Chapter 55 #2
Camila, at our table, regales us with a story about a cartel dispute that somehow involves three donkeys and a stolen helicopter, and I find myself laughing genuinely for the first time all night.
Aric, beside me, is suspiciously quiet.
I glance over to find him watching me with that expression again—soft and hungry and something else I can’t name. The one that makes my heart warm.
After dinner, the dancing begins.
Aric leads me onto the floor for the first dance. His hand finds my waist. Mine finds his shoulder. We move together with a fluidity that surprises me every time, and for the length of one song there is no gala, no guest list—just the two of us and the music and the warmth of his hand at my back.
The song ends. Alexei asks Aric for a word, and we step aside as other couples take the floor. Across it, I catch Eero leading Naomi into a clumsy, laughing approximation of a waltz, and despite everything, I smile.
I’m about to head for the champagne when I see Chiara.
She’s standing near the edge of the dance floor, a glass of champagne in her hand. The moment our eyes meet, she walks toward me.
“I think I owe you an apology,” she says gently.
I blink because that’s something I genuinely didn’t see coming. “You don’t—”
“I do.” She takes a deep breath. She looks at Aric across the room, then back at me, and there’s something resigned and almost gentle in it now.
“What I said to you in Italy. It was cruel, and it was meant to be, and I’m not proud of it.
” She turns the glass in her hand. “I told myself for a long time that if things had been different, he’d have chosen me.
That you got the life that should’ve been mine.
” Her lips press into a thin line. “But I’ve watched him tonight.
All night. The way he tracks you across a room.
The way his whole face changes when you laugh. ”
Her eyes flick between mine for a moment before her head shakes slightly.
“He never looked at me like that,” she whispers. “Not once. I used to think he was just incapable of it.” She chuckles, but it’s a sad sound. “Turns out he was only ever incapable of it with me.”
Something in my chest, some knot I’ve carried since that powder room in Italy, quietly comes undone.
Because yes, she had him first, but I got a different version of Aric Vold—the version he kept chained under years of restraint, the one hidden under ice and control, the one he’s only ever shown me—and all the firsts that come with it.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.
Chiara nods slowly. “Be good to him.” She manages a tight smile. “He doesn’t know how to ask for it.”
“I know.”
She lifts her glass a fraction—a truce, an ending, a beginning of something that might one day be civil—and she melts back into the crowd toward Hyun-seok.
The night, I think, is almost perfect.
The crowd is beginning to thin. The band shifts into a slower, quieter tempo, a signal that the evening is winding down. Aric reappears at my side and takes my hand.
“They’re leaving soon.” He leans down to whisper into my ear. “We see them out. One more performance, Mrs. Vold, and then I’m taking you to bed.”
Involuntarily, my teeth sink into my lower lip as I bite down, a smile curving my lips.
We walk toward the entrance together, preparing to thank guests, to shake hands, to play the perfect hosts one final time before the night ends.
Two of the quartet’s musicians are by the doors, setting down their instrument cases.
But the music is still playing behind us, the same slow strings.
My forehead creases because... how does the music keep playing if the musicians are right here instead?
Then I notice Aric, and the change in him.
His hand goes tight at my back. His head turns—not toward the departing guests, but toward the far wall, where one of his men should be standing. He isn’t.
In the space of a single breath, my husband disappears. Something colder takes his place. His free hand is already reaching beneath his jacket, toward the weapon I know he keeps there when the doors slam open.
Cold air rushes in, and I see men outside. Then I see the guns, and my blood runs cold. Two men. Maybe three. Moving fast. Moving toward us.
No—not toward us.
Toward him.
Toward Aric.
They’re going to kill my husband.
My thoughts are racing, spiraling. My heart thuds in my rib cage.
I don’t think. My body moves before my mind can catch up, years of royal training overridden by something primal—something that doesn’t care about protocol or self-preservation or anything except the man beside me.
The man who burned a contract for me. Who saved my life twice.
Who trusted me with the parts of himself he’d spent a lifetime keeping locked away.
I throw myself in front of him.
The gunshot cracks through the air, and then I feel pain.
Blinding, searing, consuming. It tears through my side like fire, like lightning, like something that should not be able to exist inside a human body.
Screaming echoes through the room. Maybe it’s mine. Maybe it’s someone else’s. I can’t tell anymore.
The world tilts and spins, then goes dark at the edges.
The champagne silk I spent three fittings to perfect blooms red beneath my hand, spreading fast, soaking warm through my fingers.
And the last thing I see before I hit the ground is Aric’s face—his usual composure completely shattered—as he reaches for me, falling with me, his arms closing around me before I collapse.
“Ayanna!”
It sounds like a roar, a raw and broken one.
I try to speak. Try to tell him it’s okay. Try to say I love you—because I never have, not out loud, and that seems suddenly like the cruelest thing I’ve ever done.
But the darkness is rising, and then… nothing.