The realization is like punch to the gut.
"Your—what?"
"Alexei. My older brother." He finally turns to look at me, and his eyes are colder than I've ever seen them. “We haven’t spoken in three years."
"And the woman with him?"
"Isabelle." His voice is flat. "My ex-fiancée."
Oh. Oh God.
“Was she someone who?—”
“Someone I met through a mutual friend? Yes,” he says, answering a question I didn’t ask. “Someone I started dating shortly after? Yes. Someone who had a relationship with my older brother before our own relationship began? Yes.” He knocks back the rest of the scotch, jaw hard enough to cut glass. “Someone who rekindled that affair with him while we were engaged—the same woman who detonated my ability to trust anyone for the last three fucking years? Also yes.”
I go completely still.
Because suddenly everything clicks into place with the force of a car crash.
The walls. The control.
The Ice Prince act.
The way he looked at me in his office on my first day like I was a hostile takeover in a pencil skirt.
I swallow hard. “I didn’t know?—”
“Richard knew,” Victor cuts in, his voice turning colder, sharper. “He knew exactly who Alexei was. Knew exactly what he did to me. And he invited them to dinner anyway.”
“Why?”
“To rattle me. To show the board I’m not as controlled as I pretend to be. To prove I’m unstable.” He laughs once, bitter and furious. “And I handed him exactly what he wanted.”
“You were defending yourself.”
“I was acting like a child.” He sets the glass down with a hard thud against the railing. “I just torched a hundred-million-dollar acquisition because I couldn’t keep my emotions in check for one goddamn dinner.”
“Or,” I say quietly, “you made a choice.”
He looks at me like I’ve interrupted him in a language he doesn’t speak.
“What?”
“You chose to walk away from something toxic instead of staying there and pretending everything was fine.” I step closer. “That’s not weakness, Victor. That’s strength.”
His eyes narrow slightly, not in anger this time, but in bafflement. Like no one has ever dared to hand him a softer interpretation of himself and expected him to take it.
“You don’t understand?—”
“I understand that Richard Francis is a manipulative ass who tried to use your trauma against you. I understand that your brother betrayed you in the worst possible way. And I understand that you walked away from both of them tonight.” I reach for his hand, my fingers closing around his. “That takes courage.”
“It takes stupidity,” he mutters. “I just—” He drags his free hand through his hair, visibly unraveling. “The acquisition. The board. Everything I’ve been working toward?—”
“Is secondary to your mental health and self-respect.”
“That’s not how business works.”
“Then maybe business is broken.”
