Chapter 10
VIKTOR
Seven Months Ago
She’s laughing at me by the time the plane starts to taxi.
Not openly. Not cruelly. Just with that warm, unwilling amusement of a woman who didn’t expect to enjoy herself and now clearly resents the fact that she is.
“I still think this is ridiculous,” she says, settling into the seat with far more care than most people would admit to.
“What is?”
“You deciding I’m staying here.”
“Because the universe intervened.”
That gets me a look.
“You actually believe that line works on women?”
“I’ve never needed it to.”
She laughs then, a real laugh this time, and I feel the small, private satisfaction of having earned it.
She’s nervous. That much is obvious. She hides it decently, but I see it in the way she keeps adjusting the seat belt, in the extra attention she gives every sound the plane makes, in how often her fingers return to the water bottle in her lap as if checking it’s still there.
I let the banter carry us through takeoff because it keeps her breathing evenly.
For a while, it works. Then the plane begins to climb in earnest, banking through a patch of rough air, and I see the change come over her face all at once.
The color goes out of it. Her hand tightens around the armrest. Her shoulders lock.
She looks straight ahead with that awful, fixed concentration people get when they’re trying not to panic and only making it worse.
“Sienna.”
She shakes her head too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I said I’m fine.”
The plane shudders again.
That does it.
I unbuckle before the seat belt sign has even gone dark and step into the aisle. The attendant appears almost immediately, polite and already prepared to tell me no.
“Is there a suite available in first?” I say.
Her eyes flick toward the front of the cabin, then back to me. “Yes, sir. There’s one available.”
“We’re taking it.”
She starts to explain process. I don’t let her get far.
“Charge whatever you like,” I say. “Just move us.”
There are some advantages to money. One of them is that arguments like this become brief.
By the time I turn back to Sienna, she’s trying very hard not to look humiliated by the attention.
“You can’t do that,” she says.
“I just did.”
Her mouth parts. “For me?”
I look at her for a moment, long enough to make the answer clear before I speak it. “Yes.”
She goes quiet.
The suite is absurdly luxurious for a flight of this length. A private little world shut off from the rest of the cabin, with a wide seat that folds flat, softer lighting, too much leather, too much polished wood, and enough privacy to make a man dangerous if he were already inclined that way.
I am.
She steps inside and turns slowly, taking it in. “This is insane.”
“It’s quieter.”
“It looks like a hotel room.”
“A small one.”
That gets the faintest smile out of her, but only for a second. The plane gives another small jolt and the smile vanishes.
I close the door behind us. “Sit down.”
She does, though less because I told her to and more because her knees are not as steady as she wants them to be.
I sit beside her, not crowding her yet. “You need to breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Badly.”
She glares at me for that, but her eyes are too wide to make the effect convincing.
I take the water from her hand, set it aside, and reach for her wrist instead. Two fingers over the pulse. Too fast.
Her attention drops to my hand on her skin. “You do this often?” she asks, and even through the nerves I can hear the attempt at humor.
“Calm frightened women in the sky?”
She nods.
“No.”
That stills her.
I hold her gaze. “Just you.”
Something in her face shifts at that. The fear doesn’t go away, but it changes shape. Softer now. More aware. She looks at me as if she can’t decide whether I’m helping or making this worse.
Possibly both.
I keep my fingers at her wrist until her pulse starts to settle.
Then she says, “You really upgraded to an entire suite because I looked nervous.”
“You looked like you were about to climb out of your own skin.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She gives me a long look and then, despite herself, she smiles again. Small. Uncertain. Beautiful enough to make me lose interest in every other woman in the air.
I should have known then that the flight would not end well for me.
Present Day
I hear the commotion before I reach the hallway.
Raised voices. A startled gasp. Then silence, the bad kind, the kind that tells me something has already happened.
By the time I turn the corner, Sienna is stumbling backward.
One of the house staff catches her under the arms before she can hit the floor properly, another grabbing for her elbow as her knees buckle.
It all happens in a flash. Camille is standing a few feet away, flushed and rigid, and Ethan is staring at Sienna with a look on his face I do not like at all.
Everything in me goes cold. “What the fuck is going on here?”
