Katerina
By the time the first hour passes, I hate everyone in the room.
I know within ten minutes that bringing the children here was a mistake.
Not because anything obvious happens. No one raises a voice. No one pulls a gun. No one even looks surprised to see a four-year-old boy standing beside Sergei Markov in a little dark suit.
That’s exactly the problem.
The room takes Nikolai in too easily.
Men glance at him and then glance at my father.
Women smile at Sofia because she’s bright and pretty and impossible not to notice, but their eyes always come back to Nikolai.
He’s quieter. More serious. He stands close to me, one hand on my dress, his face solemn in that way people always find charming until they start imagining futures for him.
I can feel my father enjoying it.
Not openly. Papa never enjoys anything openly unless he wants the whole room to know. But I know him too well. Every time someone leans in to say how handsome the boy is, or how much presence he has, or how he has the ‘Markov look,’ my father’s expression shifts by a fraction.
I stand there holding Sofia’s hand and smiling when required, and all I can think is that the moment dinner ends, I’m taking the children upstairs and leaving as early as I can without making a scene.
If Papa wants them seen tonight, fine. He’s had his audience.
He will not have the rest of the evening.
I turn my head, already checking the nearest exit, and then I see him.
I stop breathing.
At first, my mind refuses to make sense of it.
The man is too tall, too familiar, too impossible.
He’s moving through the room with the sort of ease no one can fake, and people shift around him without seeming to realize they’re doing it.
He’s dressed in black, no tie, no smile, and there’s silver at his temples now that was only just beginning when I knew him.
Roman.
For one terrible second, I think I’ve imagined him into the room.
Then he lifts his head and looks straight at me.
My body reacts before my thoughts can catch up. My heart slams once so hard it hurts. The edges of the room blur. I take a step back, catch the hem of my dress under my heel, and lose my balance.
It happens so fast I don’t even have time to be embarrassed.
One moment I’m upright, and the next I’m falling.
Then Roman catches me.
His hand closes around my waist. His other hand catches my arm. The grip is strong, instant, familiar enough to make heat rush through me at the worst possible time.
I look up at him.
For one insane heartbeat, everything else disappears. The music, the voices, my father, Vika, the children, all of it goes quiet behind the simple fact of his face being this close to mine again.
He does not look shocked.
He does not look angry.
He looks… composed. Cool. Like I’m a woman who stumbled in a crowded room and nothing more.
“Katerina,” he says, low enough that only I can hear it.
My name in his mouth should not still sound like that.
I straighten too quickly and nearly make things worse. “I’m fine.”
“You nearly fell.”
“I noticed.”
He lets go of me at once.
That hurts more than it should.
I don’t know what I expected. A crack in the face, maybe. Some sign that he remembers the same things I do. That he sees me and feels the shock I’m still trying to breathe through.
There’s nothing.
He steps back as if there has been no history between us at all.
And suddenly I feel foolish.
Four years is a long time. Men like Roman do not spend years haunted by one woman. Men like Roman have lives, power, enemies, women, whatever else men like Roman collect and destroy. I’m the only one standing here feeling as if I’ve just seen a ghost.
Papa recovers first.
“Mr. Sokolov,” he says, with that measured warmth he uses for powerful men he has not yet decided whether to trust. “You made it.”
Roman inclines his head. “Sergei.”
My father smiles, but he’s already studying him more closely. I can see it. Papa always recognizes power quickly. It’s one of the few instincts in him that has never once failed.
And then Vika moves in.
She has been waiting for a man like this all evening.
She’s in one of her sleek black dresses, the kind she wears when she wants the entire room to understand that she’s desirable and knows it.
Hair perfect. Mouth painted deep red. Shoulders bare.
She looks expensive, hungry, and completely at ease.
“Roman,” she says, as if she has every right to use his first name.
He turns to her.
Only then do I realize they know each other.
Not deeply, maybe. But enough that she doesn’t hesitate, enough that he doesn’t ask who she is. That realization slides into me like something cold.
So, she has met him before.
How? When? And why does that bother me this much?
I look down at myself before I can stop it.
My dress is dark blue, high at the neck, simple except for the fit. It had felt elegant enough when I put it on. Appropriate. I was dressing for my father’s crowd, not for seduction. I was dressing to protect, not to be seen.
Standing beside Vika now, I feel plain.
I hate myself a little for noticing.
Then I hate the room for making me notice.
When I look up again, Roman is already watching me. Not the polite glance from a stranger, and not the cool courtesy from a man pretending not to know me.
Vika recovers first.
By the time I’ve managed to steady my breathing, she’s already smiling up at Roman as if almost falling into his arms was the most amusing little accident of the evening and not something that has left my pulse pounding in my throat.
“You do make an entrance,” she says.
Roman’s expression barely shifts. “I came through the front door.”
Vika laughs as though he has said something clever and charming instead of flatly obvious. My father watches the exchange with far too much interest for my liking, his hand resting on the back of Nikolai’s chair, his gaze moving from Roman to Vika and then, once, very briefly, to me.
That look tells me enough.
They expected Roman. Maybe not me stumbling into him, maybe not the children, maybe not this exact moment, but Roman was part of whatever tonight is. Vika knew he would be here. Papa knew Vika knew. The understanding passes between them so fast anyone else would miss it.
I don’t.
And suddenly I feel ridiculous standing there in dark blue silk chosen for decency and distance while Vika glows in black like she dressed for him.
I hate the thought the moment it arrives.
I hate her more for making me have it.
