Six women are already here. Two blondes, one dark-haired, one redhead, two brunettes. All beautiful. All polished to perfection.
I don't try to look like I belong. I walk to the sideboard, pour myself a glass of water, and stand by the fireplace where the light is warmest and the angle gives me a clear view of the door.
I wait.
I am very good at waiting. Six years of watching Rovin Mostovoi from across rooms has taught me patience. So has the last six months of watching my life disintegrate and knowing that the only way through was forward.
The doors open again at seven forty-five.
Three men enter. I don't recognize them. They are older, heavyset, wearing wealth like armor. They scan the room with the efficiency of men who are used to assessing value quickly. One of them looks at me, pauses, and moves on.
At seven fifty, two more men arrive. Younger. One looks nervous.
At seven fifty-five, the energy in the room changes.
I feel it before I see him. A shift in the air, like the barometric pressure dropping before a storm. The women near the door straighten. One of the men already in the room adjusts his cufflinks, a gesture so small it's almost invisible, but I recognize it. It's the gesture men make when they want to appear composed in front of someone who unsettles them.
Rovin Mostovoi walks into the room, and everything else falls away.
He is exactly as I remember, and nothing like I remember, because memory can’t hold the reality of him. He is tall, broad through the shoulders, narrow through the waist. His suit is charcoal, impeccably cut, with a white shirt underneath and no tie. His hair is dark and cropped close to his skull, and his jaw is the kind of angular that makes you think of cut glass, pretty and deadly.
His eyes find the room. They move across it, systematic and unhurried, touching each face for a fraction of a second before moving to the next. It is a military assessment performed in the guise of a social entrance.
Those eyes reach me.
They stop.
I don't know how long he looks at me. It could be one second or five. His face gives away nothing. His body doesn't shift, doesn't lean, doesn't signal. But his gaze stays, and staying is its own kind of statement.
Then he moves past me and walks to the far side of the room, where a man I recognize as a broker steps forward to greet him. They exchange words I can't hear. Rovin accepts a glass of dark liquid, whiskey or cognac, but doesn't drink from it.
Behind him, another man enters. Leaner, sharper-featured, with a smile that moves across the room like a blade. Akyl Mostovoi. The second brother. He is wearing a navy suit and looking at the women in the room with the kind of unabashed assessment that would be offensive from anyone less dangerous.
Akyl's eyes find me too, and unlike Rovin, he lets his interest show. One eyebrow lifts. The corner of his mouth moves.
I set down my water glass. The evening is structured, Grace told me, in phases. First, the reception. Then dinner, seated at a long table with assigned positions designed to create proximity between potential matches. After dinner, private conversations. Offers. Negotiations. Bidding.
I don't intend to wait for the assigned seating.
The broker is speaking to Rovin, gesturing toward the blonde on the far side of the room. Rovin listens without expression. His glass sits untouched in his hand.
I cross the room.
The distance between the fireplace and Rovin Mostovoi is perhaps twenty feet, and I cover it in the time it takes for the broker to notice me approaching and for his sentence to die in his mouth. Rovin turns his head. Not his body. Just his head, tracking my movement the way a predator tracks motion in its periphery.
I stop three feet from him. Close enough to be deliberate. Far enough to be polite.
"Mr. Mostovoi," I say. My voice is steady. "My name is Claudia Hartley. I'd like five minutes of your time before the formal proceedings begin."
The broker stares at me. This is not how the evening works. Women don’t approach men directly. Women are presented, curated, offered. The whole system depends on a choreography that I’ve just shamefully broken. The thought sends a thrill through me.
Rovin looks at me. His eyes are dark, nearly black in the low light, and they study my face with an attention that feels almost physical. Like being touched by someone who knows exactly how much pressure to apply.
"Hartley," he says. His voice is low, accented, unhurried. "The politician's daughter."
"The former politician's daughter," I correct. "He doesn't hold the title anymore."
The corner of his mouth twitches upwards. If he were anyone else, I would call it amusement.
