Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Ayanna
The next weeks pass in a whirl of caterers and florists and invitation designers and venue tours (we settled on the Vold estate itself, because apparently my husband owns a ballroom I didn’t know existed until the second week of planning), color-palette debates (champagne and black and deep magenta), and menu tastings that have left me with strong opinions about canapés and an unexpected hatred for goat cheese foam.
Weeks of building something from nothing, and I have never felt more alive.
Back in Monsera, my charity work was always filtered through the royal machinery—committees and advisers and publicists who turned every idea I had into something unrecognizable by the time it reached the public.
Not here. Here, I am the committee. The adviser. The publicist. The woman making decisions and watching them become real.
It’s terrifying and exhilarating and mine.
The gala is set for Saturday—two weeks away—and the house has transformed into carefully orchestrated chaos.
Ingrid has taken charge of household logistics with the efficiency of a military general, coordinating staff schedules and delivery windows and the thousand small details that separate a successful event from a disaster.
She’s in her element, clipboard in hand, reading glasses perched on her nose, occasionally muttering in Norwegian at vendors who don’t meet her standards.
I’ve learned to stay out of her way when she gets that particular look in her eye.
The event coordinator Aric hired (at my request because I know my limits and floral installations are firmly one of them) has turned the ballroom into something out of a dream.
Crystal and candlelight. Black silk and champagne roses.
A string quartet will play in the corner.
A silent auction will line the walls. And at the center of it all, a dance floor where the most powerful criminals in the world will waltz with their wives and pretend to be civilized.
Hosting a charity gala for a children’s hospital with money earned from organized crime is not something I ever pictured myself doing.
Baby steps. One moral compromise at a time.
“You’re staring at the seating chart again.”
Naomi’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts.
She’s curled on the sofa in the library, a book in her lap she hasn’t turned a page of in twenty minutes.
I know because I’ve been watching her pretend to read while she actually watches the door.
Waiting for a certain blond Vold brother to walk through it.
“I’m not staring,” I say, dragging my attention back to the papers spread across the desk. “I’m strategizing.”
“You’ve rearranged the same three tables six times.”
“Seven, actually. And it’s important. You can’t seat Bobby Thorne near anyone with a wife he might try to seduce, which eliminates approximately ninety percent of the room.”
Naomi snorts. “He sounds charming.”
“He’s a disaster.” I tap my pen against the chart. “But his wife is lovely, and I need them there for appearances.”
“Appearances.”
“Politics.”
“Mafia politics.”
“Is there any other kind in this house?”
She laughs, and the knot in my chest loosens. She’s been doing that more lately. Laughing. Relaxing. Letting the tension drain out of her shoulders bit by bit, day by day.
Almost six weeks in Norway, and she’s starting to look less like a girl who fled her country in terror and more like a girl who might actually be okay.
I know who to thank for that.
As if summoned by the thought—which, honestly, he probably was, because Eero has a supernatural talent for materializing wherever Naomi happens to be—the library door opens.
“Ladies.”
Eero leans against the doorframe with that easy grin, and enough confidence to suggest he’s never doubted his own appeal for a single second.
I watch Naomi try not to react. She fails spectacularly. Her book slips. Her cheeks flush. She becomes suddenly, intensely interested in a page she definitely wasn’t reading—though she’s now holding the book upside down and hasn’t noticed.
Oh, little sister. You have it bad.
“Eero. Can I help you with something?” My tone oozes sarcasm.
“Just checking in.” He pushes off the doorframe and saunters in with effortless confidence. “Seeing if you needed anything. Coffee. Tea. Target practice.”
That last one is aimed at Naomi, with a look I’m definitely not supposed to see.
She blushes harder.
“Target practice?” I arch a brow.
“Naomi’s been learning to shoot.” Eero drops into an armchair like he owns it. “She’s a natural. Steady hands. Good instincts. Hit three bull’s-eyes yesterday.”
“Four,” Naomi corrects quietly, then immediately looks like she wishes she hadn’t.
Eero’s grin widens. “Four. My mistake.”
