Chapter 8
SIENNA
I look at Viktor and something in me goes cold.
He isn’t just worried about the girl.
That would make sense. Anyone would be worried.
A woman just collapsed at breakfast and got carried into the house foaming at the mouth.
But this is different. There’s something more focused in his face, something harder underneath the concern, as if his mind has already moved past panic and landed somewhere darker.
And then I know why.
Because I remember.
Not all at once. Just a small, clear sequence, like someone turning a lens.
A server comes around with champagne after Camille’s toast. I’m standing near the side station, answering a question about coffee service. The tray passes Viktor first. He looks at it, then shakes his head once. Doesn’t take a glass.
The server moves on.
A second later, one of Camille’s bridesmaids laughs and reaches for one instead.
The same girl. I saw it. I’m suddenly sure of it in a way that makes my stomach twist.
It was meant for Viktor.
The thought hits me so hard I almost reject it on instinct.
No. That’s insane. It doesn’t mean that. It could still be random. A mistake. The wrong tray, the wrong glass, the wrong moment. It doesn’t have to mean someone is trying to poison Viktor Sokolov in the middle of a wedding breakfast in front of half the guest list.
Except the look on his face says he’s thinking something close to the same thing.
My pulse starts to climb again. Who would do that?
Why here? Why now?
And who exactly is Viktor, really?
I thought I knew what he was when I met him on the plane.
Rich. Older. Dangerous in a way that made my body respond before my brain could catch up.
I knew that much the first time he looked at me properly.
I knew it when he touched me. I knew it when I saw the tattoos on him later, dark ink over hard muscle, half-hidden under expensive clothes and older scars.
I knew he was not just some businessman with a nice watch and a commanding voice.
But I still have no idea what he really is. Not in a way that explains this.
The ambulance doors slam outside. The sound pulls me back.
Staff and guests crowd the terrace and front drive in loose, frightened knots as the girl is carried out.
Her skin looks waxy now. Too still. Maksim climbs in after her, one hand already reaching for something beside the stretcher.
The paramedics shut the doors, and a moment later the ambulance pulls away from the estate, lights flashing over the gravel and clipped hedges and white flowers as it goes.
Camille is crying.
But even from here I can tell it isn’t grief. It’s panic. Her mascara is still perfect. Her dress is still perfect. Her hands flutter uselessly at Ethan’s sleeve while she keeps saying, “This can’t be happening today. This cannot be happening today.”
Not is she going to be all right.
Not what happened to her.
Ethan has both hands on her shoulders, trying to look steady, trying to look in control, but I can hear the strain in his voice even from a few feet away.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “Father will make sure the police stay away and nobody asks too many questions.”
I stare at him. The words slide under my skin in a way that has nothing to do with this morning and everything to do with the man standing a few steps from me.
Father will make sure the police stay away.
Nobody asks too many questions.
Who says something like that unless it’s normal in their world? Unless there is already an understanding that things can be buried at convenience.
I look at Viktor again.
He’s speaking quietly to Yuri now, face unreadable, body still. He hasn’t raised his voice once since the girl collapsed. He hasn’t shown shock the way other people have. Only attention. Calculation. A terrible kind of calm.
And suddenly I’m back on the plane for a split second, not in the seat, not in the soft heat of him later, but in the moment before any of that, when he stepped between me and the creep bothering me with that same stillness.
That same ease. As if handling dangerous men was not unusual for him, just tedious.
My mouth goes dry.
I slept with this man. I am carrying his child.
And I do not know who he is. Not really.
The realization should make me step away from him. It should make me gather whatever is left of my common sense and run in the opposite direction.
Instead, horribly, what I feel first is fear for him.
If I’m right, then someone tried to poison Viktor this morning and nearly killed the wrong girl by accident.
I fold my arms around myself without thinking, then stop halfway before my hands can settle where they want to. Still, the baby shifts low and heavy, as if even that tiny movement was a signal something has gone badly wrong.
I force my hands down.
Across the terrace, Camille is still crying. Ethan is still murmuring to her. Alina stands a little apart from them, pale and furious in a much quieter way. Around all of them, guests are beginning to understand that the morning is not going to recover.
The wedding is already cracking.
