7. Ofelia
Ofelia
“He’s watching you.” Lourdes’s eyes cut to Alexei then back to me as she puts her head close to mine.
“Understatement.” Benny puts his arm around me from the other side and leans in close. “He hasn’t taken his pirate eye off you all night.”
“Stop it, both of you.” I take the cocktail the barman hands me, trying to ignore the delicious thrill their words send down my spine.
We left the 404 Not Found bar an hour ago, and now we’re standing in the VIP section of L’Arc nightclub.
Lars and Mickey are seated at a U-shaped booth, surrounded by several others of both genders whom I vaguely recognize as Lars’s friends.
They’re all extremely beautiful, immaculately dressed, and openly admiring of both Lars and Mickey.
Alexei sits opposite them, as grim and quiet as ever.
And I’m as mesmerized by him as I ever was.
I’m amazed he’s even still here. Let alone watching me, as my friends claim. I’ve been alone with my limerent fantasies for so long that I don’t trust my perception of reality.
Let’s face it—I don’t trust myself at all.
Not when it comes to Alexei.
I’ve been proven wrong too many times.
“Come and dance,” Benny says, tugging me by the hand. “I want that sexy Viking to see my hot moves.”
“I don’t know.” I hang back. In the dance space of the private booth, several of Lars’s and Mickey’s admirers are already writhing in a blatant effort to gain their attention.
“Come on.” Lourdes tugs my hand with a wicked smile. “If you dancing right in front of Pirate Boy doesn’t make him lose his mind completely, I don’t know what will.”
“Let me at least finish my drink.”
“Fine.” Benny wags a finger at me. “But we’re dancing.”
Whether Alexei is truly watching me or not, I’ve been acutely aware of his still, silent presence from the moment I saw him in the audience. I avoided a physical greeting in the first bar by reminding myself of something Seline once told me during a tarot reading.
Boundaries, she’d said, tapping the Hermit card sternly. You can put boundaries in place, Ofelia, to maintain your peace.
Unfortunately, the moment Alexei spoke to me, those boundaries scattered like ash on the wind, along with my surroundings and everyone else in the bar. And like always, his words cut through the champagne compliments to my very core.
“That’s what I thought of,” he said, “everyone dancing and laughing in the afternoon sun.”
I breathe deeply, mentally erasing the words from my mind, trying to ignore how closely his description matches my own experience. The last thing I need is another Alexei memory to agonize over in solitary darkness.
No.
What I need to remember is how fast he closed down the moment my boundaries softened. The way he physically stepped away from me.
Alexei Petrovsky may well be the only person who experienced what I felt when I played. He may even be watching me from his booth, as Lourdes says.
But we both know that watching is all he’s ever going to do.
“Come on,” Benny is saying to Lourdes and me. “When else are we ever going to have our own private dance floor in the VIP section of L’Arc?”
“Why not?” I say lightly, putting my drink down on the table and smiling at Benny. “Let’s see those moves, diva boy.”
“Yassss!!” He throws his head back, whooping in triumph, and leads Lourdes and me onto the small private dance floor in front of our booth, twirling us both into action as he starts busting his own—admittedly pretty impressive—moves.
I catch Mickey’s eye as I spin. He grins, raising his glass at me, and I blow him a kiss. It was Mickey who finally convinced Papa to allow me out without my security detail, arguing that between him and Alexei, not to mention Lars’s barrage of security guards, I’d get home safely.
His advocacy is even more generous given that I know he isn’t Alexei’s biggest fan.
But whatever his private opinions, my brother also understands, better than anyone, how rare it is for me to have a night away from the watchful eyes of Papa’s men.
And to Mickey’s credit, he’s also humble enough to accept that Papa would never have agreed to stand my security down without an ironclad guarantee that Alexei will stay with us.
Which is the only reason Alexei came at all, I remind myself. Papa knows that Alexei is a killer every bit as dangerous as he himself ever was. Ironically, that’s also why he trusts him to keep me safe.
Fortunately, Papa has no idea exactly how dangerous to my well-being Alexei truly is.
I was intensely aware of him during the raucous limo ride here.
I felt like I was in somebody else’s body when he helped me out of the limo, then positioned himself between me and the curb as we walked straight past the long line of hopefuls waiting to get in, his hand resting at the base of my spine like a brand, watching every passerby like he just might kill them if they got too close.
