I looked toward the grand staircase and there she was. Long, dark locs bounced wildly around her shoulders, and her legs, bare beneath a white dress shirt that clearly did not belong to her, stormed down the stairs. Shorty had murder in her face and fire in her eyes. She was beautiful and clearly furious enough to set the ballroom blazing with one look.
“Where is he?” she demanded, her voice cutting through the room.
The rest of the noise died.
My head turned so fast toward Maxim I almost got dizzy. Thepakhan,who always tried to look so together,was ruffled.
For real ruffled.
I mean, he wasn't acting in a dramatic, losing-his-mind kind of way. Maxim’s posture was still perfect, his suit still immaculate. But his face… a muscle was doing jumping jacks in his jaw and his cold eyes looked both mad and kinda fascinated. Like this woman would’ve had all his attention even if she weren't crashing our reception half-dressed. Yeah, something had cracked in that chilly calm of his. Even I realized how rare that had to be.
The woman’s chest was rising and falling quickly under what was obviously his shirt. His shirt. Not hers.His.
I smiled. Oh, this was messy.
“Targen,” I whispered.
His eyes never left his brother. “Hmm?”
“Who is that?”
He smiled big, like flat out grinned. He was enjoying this, too. “That is Hurricane Seraph and my brother is right in her eye.”
Seraph descended the last few stairs and kept going, straight toward Maxim like she couldn’t see the obviously armed men circling the room or be bothered to think about the danger of speaking to him like that in public. I had a feeling she didn't care.
“I asked you a question,” she snapped. “Where is my son?”
Son? Aww, shit.
Maxim moved then, smooth but fast, covering the distance between them before anyone else could intervene. He said something to her in Russian, low and cold, but whatever it was did not calm her down. She hissed something back that sounded like a curse. A few people looked scandalized. A few more looked intrigued. Okay, it was me; I was intrigued.
“She fine as hell, then she has the nerve to be talking to him like that. I think I love her,” I murmured.
That made Targen side-eye me. “Focus.”
“I am focused.”
“On the wrong shit.”
But his own mouth curved again.
“I do not care what this is. You answer me, or I will fuck this all up,” Seraph threatened as Maxim continued his fiercely whispered conversation with her.
He inclined his head toward Targen and me. Seraph looked, her eyes meeting mine, and a moment of regret clouded her perfect face.
“Sorry,” she said tightly.
I lifted my glass. “Do you, sis. You got it? You need backup?”
“Theory!” Targen hissed as his father laughed.
Maxim glared at me. I winked at him, smiling big as hell. Eventually, Maxim got a hand on Seraph’s elbow and guided—if guidance was a euphemism for strong-armed—her away from the center of the room, his face smooth again, but don’t-fuck-with-me energy pouring off him. Artyom and Lev materialized like shadows behind him. Sergei said something to divert attention from Maxim’s spectacle, his face all friendly, his voice all steel. The room slowly restarted around us, conversations picking back up.
“Did that just happen?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Targen said dryly. “And Maxim will probably kill half the staff for letting it.”
I laughed softly. “Again, your family is a lot.”