I look between them. The air in the room has shifted—thickened, charged with the kind of electricity that exists between two people pretending not to want each other when everyone can see they do.
Eight weeks ago, I warned Naomi not to fall for any brooding Vold brothers.
She ignored me. In her defense, Eero isn’t brooding. He’s the opposite of brooding. He’s sunlight and bad jokes, and watching him with my sister is like watching ice cream melt—inevitable, messy, and probably going to make a disaster of everything.
But also, infuriatingly sweet.
The way he looks at her when she isn’t looking. The way he invents excuses to be wherever she is. The way his whole face changes when she laughs at something he’s said—softer, younger, stripped of the performance he wears for everyone else.
Aric told me Eero swore he was serious, and I’m starting to believe it.
“So,” I say, setting down my pen and fixing Eero with a look. “Target practice. Shooting lessons. What else have you been teaching my sister?”
He holds up his hands. “Purely educational. Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Scout.”
“In spirit.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Naomi watches the exchange with her cheeks reddening by the second, most likely praying for the floor to open and swallow her whole. “Ayanna—”
“It’s fine.” I wave a hand. “I’m just making sure your instructor understands that if anything happens to you, I’ll personally ensure he never uses his hands again.”
Eero grins. “Noted.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are. That’s what makes it charming.”
Naomi groans into her upside-down book. “Can we please talk about something else? Anything else.”
“The gala,” Eero offers helpfully. “Big event. Lots of important people. Ayanna’s debut as Mrs. Vold. Very stressful.”
“Thank you for that summary.”
“Happy to help.”
I lean back, studying him. Beneath the easy charm, there’s a steadiness in his eyes that wasn’t there eight weeks ago. Or maybe it was, and I just wasn’t looking for it.
“You’re coming, I assume.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“You’ll behave?”
“Define behave.”
“No starting fights. No seducing anyone’s wife. No—”
“I don’t seduce anyone’s wife.” His voice sharpens, just slightly. “I’m not Bobby Thorne.”
My brow arches.
“Heard you struggling with the seat logistics.” He shrugs one shoulder.
“Hm, someone’s been eavesdropping,” I tease.
“I wasn’t—”
We burst into laughter, and I think Eero might’ve just blushed.
“I just want the night to go smoothly,” I state.
“It will.” He stands, all grace and confidence, and I catch the way his gaze flicks to Naomi before it comes back to me. “You’ve worked hard for this. It’s going to be perfect.”
“You almost sound sincere.”
“I am sincere.” He pauses at the door. “Despite what everyone seems to think, I’m capable of it occasionally.”
He leaves, and Naomi watches him go with an expression that tells me everything I need to know.
Definitely too late.
The days blur together after that. Final fittings for my gown—a custom piece. Last-minute RSVPs that require seating chart adjustments. A minor crisis involving the ice sculpture. A major crisis involving the flowers.
Through it all, Aric is always there to support me.
He doesn’t interfere—that was our agreement, my vision, my execution—but he’s there. In the background. A steady presence I’ve come to rely on without quite realizing it.
He reviews the security arrangements with Tassilo, adding a few details: twice as many men on the perimeter, a second detail assigned to Naomi alone, every entrance mapped, and the ballroom to be swept twice before a single guest sets foot in it.
One time, I hear Aric’s voice gone flat and hard over the staffing list, because an event this size means strangers in the house.
Caterers. Florists. Musicians. Forty-some temporary hires Ingrid vetted and Tassilo vetted again, and Aric still doesn’t like it.
The other time I walk in on Tassilo turning a floor plan toward Aric with the exits marked in red, and I’m reminded—with a small, cold drop in my stomach—that the beautiful room I’ve spent eight weeks building is about to fill with two hundred people who kill for a living.
Aric signs off on the guest list. Vetoes one name I didn’t recognize (a rival family, apparently, recent bad blood, best to avoid) but approves everyone else without comment (except for Bobby Thorne, who Aric knew should be invited but tried every excuse to cross him out of the guest list and got so happy when he heard Thorne had declined).