Every face in the hallway turns toward me.
Sienna looks up. She’s pale, breathing too fast, still half held by the staff. Even now, with everyone staring at her, she tries to straighten and says, “I’m fine.”
I don’t listen.
I close the distance between us at once and crouch in front of her. “Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Is anything hurting?”
“No.”
I look at her for a moment. Her face. Her hands. The way she’s holding herself too carefully now, trying to seem steady when she clearly isn’t. I know that look. I’ve seen it before. A woman trying to manage herself past the point where management is still enough.
One of the staff says, “Sir, Ms. Laurent pushed her.”
I lift my head.
Camille’s mouth parts. “I barely touched her.”
My eyes stay on her just long enough to silence whatever she was going to say next.
Then I look back at Sienna. She’s still trying to stand on her own, still trying to wave this off before anyone makes too much of it, and I can see the effort it’s costing her.
That settles it.
Before she can argue, I slide one arm behind her back and the other under her knees and lift her.
She lets out a startled breath and catches at my shoulder. “Viktor, no. Put me down.”
“No.”
“I can walk.”
“You can be angry with me later.”
She opens her mouth again, probably to do exactly that, but I’m already turning.
Ethan steps forward. “Father—”
I don’t stop. I don’t even look at him at first. “We’ll talk later,” I say.
Something in my voice must land the way I intend, because when I do turn my head, he has already stopped moving.
“It wasn’t like that,” he says.
“Later.”
That ends it.
The hallway clears in front of me without anyone needing to be told twice. Camille says something behind me, brittle and angry, but I don’t catch the words and I don’t care to.
The only thing I care about is the woman in my arms.
She’s lighter than she should be. Tense all through her body.
Trying very hard not to show fear and failing only in the small ways most people would miss.
The fast pulse at her throat. The way her fingers tighten on my shoulder when I shift my hold.
The way her free hand keeps hovering near her stomach before pulling away.
I notice all of it.
I carry her into the room and set her down carefully on the sofa.
The second she’s seated, she says, “I told you, I’m fine.”
I kneel in front of her. “Tell me the truth,” I say. “Is anything hurting?”
I take out my phone and call Maksim before Sienna can start telling me, for the third time, that she’s perfectly capable of checking herself.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Where are you?”
“In the drive,” he says. “I was thinking of going to the hospital to check on the girl.”
“Come upstairs first.”
A beat. “Why?”
“I need you to look at someone before you go.”
There’s a pause just long enough for him to understand more than I’ve said.
Then, “I’m on my way.”
I end the call and slip the phone back into my pocket.
Sienna is watching me. Her color is a little better now that she’s sitting, but not much.
She still looks shaken, still too pale, still as if she’s holding herself together by discipline alone.
The room I brought her into is mine, though I haven’t told her that yet.
I didn’t think about where I was carrying her until I was already halfway there.
Now that we’re inside with the door shut, it’s obvious.
“Where am I?” she asks.
“My room.”
Her eyes move past me then, taking it in.
It’s the largest suite in the house, too large for a man staying two nights.
Dark wood, cream walls, tall windows opening onto the rear gardens.
A sitting area near the fireplace with low leather chairs and a long sofa.
A bed wide enough to be absurd, dressed in white linen and a charcoal throw folded precisely at the foot.
Everything expensive. Understated. The sort of room designed for privacy and power rather than comfort, though it manages both.
My jacket is over the back of one chair. A watch case lies open on the dresser. The air still carries the faint scent of my cologne and the coffee I left half-finished an hour ago.
“Wow,” she says quietly.
I almost ask which part of it she finds worth remarking on, but the question feels too close to vanity and too far from the point.
Instead I say, “Sit still until Maksim gets here.”
She gives me a look. “You really don’t hear how bossy you sound, do you?”
“I hear it. I simply don’t object.”
That gets a small breath out of her that might have become a laugh if the morning had been kinder.
Good.
I turn toward the bar and pour water, more to give her a moment than because she needs help lifting a glass.
When I hand it to her, her fingers brush mine, and that small contact is enough to bring back entirely unhelpful memories of another room, another flight, another time I had her flushed and open and looking at me as if she had forgotten where she ended and I began.