Chapter 7
VIKTOR
Morning arrives too early and with far too much structure.
There is, apparently, a breakfast on the south lawn before the wedding party is carted off for photographs, vows, champagne, and whatever other rituals people invent when they have too much money and not enough self-awareness.
I stand at the edge of the terrace with coffee I do not want, a headache I have earned, and a temper made worse by the fact that I slept perhaps three hours.
Not consecutive ones.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sienna.
Her face when she turned and found me in that room.
The marks rising on her wrist. The way she said no too quickly when I asked if the baby was mine.
The way she kissed me back before that. The way her body fit against mine for that brief, catastrophic minute before everything changed.
I spent the better part of the night irritated with myself.
Not because I want her. That part is uncomplicated. I wanted her the first time I saw her. Wanted her more after the plane. Wanted her last night the second I stepped into that room and found her looking like she was holding herself together out of sheer stubbornness.
No, what irritates me is that I am no closer to understanding her than I was seven months ago. Perhaps less.
A string quartet is already tuning somewhere below.
Staff move through the garden with trays and folded napkins and the grim cheerfulness of people paid too well to complain aloud.
The lawn has been set with round tables under pale umbrellas, white flowers at the center of each one, silver catching the early light.
Elegant. Expensive. Entirely unnecessary at this hour.
“Still brooding before coffee is finished?”
I know the voice before I turn.
Alina.
She comes up beside me in cream silk and diamonds, as polished as ever, one hand lifting to rest lightly on my arm as if she still has some standing there.
My ex-wife has always understood the power of presentation.
She’s beautiful in the way certain women remain beautiful because they have spent a lifetime treating beauty as both weapon and occupation.
She also has dreadful timing.
“Good morning,” I say.
She smiles as if I have offered something warmer. “That sounded almost civil.”
“We were married, not at war.”
“Those are not always different things.”
That, at least, is true.
Alina and I were never a love story. We were a merger that lasted longer than it should have because we were both too proud to end it before pride itself became the reason.
She came from the right family, understood discretion, understood power, understood what it meant to stand beside a man like me and never once ask him to be smaller for her comfort.
What she never understood was that tolerance and intimacy are not the same thing.
We made Ethan. We made a life that looked excellent from the outside. Eventually we made each other miserable enough, quietly enough, to separate without anyone having the pleasure of calling it scandal.
Now we are what many divorced people become when they still share blood and history and too many social obligations: cordial in public, careful in private, and occasionally tempted to revise the past into something kinder than it was.
Alina is more tempted by that than I am.
Her fingers remain on my sleeve. “You left dinner early.”
“I had seen enough.”
“I know there was some unpleasantness—” she starts.
“Unpleasantness?” I say. “Is that what you’re calling your son?”
She scrunches up her face. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Right.” I turn back to watch the arrangement.
Below us, guests begin drifting out toward the lawn, glossy and under-rested, women in morning dresses and men pretending not to resent collars before noon. Somewhere to the left, Ethan’s laugh rises briefly and dies just as fast.
I look for Sienna before I mean to.
I don’t see her, and the absence catches at me more than it should.
Alina notices where my eyes go. Of course she does. “You are distracted.”
“No.”
She gives me a look that says she’s too old to indulge obvious lies. “You didn’t sleep.”
“I slept enough.”
“You look like you were up thinking.”
That I ignore.
She leans in slightly, perfume and memory arriving together. Once, years ago, I liked that scent on my sheets. Now it only tells me she’s standing too close.
“You always do this,” she says. “Something unsettles you, and instead of naming it, you become impossible for everyone around you.”
“I am always possible for the right people.”
That gets a breath of laughter from her. “There he is.”
I take a sip of coffee and let my gaze slide over the grounds again. Still no Sienna.
I should leave that alone. I should let the morning do what mornings do and trust that she will appear when her work requires it.
Instead I find myself back on the plane.
Back in that dim cabin, the hum of the engines low and constant under everything else, the smell of whiskey and her skin still on me when I finally slept. I remember waking slowly, warm and sated in a way I rarely allow myself to become, reaching for the shape of her and finding nothing.