Until I find the name I struck off it sitting back on the final draft.
Leandro Almaviri.
“I took him off,” I say, presenting the printed list on his office desk. “On purpose.”
“I know.” Aric doesn’t look up. “I put him back.”
“Aric—”
“Monsera is The Gods’ newest route. Your father holds it.
” He finally lifts his eyes to mine. “A gathering like this—every family in the world represented—and the man who controls that corridor pointedly uninvited? That isn’t a snub he swallows.
It’s an insult the Council notices. It costs us more than his presence ever could. Plus, he’s my wife’s father.”
“You threw him out of this house eight weeks ago.”
“And I would rather have him inside it Saturday, under my roof and my guns, where I can see every move he makes, than circling it in the dark, where I can’t.
” His voice is even as always. “He comes. He smiles, because the whole world will be watching him do it. He leaves. And I will have eyes on him from the moment he arrives until the moment his car clears the gate.”
It’s the right call. I know it’s the right call. It’s exactly the cold, two-moves-ahead logic that’s kept my husband breathing his entire life.
It doesn’t stop the dread from settling into my chest like a stone and staying there.
My father will be at my gala.
With him walking back into our lives in five days, I should tell Aric what Naomi overheard. Even if she’s not certain if she heard right, and even if I don’t believe my father could actually have anything to do with the murder of Luca.
I open my mouth.
“And my mother?” I ask instead, because for some reason, I can’t bring myself to throw such shade at my father.
“On the list. With him.”
At night, Aric pulls me into bed and listens to me ramble about centerpiece heights and cocktail hour timing until I fall asleep mid-sentence, only to wake up the following morning with his arm still around me and coffee already waiting on the nightstand.
He’s not a romantic, but he’s attentive in ways I didn’t expect.
“You’re stressed,” he observes three nights before the gala, watching me pace the length of our bedroom while reviewing notes on my phone.
“I’m focused.”
“You’ve read that same page four times.”
“It’s an important page.”
He catches my wrist as I pass and pulls me to a stop before he takes the phone from my hand and sets it on the nightstand.
“It can wait.”
“No, it can’t. The caterer needs confirmation on the vegetarian options by—”
He kisses me.
Long and deep. The kind of kiss designed to short-circuit my brain and redirect my attention to more immediate concerns.
It works.
Damn him.
“The caterer can wait,” he murmurs against my lips.
“You’re distracting me.”
“That’s the point.”
“Aric—”
“The gala will be perfect.” His hands slide to my hips. “You will be perfect. And if anything goes wrong, I will personally ensure it’s handled before you even notice.”
“That’s… actually very reassuring.”
“Good.” He pulls me closer. “Now stop thinking about vegetarian options and come to bed.” He leans to my ear and whisper-growls, grazing the shell of my ear, which sends shivers through my body. “Let me take that tension away from you.” He pulls my earlobe between his teeth. “With my tongue.”
Well, that’s an offer I can’t resist.
Seems like the caterer gets their confirmation the following morning after all.
Saturday arrives. I wake before dawn—too anxious to sleep, too wired to lie still—and spend the early hours going over timelines and backup plans and all the things that could go wrong but hopefully won’t.
By noon, the house is a hive. Staff everywhere. Deliveries arriving in waves. The ballroom getting its final touches.
By three, the first of the Gods begin to arrive—those traveling from far, Monaco and Korea and Mexico, who need time to settle before the evening starts.
By five, I’m in the primary suite being transformed.
Hair parted clean down the middle, falling in a sleek black curtain down my back.
Then makeup—warm brown shadow and a satin nude lip.
And finally, the dress. Champagne silk, off the shoulder, the neckline baring my collarbones while pleated chiffon wraps my arms in soft, cloudlike folds. Pearls at my ears. Nude satin heels.
I stare at my reflection.
Mrs. Vold. That’s who’s looking back at me.
Not Princess Ayanna. Not the girl who signed a contract and braced for a lifetime of being miserable.
Someone new. Someone who built something out of nothing.
I take a breath and go to find my husband, hoping the evening remembers its script.