and he stepped close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
“What would you do with it?” he whispered. “If you had one night of complete freedom with just you and your desires.”
My breath caught. This wasn’t the kind of conversation I usually had with men I’d just met. It felt dangerous, reckless. But god, I wanted more.
“I’d…” I started, then faltered. The possibilities were suddenly endless and overwhelming. “I’d do something unexpected.”
“Like?”
I looked up at him through my lashes, feeling bolder than I had in years. “Like dance the night away with a handsome stranger, maybe.”
His smile was slow in a way that should have set off warning bells, but instead sent a thrill racing through me.
“Is that what you want me to do? Ask you to dance?”
“Do you want to ask me to dance?” I felt my voice catch in my throat. God damn it. We were flirting…hard. Harder than I’d ever flirted, and it was because I wanted to.
Viktor’s lips brushed my ear. “We can do whatever you want, Beatrice.”
My name in his mouth was like a gentle river, pleasing me in the best of ways. I closed my eyes, savoring the moment, the rebellion, the sheer thrill of doing something my brothers would absolutely forbid.
When I opened them again, Viktor was watching me with an intensity that made my body want his against mine, grinding the night away.
But before I could grab his hand and tug him to the floor for a night of plain old dancing, I felt the vibe in the club change. There was movement behind Viktor, too much movement, and the next thing I knew, people were screaming, shouting, pushing past each other toward the exits.
“Fire!” someone yelled, and the word rippled through the crowd like a match to gasoline.
That’s when I smelt the acrid smell of smoke and immediately felt the panic tingle up my fingertips. My body went rigid from the ice flooding my veins.
Fire.
The word echoed in my head, dragging up with it memories I’d spent many nights trying to bury.
I began to hyperventilate.
“Beatrice?” Viktor’s voice sounded far away. “Beatrice, look at me.”
But it was too dark, and there was so much smoke, just like it had been back then.
“Beatrice? We need to get out of here. Look at me!” he shouted again.
I couldn’t move or breathe. The smoke was getting thicker, but I was no longer in the club. I was sixteen years old again, trapped in that room—
“Beatrice.” His hands gripped my shoulders, anchoring me to the present. “We need to go. NOW.”
I forced myself to focus on Viktor’s face. He looked calm, steady, everything my heart refused to be.
“There’s a fire—” My voice cracked with terror.
“I know there’s a fire,” he said firmly, taking my hand. “Stay with me. I’ll get you out.”
I couldn’t think straight, but knew I needed to nod to get out of here. Viktor gripped onto my hand, so damn hard that I knew he wouldn’t let go, and guided me through the people shoving and pushing. When the crowd grew too compact, he moved behind me to keep people from pushing into me.
His hands were outstretched in front of me, his back pressing against mine.
“This way,” he said, clearing the path to the back door, a service door not many knew about, evidently.
A security guard let us pass, and the first thing I did was breath in the clean air, letting it fill my lungs. But nothing I did cleared away the panic. My chest was still heaving. My hands were still tingling. My legs were still shaking.
I needed to sit down. I was about to fall to the ground, right then and there, prepared to curl up and let the panic lead me to unconsciousness because I couldn’t face this anymore, but felt Viktor’s hand slide across my waist.
“My car’s this way,” he said, guiding me toward a sleek sedan, the chauffeur standing next to it, moving to open doors. “Let’s get you away from here.”
“My sisters,” I gasped in fear, suddenly remembering them. “They’re still in there!”
“Security will get them out,” Viktor assured me, still leading me away from the building. “But we need to go before the fire spreads.”
I felt like I was leaving them stranded, but the sight of flames now visible through the club’s windows sent another wave of panic through me.
Maybe Viktor was right. Our bodyguards were there too. So was club security. They’d be fine.
I just needed to get the hell out of here.
I slid into the car without a second thought.