She couldn’t have been older than me. Maybe younger. Or maybe it was just the way she held herself, too still, too careful. A couple of them looked almost underage in the low light—wide eyes, smooth faces—but I told myself it was just makeup, just youth. Just my imagination running in circles.
Still, the unease settled in my stomach like bad liquor.
Felix guided me through the room, introducing me as if I were an accessory.
He kept repeating it. “This is my fiancée. Kira.” Like saying it out loud made it real.I gave the bare minimum—a nod, the flicker of a smile.I knew I wasn’t selling it. Every muscle in my body was too tight. My jaw was clenched so hard I thought I’dcrack a tooth. I was trying. God, I was trying. But I’d never been good at pretending I wasn’t dying inside.
One of the men—dark hair, smug grin, a woman draped on his arm—tilted his head as he looked at me.
“Well,” he said lightly, glass raised, “she looks thrilled.”
There was a beat of silence.
I said nothing.
Felix’s arm tightened around mine.
He leaned down, his mouth close to my ear, his smile still perfectly in place. “Fix your face,” he said quietly. “Don’t humiliate me in front of my friends.”
My stomach twisted. I forced my lips into something that might pass for pleasant. Lifted my chin and let him parade me from one conversation to the next, my arm aching where his fingers dug in whenever I slowed.
Men drifted through the room with quiet authority, leaning close to murmur things that made the girls nod automatically. Every so often, one of them would guide a girl away—not roughly, not dramatically. Just a hand at the back, a tilt of the head toward the elevators framed in glass at the far end of the lobby.
Felix noticed where my gaze lingered.
He leaned close, breath brushing my ear. “You could be one of them,” he said lightly.
I stiffened. “What do you mean?”
He only smiled—a slow, knowing curve of his mouth—and straightened without answering. A chill settled deep in my chest.
I kept telling myself the same thing.
It will be over soon.
I will go home.
And when night falls, Maksym will come.
I held onto that thought like a lifeline, even as Felix’s hand slid possessively to the small of my back, even as his voice continued to introduce me like something already claimed.
I just had to survive the evening.
He finally started saying his goodbyes, and I exhaled slowly, relief blooming in my chest. I was already angling toward the exit, desperate for the night to be over.
His gaze slid past me, toward the lobby, toward the elevators rising in quiet columns of glass. “Where are you going?” he asked.
I frowned, my hand tightening in his sleeve. “Home,” I said, because that was what made sense. Because that was what I’d been holding onto.
He looked at me then, and there was something almost amused in his eyes. “Oh,” he said lightly. “You thought we were leaving?”
My heart stuttered.
He smiled. “I got us a room.”
The words dropped straight through me, heavy and final.
“A room?” I echoed, stupidly. “Why would—Felix, why?”