And now, an hour after we were ushered straight through the velvet rope into the VIP section and he sat down opposite Lars and my brother, I’m acutely aware that he’s barely touched the drink on the table in front of him, despite the others having consumed the best part of the bottle.
And none of that means a damned thing, I remind myself as Benny spins me beneath his arm, making the floaty layers of my dress flare out around my legs.
Protecting me isn’t just Alexei’s responsibility. It’s his obligation, one the men in our world take deadly seriously. My father would hold all three of the men at the table personally accountable if any harm came to me, and they all know it.
Alexei isn’t here because my piano playing made him feel like he was dancing in a fucking summer meadow. He’s here because he knows—better than anyone—the kind of danger that can befall Roman Borovsky’s daughter.
Lourdes murmurs something to one of Lars’s security guys, who grins and heads downstairs, toward the DJ.
What? I mouth to Lourdes, but she just smiles in response.
A moment later, the song ends, and we hear the first unmistakable strains of Taylor Swift’s newest hit.
“Girl!” Benny halts dramatically, mid-gyration. “You did not!”
Lourdes nods wickedly. “Si, guapo, I did.”
Then all three of us are shrieking, spinning in an ecstatic circle, and for the next few minutes, even Alexei Petrovsky is forgotten.
Our enthusiasm spreads to the dance floor below, and the DJ, taking the hint, launches into an entire medley from the new album.
One by one even the glamour models draped over Lars begin to dance with us, until our private space is suddenly full of laughing, dancing people, all of whom, despite their varying nationalities and the album having been out for less than a week, seem to know every word of every song.
“This is epic,” Benny yells over the music, as he takes his diva moves to the next level. I grin as I see him moving closer to the booth, but there is an increasing amount of people in the small space, and they block my view, so I can’t tell if Lars is on the hook yet or not.
Somebody steps on my dress, and I stumble.
I try to pull free, then realize my dress is snagged on something.
I bend down so the material doesn’t tear, trying to free myself, but people are jumping all around me and I keep getting jostled.
An elbow bangs the side of my head, hard enough to knock me sideways, but the music is too loud for them to hear my protests.
I can’t find my feet, the various cocktails I’ve downed on an empty stomach making me more clumsy than usual. I’m still laughing, but my head hurts where I was hit, and I can’t quite work out how to free myself and stand up.
Then suddenly, Alexei is standing there, his lone eye blazing furiously as he glares around at the people falling away from me, two of whom are sprawled unceremoniously on the floor.
Lars’s security are already picking people up and pushing the crowd back, but it’s clear that Alexei was way ahead of them.
Stand still, he mouths grimly. Leaning down, he twists my dress free from the jagged edge on the floor it’s snagged on. He touches the side of my head, frowning when I wince instinctively. “We’re leaving,” he says, and I hear the finality in his words even through the music.
“I’m fine,” I begin.
“No, you’re not.” Turning me in front of him, he walks me back to the table, the crowd parting before us like the Red Sea. “Her dress is torn, and she got elbowed in the head,” he tells Mickey curtly. “It was an accident, but this crowd isn’t getting any quieter. I need to get her home.”
“Oh my God.” Benny and Lourdes appear on either side of me. “Are you okay, darling?” Benny says, his face full of concern. “We’ll come with you—”
“No, no. Please.” I wave them both away, still half laughing. “Stay. Enjoy. I’m just exhausted after performing.”
It’s not a lie. I’m suddenly shattered, alcohol on top of performance adrenalin giving way to an emotional fragility I know all too well.
“I’ll take her.” Mickey stands up, swaying, then crashes back down into the booth, the expression of surprise on his face almost comical.
“Don’t be fucking stupid.” Alexei doesn’t look remotely amused.
“You haven’t slept in days, and you’ve drunk your entire body weight in Scotch.
You.” He nods at one of Lars’s security guys.
“Have the car brought to the front door. I’m taking her back to your penthouse,” he informs Lars, who just waves airily at us.
“There’s no fucking security at her apartment, remember?
” he snarls in response to Mickey’s frown.
“There’s four bedrooms in Lars’s hotel suite,” he adds, “one of which is yours, Mickey, and I have security on every entrance and exit. It’s the safest place for her. ”
“I should still come.” Mickey stands up again, determinedly this time, and comes out of the booth, reaching for his jacket.