Chapter 17
VIKTOR
I can’t sleep.
I try for all of ten minutes before giving up, then another ten out of sheer irritation, as if stubbornness might achieve what exhaustion hasn’t.
It doesn’t. My mind keeps circling the same things.
The hedge line. The missing sight lines.
Ethan’s face. Sienna behind her locked door telling me to go because it’s better for the baby if she stays away.
So now I’m downstairs with a glass of whiskey I don’t need and the kind of silence that only comes after midnight in a house full of people pretending tomorrow is still normal.
The study is dim except for the lamp on the desk and the amber light of the drink in my hand. Outside the windows, the grounds are black and wet. Inside, the house feels watchful.
The door opens without a knock. Maksim walks in, shrugs off his coat, and looks at the glass in my hand.
“You came back,” I say.
“Of course.” He shuts the door behind him. “You didn’t think I was leaving you alone in a house full of people you can’t stand.”
“I was trying not to flatter myself.”
He glances around the room, then at me again. “And yet here you are, awake, drinking alone. Very flattering.”
I don’t bother answering that. I pour him one anyway.
He takes the glass, sits in the chair opposite mine, and stretches his legs out like he has every right to be comfortable in my study at this hour. Which, in fairness, he does. He has been doing this too long for formality to matter.
For a while we drink without speaking.
Then Maksim says, “Your son looks like hell.”
“He should.”
“That’s not paternal.”
“He has had a difficult day.”
Maksim gives me a look over the rim of his glass. “That was almost sympathy.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
He smiles faintly. “Fine. Mild recognition of consequence.”
That, at least, is accurate.
“And Alina?” he asks.
“Tense.”
He lifts a brow. “That all?”
“She thinks this is somehow a reflection on me personally.”
“Well,” he says dryly, “someone did try to poison your breakfast.”
I look at him. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He takes a sip, then leans back in the chair. “She’s worried about Ethan.”
“She’s worried about her version of Ethan.”
That gets a small nod out of him. He understands exactly what I mean. The boy she still sees and the man standing in this house are not quite the same person.
We sit with that for a moment.
Then Maksim says, “And the woman upstairs?”
There it is.
I almost smile, but I’m too tired for it. “You were waiting to ask.”
“Yes.”
I look down at the glass in my hand. “I know.”
“What’s going on with her, Viktor?”
I’m quiet for a second because I don’t have an answer that sounds simple.
And maybe that’s the answer.
“At first?” I say. “It was simple. Attraction. Bad timing. One flight. One night. I thought that was all it was.”
Maksim says nothing.
“But it isn’t,” I say.
“No,” he says. “It doesn’t look like it is.”
I nod once. “When she’s not in front of me, I think about where she is. If she’s all right. If someone’s said something to her. Done something. If she’s sleeping. If she’s upset.” I pause. “And when she is in front of me, I still want her. That part hasn’t exactly become easier.”
Maksim snorts softly. “Clearly.”
I ignore that.
“I don’t like seeing her afraid,” I say. “I don’t like that she thinks she has to handle everything by herself. I don’t like that she keeps looking at me like she wants to trust me and doesn’t know if that would be the stupidest thing she could do.”
Maksim watches me for a long second.
Then he says, “That sounds bad.”
I let out a short laugh. “For who?”
“For both of you.” He turns his glass once in his hand. “You care about her.”
“Yes.”
The answer comes easily. Too easily, maybe.
Maksim notices that too. “More than you planned to.”
“I didn’t plan any of it.”
“No,” he says. “That’s usually how this happens.”
The room goes quiet again.
Then he asks, “And the baby?”
I lean back and look at the ceiling for a second before I answer. “I told her I didn’t care whose it was.”
“Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
He studies my face. “That’s not the same thing as not wanting it to be yours.”
I look at him again. “No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
He nods slowly. Then, after a pause, “You’re in deep.”
I could deny it. Say it’s too soon. Say too much has happened too fast for any of this to mean what it looks like. But that would be a lie, and I’m too tired to lie to him.
“Yes,” I say.
Maksim exhales and rubs a hand over his jaw. “I was hoping you’d say no.”
“I know.”
“Because this is going to get complicated.”
“It already is.”
He can’t argue with that.
For a while neither of us speaks. He drinks. I don’t.
Then he says, more quietly, “Do you love her?”
