Chapter 23
Boredom at high society events has a distinct flavor: warm champagne and hypocrisy.
We were in the ballroom of the Drake Hotel, a cavernous space adorned with crystal chandeliers that cost more than the souls of most people present.
It was a charity event—“Orphans of the City,” or some other noble cause that served only as a front for money laundering and networking among Chicago’s political and criminal elite.
I was leaning against a faux marble column, holding a glass of sparkling water I had no intention of drinking.
My suit was black Tom Ford, tailored to hide the shoulder holster and the tactical knife at the small of my back.
To civilians, I was Cassian Varro, CEO of Varro Holdings, a reclusive philanthropist. To the half of the room that mattered, I was the Consigliere who stole the throne—the man they were testing, prodding, waiting to see bleed.
My eyes swept the perimeter. Franco was positioned near the service exit. Two of my men were at the bar. Three others had blended in with the waiters. The perimeter was secure.
But my treacherous eyes didn’t stay on the emergency exits. They kept returning to the center of the ballroom. To her.
Solaia was radiant. There was no other word.
She wore a backless golden silk dress that flowed over her body like molten metal.
The slit up her leg was a calculated provocation.
She held a crystal glass with the elegance of someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth, laughing at something the mayor’s wife was saying.
She was working. Since the incident in the office, Solaia had stepped into her role with frightening competence. She wasn’t just decorative; she was diplomatic. She smoothed over the rough edges my cutting presence created. She was the velvet over my steel.
I watched her touch the mayor’s wife’s arm, a gesture of manufactured intimacy that guaranteed the renewal of construction permits for our new port.
She looked at me across the crowded ballroom.
Her social smile faltered for a millisecond.
Her dark eyes deepened, conveying a private, intimate message that made my blood heat: Get me out of here. I want to go home.
I nodded discreetly. Twenty more minutes.
I looked away to check my watch. When I looked up again, the dynamic in the room had shifted.
A man had approached Solaia. I recognized him immediately.
Alexei Volkov. A low-ranking lieutenant with the Kovacs family.
An upstart who’d only been invited because his family made a substantial donation to clean up their image.
He was drunk. His posture was loose, his face red.
He crowded into Solaia’s space, cornering her against a table of appetizers.
Solaia took a step back, maintaining her polite smile, trying to deflect. Alexei stepped forward. He said something. Solaia stiffened. The smile vanished.
I set my glass down on a passing tray. The sound of glass hitting metal was the start of the countdown.
I began to walk. I didn’t run. Running shows panic. I wasn’t panicking; I was focused. The world around me—the string quartet’s music, the laughter, the tinkling of jewelry—faded to a distant hum. My vision narrowed to a tunnel. The target was Alexei. The objective was neutralization.
I saw Alexei’s hand move. He didn’t touch her shoulder. He didn’t touch her hand. He touched the bare skin of her back, his thick fingers trailing down her exposed spine, stopping dangerously close to the curve of her ass.
Solaia shuddered visibly—pure physical revulsion—and tried to pull away, but he grabbed her arm.
Time stopped. The beast inside me, the one I kept chained with logic and stoicism, broke its cage. There was no strategy. There was no politics. There was only: He touched what’s mine.
I reached them. Solaia saw my face first. Her eyes widened. She stopped trying to free herself from Alexei and went still, knowing what was coming.
“...and I said your father was a lucky man, but your husband doesn’t know what to do with a filly like...” Alexei was saying, his voice thick with vodka.
I placed my hand on his shoulder. It wasn’t a friendly touch. My fingers dug into his trapezius muscle, seeking the nerve. Alexei stopped talking, turning his head slowly, irritated. “What’s your problem, frien...”
He saw who I was. The color drained from his face so fast it seemed like magic.
“Remove your hand,” I said. My voice was a whisper. Calm. Terrible.
Alexei blinked, confused by the alcohol and the sudden fear. He looked at his own hand, still gripping Solaia’s arm. “I was just greeting Mrs. Varro. We’re old friends, aren’t we, doll?”
He squeezed her arm. I watched Solaia’s white skin turn red under his fingers.
It was enough.
In one fluid movement, I grabbed Alexei’s wrist with my left hand and seized his index finger with my right. The finger that had dared to trace my wife’s spine.
“Niet—” he started to say.
I didn’t wait. I twisted his wrist to lock the joint and pulled his finger back. Way back. To the limit of human anatomy. And then I went past it.
CRACK.
The sound was dry, loud, and nauseating. Like a green branch snapping in half. It echoed over the Mozart. Alexei didn’t scream immediately. His brain took a second to process that his index finger was now pointing at the back of his own hand.