Roman says something low to Papa, then Vika laughs too brightly and touches his sleeve. He doesn’t move away. He doesn’t encourage her either. He simply allows the contact the way men like him allow weather, servants, and lesser people with temporary uses.
That should comfort me.
It doesn’t.
A few minutes later, when the music shifts and the room begins to loosen into the easier rhythm that comes after formal introductions, Vika gets exactly what she wants.
Roman offers her his hand.
Or maybe she all but takes it. I can’t tell from where I’m standing, and it makes me angry that I care enough to notice.
They move onto the dance floor.
I don’t think they are flirting. That would almost be easier.
It’s worse than that. They look good together.
Vika knows how to hold herself, how to tip her face at the right angle, how to give a man just enough softness to make him seem larger beside her.
Roman is impossible not to look at. Tall, dark, silver at the temples, his hand at her waist as if it belongs there, every line of him controlled.
He should look wrong beside her, but he doesn’t.
That hurts in a way I resent.
Sofia is half-asleep against Mama’s shoulder now.
Nikolai stands close to me, one hand wrapped around two of my fingers, and I feel suddenly trapped between things I cannot bear.
My son in this room. My father watching him.
My sister on Roman’s arm. Roman acting as if our history is folded away somewhere inaccessible to everyone but me.
I need a minute.
I bend toward Mama. “I’m stepping out.”
She searches my face and does not ask why. “I have them.”
I nod and walk before I can lose my nerve.
The corridor outside the ballroom is cooler, quieter, lined with mirrors and low lamps. My heart is beating much too fast. I keep walking until the music softens behind me and the sound of voices becomes something distant and muffled.
Only then do I stop.
I brace one hand against a marble console and look at myself in the mirror.
My face is flushed. My hair has loosened near one temple.
“You always did know when to run,” murmurs a voice behind me.
I close my eyes once. Then I turn.
He’s standing in the doorway, jacket still on, tie loose now, his expression unreadable in that way I once thought meant calm. I know better now. With him, unreadable usually means dangerous.
“I didn’t run,” I say.
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then lifts again. “No? It looked very familiar.”
I deserve it. I hate that he knows I know that. “I needed air.”
“You left your children in there,” he scoffs. “I’m yet to see why you brought them here tonight. What kind of opportunity do you see here, princess?”
I seethe at the title. “None of your business.”
“You’re at my event,” he points out calmly.
“I left them with my mother.”
“With Sergei Markov in the same room,” he says. The anger under his voice is so immediate that my own rises to meet it.
“He’s their grandfather.”
“He’s a man with plans.”
“And you’re what?”
That stills him for one beat.
“A man with very little patience left.”
I should back away. Instead, I take a step toward him.
The air between us changes at once. All the years between Moscow and now don’t disappear exactly, but they narrow. The room feels smaller.
“That girl isn’t yours to punish me with,” I blurt out.
Roman’s brows draw together. “What girl?”
“Vika.”
Real understanding flashes across his face, followed by something darker. “You think I care about Vika?”
“I think you let her all over you in front of me.”
His mouth almost curves, but there is no humor in it. “You noticed.”
The insult of that nearly makes me slap him.
He must see it in my face, because he crosses the distance between us before I can say anything else. One second he’s standing three feet away. The next, his hand is around my waist and my back hits the edge of the marble console.
The breath leaves me in a rush.
“Roman.”
“Say it again.”
My hands are already on his shoulders. I do not remember lifting them there. “This is a terrible idea,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
Then he kisses me.
Hard.
Not gently, not carefully, not like a man discovering whether I still taste the same. Like a man who has already thought about this too much and resents me for making him want it anyway.
I kiss him back just as furiously.
The first brush of his mouth against mine is enough to send heat through my whole body. The second opens something. His tongue slides into my mouth, and all the shame and anger and jealousy I’ve been carrying since I saw him on the dance floor burn into something simpler and much more dangerous.
His hand tightens at my waist. My fingers go into his hair before I can stop them. He makes a rough sound under his breath that hits me low and hard.
I have missed him.
That’s the worst truth of all.
His mouth leaves mine only long enough to drag down the line of my jaw. I tilt my head back against the mirror without meaning to, giving him my throat. He kisses the side of it once, then again, slower, and I shiver so hard it almost embarrasses me.
Almost.
“Still this easy for me,” he murmurs against my skin.
I hate him for being right. I also hate that I answer by pulling him closer.
He kisses me again, deeper now, one hand sliding up my back until it tangles in my hair. The other moves over my waist, my hip, my side, not groping, not fumbling, just reacquainting himself with a body he has no right to know this well after four years.
My body doesn’t seem to care about rights. It melts.
I can feel his erection against my thigh through his trousers, and the knowledge sends a pulse of heat straight through me. He feels me react and groans once, low in his throat, then bites my lower lip hard enough to make me gasp.
“Roman,” I say again, but now it sounds like begging.
He leans his forehead against mine.
For a second, both of us are breathing too hard in the dim little corridor while the orchestra keeps playing beyond the doors and our children are still in the ballroom with my family.
That thought cuts through the haze first for him.
I see the moment it happens.
His hand leaves my hair. His mouth brushes mine one last time, not soft exactly, but slower.
Then he steps back.
The loss of him is immediate and unfair.
I swallow. “Roman—”
He cuts across me with one more sentence, even quieter. “I should have remembered you only stay long enough to ruin things.”
He turns and starts toward the ballroom.
Something panicked rises in me.
“I know who you really are,” I say.
He stops.
My heart is pounding so hard I feel sick. “That’s the reason I ran.”
For one second, I think he might turn back.
He doesn’t.
He says nothing at all.
Then he opens the door and walks back into the light.