Nikolay (Kozlov Family Vampires #2)

1. Chapter 1

Nikolay

By the time I crossed the main floor of Obsidian, I had already lost more composure than I was willing to admit.

The club breathed around me—amber, sandalwood, velvet heat, the low pulse of music under conversation—but all of it had narrowed to a single, intolerable fact.

Madelyn Baucaum was downstairs in my brother’s employ, in a skirt that looked less like a uniform than an act of provocation, smiling at patrons as though she belonged here, as though Philadelphia had not been meant to spit her back toward Texas the moment the wedding festivities ended.

I had seen battlefields with less immediate threat.

That thought would have amused me on another night. It did not amuse me now.

She moved between the low black tables with a tray balanced on one hand, her body navigating the room with that infernal ease of hers, hips swaying not because she tried to entice anyone but because nature had built her soft and vivid and unashamed of it.

The purple light struck the shine in her dark hair and turned her whiskey-colored eyes molten when she tipped her chin toward some demon at the bar.

I could not hear what she said from where I stood, but I watched the demon laugh and hand over his glass like a chastened schoolboy.

I thought I could let it go after that first night—that first confrontation.

Apparently, I was mistaken. She had been in the club no more than a handful of shifts, if that, and already she had learned the room.

Or perhaps the room had learned her.

That was worse.

My body knew her too well. It had known her the instant she stepped into my orbit with the other Iron Valor contingency over a week ago, carrying a duffel bag and a reckless disregard for anyone but herself.

The word mate had slipped into my mind. The recognition had hit with such force that I had almost mistaken it for violence.

Every old law in my blood had risen in refusal, and beneath it something darker, more humiliating, had risen in want.

Since then, I had found no peace in distance because there had been no distance.

I had found none in reason because reason had become ash the moment her scent touched the back of my throat.

Wolf. Warm skin, leather, a trace of vanilla and West Texas wind that ought to have seemed mundane instead struck me with a hunger that felt nearly blasphemous.

I stalked through the hall, acknowledging no one who greeted me.

Staff stepped subtly out of my path. A pair of witches, chatting about this or that, neared and suddenly ceased their banter, slowing to give me a wide berth.

On another night, I would have moderated my stride, softened my expression, remembered that I was always being observed.

I had built a life around managing the emotional weather in every room I entered.

That gift was useless to me when my own storm had already broken.

The second floor held the VIP lounge, my father’s and now Devon’s thrones, and the chamber where the Council of Elders met.

This was a place of sealed doors and controlled sins.

The hushed corridor where pleasure had the discipline of ritual and every indulgence was watched, measured, and consented to.

Then the third, where the club shed more of its performance and returned to what it truly was under the velvet and vice—ledger, leverage, territory, and rule. This is where I was heading.

Bohdan’s office sat apart from the corridor behind a door of black lacquer set into dark paneling. I did not knock. I opened it hard enough that the brass handle struck the wall with a crack that would have made most men flinch.

My younger brother did not.

He was already leaning back in his large leather chair, fingers steepled as though my arrival had been marked on his schedule.

Dark mahogany paneling climbed the walls behind him.

Blood-red velvet drapes framed the tall windows and swallowed what little city light might have dared intrude.

Antique lamps burned low and gold, throwing long shadows over leather-bound ledgers stacked in deliberate piles.

The room smelled of old paper, polished wood, expensive liquor, and the cool metallic hint that seemed to cling to all our kind after feeding.

A slow smile had already begun at the corner of his mouth.

Goddess help him, he looked entertained.

That alone nearly undid the last of my restraint.

“Explain,” I said.

His brow lifted a fraction. “Good evening to you as well, Nikolay.”

I shut the door behind me with more force than courtesy required, though less than the fury insisting upon it.

My jaw hurt. I had not realized how hard I had been clenching it until I felt the ache.

“Why,” I asked, each word placed with care sharp enough to cut, “is Madelyn Baucaum still in Philadelphia when the rest of Iron Valor returned to Texas, and why is she currently downstairs serving clients on our floor in a skirt that has no business being that short?”