Then he screamed. A high-pitched, animal howl that made the music stop. He fell to his knees, doubled over in pain, clutching his mangled hand to his chest.
The ballroom froze. Three hundred people stopped breathing simultaneously. No one moved. The hotel security guards looked at me and, wisely, decided they weren’t paid enough to intervene.
I didn’t let go of his jacket. I kept him on his knees before me, before Solaia. I leaned down close to his ear while he sobbed.
“You’re lucky,” I whispered. “Because we’re in public. If we were anywhere else, I’d rip that hand off and make you eat it.”
I pulled him up by the collar, forcing him to meet my eyes. “Look at her.”
He looked at Solaia, whimpering. “Never look at her again. Never breathe the same air as her. If I find out you’ve so much as whispered her name while drunk, I’ll come for you. And I won’t stop at one finger. Understood?”
Alexei nodded frantically, pain and terror streaming down his face as sweat and tears. I released him. He collapsed on the floor, curled into a fetal position.
I straightened up. Adjusted my cufflinks. Ran my hand over my jacket to smooth a nonexistent wrinkle.
I lifted my gaze to the ballroom. I saw the stares. Shock. Horror. And in the eyes of the businessmen and rivals... respect. They got the message. The girl isn’t just a wife. She’s sacred territory. Touch her and die.
I turned to Solaia. She stood a few feet away. She wasn’t looking at Alexei moaning on the floor. She was looking at me. I expected to see the fear from Chapter 5. The panic at witnessing raw violence. I braced for her to recoil.
But Solaia didn’t recoil. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, yes. But her eyes... They were dilated. Bright. No horror. Fascination. An electricity in her that mirrored my own murderous adrenaline.
I extended my hand to her. “Let’s go.”
She placed her hand in mine without hesitation. Her fingers squeezed tight. We walked toward the exit. The crowd parted like the Red Sea. No one dared speak. No one dared stop us.
We stepped out into the cold night. Franco already had the limousine door open, the engine running. He looked at me, saw the tension in my jaw, and asked no questions.
We got in the car. As soon as the door closed and the window went up, isolating us from the world, the mask fell. I let out the breath I’d been holding. The post-violence tremor—that fine vibration in my hands—began.
I turned to Solaia, ready to apologize, to explain that I’d lost control, that it was excessive. “Solaia, I...”
She didn’t let me speak. She threw herself at me.
In one swift motion, she straddled my lap, ignoring the expensive gala dress, her hands grabbing my face, pulling me to her. She kissed me with a ferocity that tasted of blood and champagne.
I went rigid for a second, shocked, before my hands instinctively grabbed her waist, pulling her against me. “You broke his finger,” she whispered against my mouth, breathless. “Did you hear the sound?”
“I lost my head,” I murmured, trying to catch my breath. “I should have been more discreet.”
“Fuck discretion.” She pulled back just enough to look into my eyes. Her pupils were swallowing the brown. She was aroused. The violence, the absolute protection, had ignited something primitive in her. “He touched me. I felt dirty. I couldn’t get away from him. And then you... you showed up.”
She ran her fingers through my hair, down to my neck, feeling my racing pulse. “Everyone in that room is afraid of you, Cassian. They look at you like you’re a monster.”
“I am a monster, Solaia. That’s what I do.”
“I know.” She smiled, and it wasn’t a sweet smile. It was the smile of a queen who’d just watched her army decimate the enemy. “And that’s why I feel so safe. Because the monster is mine.”
The words hit me like a gunshot. The monster is mine.
She didn’t want Prince Charming. Prince Charming would have challenged Alexei to a verbal duel or called security. Prince Charming would have followed the rules. She wanted the dragon that burned down the entire village because someone looked wrong at the treasure.
I leaned my head back against the seat, closing my eyes for a moment, accepting the twisted reality of our life. “You're sick, Solaia,” I whispered, but my hands gripped her thigh possessively.
“We both are,” she replied, biting my lower lip. “Now take me home. And finish what you started in that ballroom.”
I opened my eyes, looking at the golden woman in my lap—the only person in the world who saw my hands stained with violence and chose to hold them tighter.
“Franco,” I said into the intercom, my voice hoarse. “To the penthouse. Fast.”
The car accelerated into the Chicago night. I'd broken a bone tonight. I'd declared silent war on the Kovacs and humiliated a man in public. But as Solaia kissed my neck, the only thing that mattered was that no one, ever again, would dare touch her without remembering the sound of that crack.
And that was a peace I could live with.