Just cool sheets, and an empty seat.
She was gone.
At first I thought she had gone to the lavatory.
Then the cabin lights brightened a little, the captain announced our descent, and I understood. I unbuckled my seat belt and stood.
The flight attendant appeared almost instantly. “Sir, I’m sorry, we’re preparing for landing.”
“I’m aware.”
“You need to take your seat.”
“I’m looking for someone.”
Her smile stayed fixed, professional and unhelpful. “Everyone needs to remain seated now.”
I looked past her down the aisle, toward the curtain separating the cabin, already knowing it was useless. “She was here,” I said.
“I’m sure she’s returned to her assigned seat, sir.”
Assigned seat.
The phrase irritated me more than it should have.
I remember sitting back down because there was no choice, jaw tight, fingers drumming once against the armrest, already planning to find her the second we landed.
But landing is chaos in private airports no less than public ones.
Doors opened. Crew moved. Cars were waiting.
Calls came in before my feet ever hit the tarmac.
By the time I had the room to look, she was gone.
No last name.
No number.
Nothing except the memory of her mouth and the certainty that she had been there.
I looked for her anyway. Longer than I should have.
“Viktor.”
Alina’s voice pulls me back, and I realize she has said my name twice already.
“Yes?”
Her brows lift. “You were somewhere else.”
“Yes.”
“Do I want to know where?”
“No.”
She studies me for a moment, then makes the mistake of letting her hand slide farther up my arm, a little more intimate now, an old reflex dressed up as comfort. “You know,” she says, softer, “we do not have to perform estrangement every minute of this weekend. For Ethan’s sake, at least.”
I remove her hand gently. “Alina.”
A warning, mild but unmistakable.
She sighs. “I was only being friendly.”
“No. You were being nostalgic.”
“And if I was?”
“We were better on paper.”
Her smile fades briefly before her facade appears again. “You always did know how to charm.” With that, she walks away.
I see her before she sees me.
She’s coming in from the side path that leads back toward the house, arms full of garment bags and a flat white box balanced against her hip, moving faster than she should for someone carrying that much.
She’s changed into lighter clothes for the morning, a soft dress under a cardigan, nothing heavy over it now, and I notice at once what I missed in the dark last night.
Or tried to miss.
She has been dressing to hide it.
Not perfectly. Not from someone looking. The lines are softer, easier to mistake if you don’t know what you’re seeing, if you’re not standing there with your hand having already found the shape beneath the fabric. But now that I know, I can see the care in it.
She shifts the weight in her arms and keeps going.
I set my coffee down and cross the lawn before I can think better of it.
She spots me halfway there and, for one brief second, I watch the exact moment she considers turning around.
Too late.
When I reach her, I take the box from her hands without asking.
Her eyes widen. “What are you doing?”
“Saving your back.”
“It was fine where it was.”
“It was slipping.”
“It was not slipping.”
I glance at the box. “It was thinking about it.”
That gets a look from her. Tired, wary, unwillingly amused around the edges. “I’m fine,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “You keep saying that.”
She shifts the garment bags higher on her shoulder and gives me a level look. “Maybe because it happens to be true.”
“Maybe because you’re stubborn.”
“That too.”
For a moment we just stand there, close enough to feel it again, that same pull from last night, quieter in daylight but no less real.
Her hair is pinned up today, not perfectly, and the morning air has already loosened a few dark strands around her face.
She looks tired. Beautiful too, though not in any way she seems interested in being told.
“I can take that back now.”
“You can,” I agree.
I don’t hand it over.
Her mouth twitches despite herself. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“That’s obnoxious.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh, then catches herself, as if she has remembered too late that laughing with me is dangerous.
I should probably stop there.
Instead I say, “You’re carrying too much.”
Her expression closes a little. “It’s my job.”
“It’s also your job not to collapse before noon.”
“I’m not going to collapse.”
There it is again. That same edge in her voice whenever she thinks I’m implying weakness.
I keep my tone even. “I did not say you were weak.”
“You were thinking it.”
“No,” I say. “I was thinking you look tired.”