He let the silence breathe.

Bohdan had always understood timing. Where I soothed, he baited.

Where I sought common ground, he discovered the exact pressure point that would make a man reveal himself and then laid one elegant finger upon it.

He did not hurry to answer because hurrying would have been mercy, and mercy was not the sport he had chosen.

He tapped his fingertips together. “Is that what has upset you?” he asked mildly. “The geography, or the skirt?”

I took one step farther into the room.

The smile on his mouth deepened, not from fear but from confirmation. He had expected this, then. Perhaps he had expected it the moment Lucia walked Maddie through these doors. Perhaps he had expected it before I did.

“Do not play with me tonight, Bohdan.”

“I rarely play with anything I cannot profit from.”

“Then answer.”

He straightened only enough to uncross one ankle from the other. His suit was impeccable, charcoal-black with a subtle pattern that the lamplight only half revealed. His cufflinks were antique platinum. His expression was pure younger-brother insolence, refined by centuries into an art form.

“Lucia brought her to me personally,” he said at last. “Madelyn wished to stay in Philadelphia. She was looking for work. I had a vacancy. I made a decision.”

My hands clenched at my sides. Not visibly, not enough for a human eye perhaps, but enough that the tendons drew hard beneath my skin. “A decision,” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“She is a guest.”

“She was a guest. Now she is an employee.”

“She is a wolf from Texas.”

He gave a slight shrug. “And?”

The single word landed with all the smooth offensiveness he intended. It forced me to hear myself as he must have heard me—old blood, old prejudices, old hierarchies hastily dressed in practical language. I despised that he could do that. I despised more that I could not say he was entirely wrong.

“And this is Obsidian,” I said, as if that settled anything. “Not a roadside bar off a state highway.”

One dark brow arched. “No, it is considerably more selective. Which is why I hired someone useful.”

“I asked why she is here.”

“And I answered.”

“No,” I said, taking another step until the desk stood between us like a formal barrier in some antique court. “You told me you had a position available, and you happened to hire someone. That was not reasoning. That was the procedure.”

At that, his mouth curved a little wider. He enjoyed this version of me. Not because he enjoyed my pain—though I would not have put some measure of brotherly cruelty past him—but because he enjoyed seeing the one brother least likely to lose his balance shoved toward the edge.

“Very well,” he said. “You would like the business case.”

I said nothing. My silence was consent enough.

He lifted a hand and began counting off points on his fingers with infuriating calm.

“She has a degree in restaurant management and years of experience at Pearl’s Bar & Grill,” he said.

“Not Obsidian, no, but high-volume service in a mixed environment where the clientele ranged from local men half in love with their own opinions to pack officers who expected immediate competence. She handled all of them without incident.”

I stared at him. He continued.

“She is quick. Quicker than she initially appears, which is useful. She reads temperaments well. In three nights, I watched her defuse one inebriated vampire, redirect a witch who wished to start a public scene with her companion, and charm a demon into paying a tab he had hoped to contest.”

His tone remained maddeningly neutral, each sentence delivered with the precision of a man reciting inventory. Yet beneath that precision I heard the relish. He knew exactly how every word struck me. He knew that each quality he named was one I had already observed and resented in private.

“She does not intimidate easily,” he went on.

“She learns quickly, asks intelligent questions, remembers preferences after being told once, and possesses the sort of warmth that makes patrons linger. You know as well as I do that another round is often purchased because a room feels welcoming before it feels expensive.”

My jaw tightened further. I could almost see him placing each point in a row like polished knives.

“Her formal training will come in handy,” he added. “Restaurant management is a valuable skill, if memory serves. Which means she is not merely carrying drinks in that very upsetting skirt. She is evaluating traffic flow, staff behavior, client rhythm, and where my floor loses money.”

“My floor?” I asked softly.

He inclined his head. “The family’s floor, then, if that preserves your delicate sensibilities.”

I ignored that. “You put a wolf shifter newly arrived from Texas in one of the most politically charged supernatural spaces on the eastern seaboard because she has a degree and can smile through trouble?”