Page 13 of Nikolay

Chapter 3

Nikolay

Bodhan did not release my arm until the heat and noise of the club had thinned behind us into a muffled pulse under stone and wood, and by then I had become acutely aware of the indignity of being escorted through my brother’s executive corridor like a problem requiring private containment.

The third-floor hall stretched long and dim before us, its heavy carved doors set at measured intervals beneath iron wall sconces that threw amber pools across the obsidian-veined marble. The light was handsome in the way expensive things often were—carefully chosen, flattering, meant to suggest old permanence rather than modern luxury. It did nothing to soothe me. My brother’s hand remained locked around my upper arm with deceptive ease, not hurting, not even close, yet leaving no room for the fiction that I was the one guiding this exchange.

I could have shaken him off. But I knew I deserved his ire. Truth be told, I was glad to have been rescued from the shame of my own behavior toward the innocent woman who’d done nothing wrong except awaken something in me that had long been dormant.

My body was still carrying the scene at the bar like a fresh wound. Maddie’s flushed face. Kyra’s quiet intervention. The look on the staff’s faces—not open shock, because Obsidian trained discretion into everyone under its roof, but that narrowed alertness people wore when power began behaving badly. Worse than any of that was the memory of my own voice, measured and cutting, each word chosen for maximum injury because I had wanted, for one vicious moment, to make her feel as exposed as I had.

I had done precisely what I despised in other men. I had taken my own disorder and placed it on a woman’s skin like blame.

The knowledge of it moved with me now, close as a second shadow.

At the end of the hall, Bodhan stopped before a black-painted door banded in aged brass—my office, though I had scarcely used it since our father’s wedding drew every orbit of family and allied chaos through Obsidian. His hand fell away from my arm. The absence of it should have felt like freedom. Instead, it only left me standing there with the imprint of restraint and nothing to push against but myself.

I adjusted my cuff though it required no adjustment.

For a moment, Bodhan said nothing. The silence between brothers had its own history. When we were younger, it had preceded conspiracy or violence. In adulthood, it usually preceded one of us lying with excellent manners.

Then he finally spoke. “Nikki.”

The name hit harder than if he had snapped at me.

Bohdan used it when he was baiting me, sometimes with that polished younger-brother insolence he deployed like a stiletto. But never in this tone. Never low and careful, the edges filed off, as if he were approaching something injured that might still choose to bite.

I looked at him.

The knowing amusement from earlier had vanished utterly. No smirk. No elegant cruelty. His amber eyes held steady on mine, and what I saw there unsettled me more than mockery would have.

Concern did not sit naturally on Bohdan’s face. Not undisguised.

“You wish to say something,” I said.

He exhaled once through his nose, glancing briefly toward the corridor behind us as though confirming we remained alone. “I do.”

“Then say it.”

His gaze returned to me. “I have never seen you like that.”

I could have feigned ignorance. It would have insulted us both.

Instead, I said, “It is handled.”

“No.” The word came flat and immediate. “It is not.”

I felt my jaw harden. “You removed me from the floor. I am no longer on the floor. That seems, by any reasonable measure, handled.”

He ignored the attempt at dryness. “You are the largest of us,” he said, not as a compliment but fact. “You could tear most men apart with your hands if you chose. Everyone who has ever met you knows that inside five minutes. And still,”—his eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger but in painful precision—“you have always been the safest one in the room.”

I said nothing.

Bodhan went on. “Not because you are weak. Not because you are soft. Because you are measured. Because you think before you move. Because you find the phrase that keeps blood from being spilled and make other people believe peace was their own idea all along.”

His voice remained quiet. That made it worse. A raised voice might have allowed me to defend myself against temper. This was only observation, deliberate and exact.

“You have talked witches back from curses,” he said. “Talked vampires out of duels. Talked our father out of actions he would have regretted and made him believe he had arrived there himself. You have walked into rooms full of enemies and left them discussing terms instead of casualties.” He held my gaze without blinking. “What happened below was none of those things.”