That one stays in the room for a second. I look at the whiskey in my hand and think of Sienna in my bed, in the hallway, behind the locked door. I think of her face when she’s angry. The way she sounds when she says my name. The way my whole body goes on alert when she’s hurting.
I think of how quickly that happened. And how little I care that it was quick.
“Yes,” I say.
Maksim doesn’t look surprised. Just disappointed for me, maybe. Or worried.
“That’s worse than wanting her,” he says.
“I know.”
He finishes his drink and gets up. At the door, he stops and looks back at me. “Then don’t lie to yourself and call it something easier.”
I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means don’t pretend this is just sex because sex would be simpler. It isn’t, and you know it.”
I say nothing.
He gives me one last look. “Get some sleep if you can.”
Then he leaves.
I’m alone again. The whiskey is still in my hand. The house is still quiet. Nothing is solved. But at least one thing is clear now.
It isn’t just sex.
It hasn’t been for a while.
I leave the study and start back toward my room.
The house is mostly quiet now. Not silent, but close. Lamps left on in the corridors, carpets swallowing sound, the kind of late-hour stillness that makes every instinct sharpen whether you want it to or not.
I’m halfway down the gallery when I feel it.
Not a sound exactly. Just presence.
My body reacts before my mind does. I turn at once.
Camille is standing a few feet behind me.
She’s smiling. Not warmly. Not nervously. Just as if being found out in a dark hallway past midnight is not in the least awkward for her.
I look at her for a second, then say, “What are you doing up so late? It’s your wedding day tomorrow.”
She comes a little farther into the light. She’s changed out of whatever she wore to dinner and into something softer, but she still looks composed. Too composed, maybe. Hair brushed smooth, face washed clean of most of the day, but not all of it. There’s strain there if you know where to look.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says.
“That makes two of us.”
She studies me for a moment, hands clasped loosely in front of her, and I have the odd thought that most men would make the mistake of underestimating her in exactly this posture. Pretty. Controlled. Decorative.
They would be wrong.
I’ve never thought Camille was someone who could be harmful.
Vain, certainly. Entitled, often. Her family has connections that matter, and not the public sort they bother mentioning in magazines or at fundraisers.
Quiet ones. Useful ones. The kind that make a marriage worth considering even if affection is thin and the bride herself comes with more appetite than discipline.
That was part of why I did not object too loudly when Ethan chose her.
Her mouth tightens slightly. “You were ready to cancel the wedding over nothing.”
Not a question. A fact. So Ethan had told her about our conversation.
She keeps her eyes on me. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
I say, “I was considering it.”
“You were angry.”
“Yes.”
“Because of her.”
When I don’t answer her, she continues. “She’s a planner. A temporary one. And you were ready to blow up my wedding over some fat woman you barely know.”
I feel the insult. I let it pass.
She’s waiting for me to react. Waiting for me to show her exactly what Sienna is to me.
I don’t. I look at her and say, very evenly, “You should be careful.”
“Interesting,” she says. “You won’t even argue the point.”
“No.”
She studies my face. “Because you know I’m right?”
“No,” I say. “Because I don’t explain myself to people who are trying to bait me.”
That gets through.
She goes quiet, and I can feel the calculation in it now. Less emotion. More thought. Better. This version of Camille is easier to talk to.
Then she says, “You think I’m beneath this.”
“I think you’re upset,” I say. “I think you dislike losing control of a room. And I think you came looking for me tonight because you wanted to see whether you still had any.”
Her expression shifts. Only slightly.
I’m not interested in reassuring her. If she wants to know whether I’m looking at her, she can have the answer. I am.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I’m not stupid enough to ruin my own wedding.”
“That,” I say, “is the first useful thing you’ve said tonight.”
She studies me. “You underestimate me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I think you care very much about control,” I say. “And I think you don’t like losing it.”
Her chin lifts. “Neither do you.”
“No.”
She smiles faintly at that. “At least you’re honest.”
“More than most.”
Another pause. “I think we had a very enlightening conversation tonight.”
“Very,” I murmur.
Then she turns and walks away. I watch her go, thinking not about what she said, but about what she didn’t. By the time she disappears around the corner, I know two things.
The first is that Camille is not nearly as simple as Ethan likes to think.
The second is that she wanted something from me tonight, and she left without it.