10. Luka #3
For a moment, I think she’ll refuse simply because she knows I expect obedience. Then she exhales through her nose, turns, and walks ahead of me toward the alcove near the side corridor.
I follow her.
The alcove is not private, not truly, but it is shielded from the main hall by a dark marble column and a wall of decorative glass. Anyone determined enough could see us. No one intelligent enough would try.
Nina stops near the wall and folds her arms. “Well?” she asks.
I study her face.
There are faint shadows under her eyes.
Her hair is loose, soft around her shoulders, and I dislike the thought that I don’t know whether she wore it that way for herself, for work, or because she knew I would see her today.
Ridiculous.
I’m forty-two years old, wounded, hunted, and currently standing in my own building trying to interpret a woman’s hairstyle like a boy.
“What is this?” I ask.
Her expression does not change. “What is what?”
“This.”
I gesture between us. A mistake.
Her eyes flick briefly down to the space between our bodies, then back up. “There is no this,” she says.
“Don’t lie to me.”
She laughs once, quietly. “That’s rich.”
My jaw tightens. “Explain.”
“No.”
“Nina.”
“No,” she says again, sharper now. “You don’t get to disappear for two weeks, come back, lie to half your staff in a polished little speech, then drag me into a corner and demand explanations like I’m one of your department heads.”
I stare at her. “You’re angry because I didn’t call you into my office?” I ask.
Her eyes flash. “God, your ego is breathtaking.”
“Then help me understand.”
The words surprise both of us.
Nina’s face shifts, anger disturbed by something softer before she covers it again.
She looks away first, toward the hall where people are still dispersing in quiet clusters. “I didn’t appreciate the way you spoke to them.”
“To whom?”
“The staff.”
My brows draw together. “I addressed them.”
“You managed them.”
“That’s my role.”
“No.” She looks back at me now, and the frustration in her face is clean and bright. “You controlled them. There’s a difference.”
I say nothing.
She continues, quieter but firmer. “They’re scared, Luka.
They were in the building when men with guns entered the garage.
Some of them heard the shots. Some of them saw security carry bodies out.
They have spent two weeks whispering because no one told them anything real, and then you stand in front of them and say words like protocols and operations and expected to return to work. ”
I look toward the hall.
At the employees still speaking in low voices. At the security positioned too visibly by the doors. At Meredith, who stands with the rigid stillness of a woman pretending efficiency is not fear.
Nina steps closer, lowering her voice. “You should’ve acted like a leader.”
The words strike harder than I expect.
I look back at her.
She does not retreat from what she has said.
“You’re very comfortable being obeyed,” she says. “You’re less comfortable letting people be human.”
“That’s not how I run this company.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
There are very few people in the world who would say this to my face.
Fewer still who would survive it.
Nina says it with her chin lifted and her hands curled tight against her own arms, not because she wants to hurt me, but because she thinks I need to hear it.
I feel my temper rise. I feel something else beneath it too. Not shame. I dislike the word. But something close enough that I recognize it by the way it makes me want to become colder.
“You think I should’ve frightened them less,” I say.
“I think you should’ve reassured them more.”
“I reassured them there’s no ongoing threat.”
“You said it like a legal clause.”
“It was a legal clause.”
“Exactly.”
I look at her for a long moment, then say, “You believe I failed them.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. “I think,” she says carefully, “you scared them into silence when you should have made them feel protected.”
Protected.
The word sits between us. A familiar word. A dangerous one.
I think of the garage. My body over hers. Concrete bursting near her head. Her bloodless face in the red emergency light. Her hand pressing against my wound while she told me to go to the hospital in a voice that shook.
“I did protect them,” I say.
Her expression softens slightly. “I know,” she says. “But they don’t.”
And there, finally, is the difference.
It’s not that she is angry I survived and stayed away. Not only that.
She sees what I missed because I was looking for enemies.
I exhale slowly.
The movement pulls at my shoulder, and pain runs down my arm.
Nina notices immediately. Her eyes drop to the sling. “Does it still hurt?”
“Yes.”
Her gaze lifts. The honesty surprises her.
“It’s healing,” I add.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No,” I say. “It was what I wanted to answer.”
She almost smiles. Then her expression shifts again, as if she has remembered something heavier than this argument. She looks down at her hands, uncrosses her arms, then folds them again.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says.
“What?”
She hesitates.
Nina rarely hesitates. She snaps, deflects, attacks, mocks, survives. Hesitation does not suit her, and because of that, I dislike it instantly.
“What is it?” I ask, softer now.
She draws in a breath. “Misha—”
“Luka?” The voice comes from behind me.
Familiar in the vague, inconvenient way of a face once seen across candlelight and no longer worth remembering.
Nina stops speaking.
I turn.
A woman is walking toward us from the main hall, smiling like she has been invited into my day rather than trespassing inside it. Tall, blonde, expensive. Pale pink dress beneath a white coat. Diamonds at her ears. One hand rests over her stomach, though at first the gesture means nothing to me.
I know her. I think.
The name does not arrive immediately, which says enough about the importance of the evening we apparently shared.
Alina?
No.
Katie?
Beside me, Nina goes very still.
That helps me place the woman faster.
Karelin.
Alina Karelin.
Dinner at Maison.
The night before the boardroom.
The night Nina left angry in a car I arranged and spent the drive home texting another man out of spite.
Alina reaches me before I can speak. She rises onto her toes and kisses my cheek.
I don’t move.
The scent of her perfume hits me, too sweet, too familiar from a night I barely remember and now resent being forced to recall.
“Baby,” she says, smiling wide enough for the hallway to notice, “guess what?”
Alina’s hand presses more deliberately against her stomach.“I’m pregnant,” she announces.
The hallway beyond us continues in fragments: the low murmur of employees, the distant chime of an elevator, Meredith’s voice somewhere behind the column. Ordinary sounds from a world that apparently has not realized mine has just been split open again.
I look at Alina. Then at her hand.
Then at Nina. That’s the mistake.
Because Nina sees me look.
Her face does not crumple. She’s too proud for that. Too disciplined in her own way. Instead, her mouth curves slightly, a small, terrible attempt at politeness that does not reach her eyes.
“Well,” she says softly, before I can say a single word, “congratulations.”
Then she steps back. Just one step.
Enough to make the distance feel permanent.