He says something in her ear, and she blushes, then he takes her hand and kisses the inside of her wrist like he’s fucking done with me countless times before.
I turn away and focus on the table before my father notices me staring, but across the room, Ruslan laughs again. It’s deliberate now—I know it in the way I know the rhythm of my own pulse. He’s performing, flirting with the kind of easy, vulgar confidence that turns heads.
The Dragovich heir is exactly what he should be—dangerous with men and insatiable with women.
I should approve. Instead, I feel murderously, humiliatingly livid.
By dessert, I’m barely hearing the conversation around me. Men are discussing shipping concessions and customs interference somewhere to my left. My father asks me for my opinion at one point, and I give him the right one without really thinking, because some parts of me perform on instinct now.
But when dinner finally ends, and the older generation moves to cigars, brandy, and whatever private threats need to be discussed before dawn, I make myself visible just long enough to avoid suspicion.
Then I slip out through the side corridor.
Past the music room, past the smoking lounge, and past the last cluster of laughing wives and bored heirs. I climb the narrow staircase to the private terrace outside my room above the west wing.
I step out and slam the door shut hard enough that the glass rattles in its frame. The night air hits me cold, but it doesn’t do a fucking thing to cool what’s clawing through me.
I light a cigarette with steady hands that should shake, which irritates me because I feel on the verge of breaking apart, yet my body remains composed. Scowling, I brace my elbows on the balustrade and inhale deeply, letting the smoke burn and my chest ache, pretending the tightness is from nicotine, not him.
I need to end this.
That thought has been circling my mind for months. Every meeting gets worse. Every goodbye takes more out of me. Every time I see him again, another layer of whatever lie I’m hiding behind gets ripped off and tossed aside until there’s nothing left but the raw truth underneath it.
I’ve been in love with Ruslan for so long that I don’t even know when it stops being lust and starts being a terminal condition. Maybe it’s always both. Maybe that’s why seeing him with someone else downstairs feels less like jealousy and more likehaving a knife driven in under my ribs and twisted slowly while I stand there smiling like a fucking fool.
I hate that I’m angry at all, because anger means I care, and caring means I’ve already lost more of myself than I can afford.
The terrace doors open behind me, but I don’t turn.
I know his footsteps too well by now. I know the rhythm of him the way I know my own pulse. Even in silence, I know when he’s near. That alone feels like a humiliation.
“They said you retired for the night,” Ruslan starts.
His voice rolls over me, familiar and infuriatingly calm, and rage flashes so hard through me that for a second I have to shut my eyes. I take another drag of my cigarette, hold the smoke until my lungs ache, then turn to face him with every sharp edge I have left.
He’s left the top button of his shirt undone, while his tie hangs loose at the collar. His sleeves are rolled up, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass of amber liquid like he’s just stepped out for air instead of following me out here to finish ruining my night properly.
He looks unfairly beautiful in the half-dark. Too beautiful. My vice. My ruin. My fucking poison wrapped up in broad shoulders, blue eyes, and a mouth that’s taught me too well how to lose.
“You should go back to your partner for the evening,” I say, and the jealousy in my voice is humiliatingly obvious. I hear it the second the words leave me, and hate that too.
His brows pull together faintly. “She’s not my partner.”
I laugh once without humor. “No? You had her hanging off you for three fucking hours. Forgive me for misunderstanding.”
Whatever he expects from me, it isn’t this. I see it in the way his face changes—not much, but enough. The lazy ease drops right away, replaced by something serious as he puts the glass down on the stone balustrade.
“She’s nobody,” he says.
“She had your hands all over her.”
“She had my arm, there’s a fucking difference,” he says, stopping a few feet away from me.
I scoff and flick ash over the balustrade, watching the ember disappear into the dark. “That’s an interesting distinction.”
His jaw tightens slightly. “Salvatore.”
The way he says my name now is different from how he usually does—less heat and more careful.