And I’m standing in the middle of it, staring at a man I thought I knew through hunger and memory and one night of astonishing sex, realizing that whatever he really is, it’s bigger, stranger, and more dangerous than I let myself imagine.
Viktor turns then, as if he feels me looking.
His eyes find mine immediately, and for one second the whole terrace seems to fall away. The crying bride. The guests. The ambulance already gone through the gates. Ethan trying to act like his father can bend the police to his will.
It all disappears under the weight of that look.
He sees that I know something. Maybe not everything, but enough. And in his face, for the first time since breakfast shattered, I see something that looks almost like a warning. Not to speak. Not yet.
My heart starts pounding all over again.
I slip away at the first chance I get.
Not far. Just into a small sitting room off the side hall, one of those half-forgotten rooms meant for coats or quiet conversations, with pale walls, a narrow sofa, and tall windows looking out over the side garden.
The door doesn’t quite latch unless you push it hard, and I don’t.
I just need a minute. A breath. Somewhere no one is watching my face.
My hands are shaking when I pull out my phone.
Talia picks up on the second ring. “Sienna?”
I close my eyes. “Tell me who these people are.”
A beat of silence.
“What happened?”
“Just answer me.”
More silence, and then I hear her exhale. “I don’t know everything.”
“What do you know?”
“I know enough not to mess up the job they hired me to do. That’s why I had to ask you last minute.” Her voice drops. “I looked them up after I booked the job. Not all of it is public, obviously, but there’s enough. These people are powerful, Sienna.”
My grip tightens on the phone. “How powerful?”
Another pause.
Then, quietly, “I think they’re part of the Russian mafia.”
“You think?” I blanch.
For a second, I just stare at the floor.
No. No, of course not. Of course the impossibly controlled, heavily tattooed, silver-haired man who can make people shut up with two words and make problems disappear is not just some rich father of the groom. Of course this had to be worse.
“Sienna?” Talia says. “Did something happen?”
I open my mouth.
The door moves behind me.
I turn.
Viktor is standing there.
He must have pushed it the rest of the way open without a sound. He fills the doorway easily, dark suit, rolled cuffs, that unreadable face. He looks from me to the phone in my hand and back again.
“Who are you talking to?” he asks.
My throat goes dry.
Talia is still there, a small, urgent voice in my ear now. “Hello? Sienna? Hello?”
I don’t answer either of them.
Viktor steps inside and shuts the door behind him.
The room gets smaller at once.
“Sienna,” Talia says, more urgent now. “What’s going on?”
Viktor holds out his hand.
I don’t move.
“Who are you?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer. He just comes closer, takes the phone from my hand before I can stop him, lifts it to his ear for the barest second, then ends the call and sets it face down on the side table.
Anger rises through me enough to cut through the fear. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Several things,” he says. “At the moment, the most pressing one is you trying to learn about me from someone else.”
I step toward the table. He shifts once, and that’s all it takes. He’s in my way again, not touching me, just there, broad and impossible to get around without making contact.
“I’m leaving.”
“No.”
I look up at him. “Move.”
He doesn’t.
The air between us is charged in that awful, familiar way it always seems to be around him. Too much in too little space. Too much history for something that shouldn’t even count as history. One night on a plane. One kiss in the dark. One child he still doesn’t know is his.
My whole body is alive with nerves.
“You don’t get to do this,” I say. “You don’t get to walk around like everyone should just accept whatever you are and never ask questions.”
His gaze stays on mine. “You can ask me.”
“Can I?”
“Yes.”
“Will you answer?”
His face changes, just slightly. Not softer. More intent. “Some things.”
I laugh once, breathless and angry. “That’s what I thought.”
I try to step past him.
He catches my wrist. Not hard. Nothing like Ethan. But the contact jolts through me anyway.
“Don’t,” he says.
I yank once on instinct, more from anger than fear. “Let go.”
His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there for a moment too long. When he looks back up, his voice is lower. “You should stop looking at me like that.”
My pulse trips. “Like what?”
“Like you hate me and want me at the same time.”
Heat rushes into my face, and I hate that he can still do that to me in the middle of all this. “You are unbelievably arrogant.”
“Yes,” he says. “But not wrong.”
I should slap him.
I should tell him to get out.