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It could be a telemarketer, my assistant calling with a question, or a dozen other possibilities, but my gut told me it wasn’t.
It was eleven in the morning here, which meant it was near the end of the workday in London. Perfect timing for a CEO announcement.
My heart pounded hard enough to drown out the ringtone. A metallic taste welled on my tongue, flooding me with equal parts anticipation and foreboding.
After everything—the schemes, the scandals, the setbacks—this was it. The moment of truth.
“Kai.”
Dante’s low voice pulled my attention back to him. His eyes were fixed on something over my shoulder, and I followed his gaze to the exit.
An anchor dragged my stomach straight to the boxing ring’s black canvas floor. A low buzz filled my ears.
Isabella stood next to the door, her chest heaving with quick breaths. I didn’t know how she got in, but I knew why she was here. It was written all over her face.
I’d lost the vote.
ISABELLA
The silence was deafening.
Dante had muttered an excuse about meeting Vivian for lunch and made a quick exit, leaving me and Kai alone in the boxing gym.
He stood still as stone in the middle of the ring. Sweat gleamed on his bare torso and dampened his hair, making him look like a warrior fresh from battle.
I’d caught the tail end of his match with Dante. It was my first time seeing Kai box, and it’d taken my breath away. The precision, the power, the lethal grace—it was like watching a master execute a beautifully choreographed dance.
If I were here for any other reason, I would’ve savored the experience, but all I felt was an icy ball of dread in the pit of my stomach.
“Who?” Kai’s face and voice were wiped clean of emotion.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “Someone named Russell Burton?”
He reacted then. A tiny jerk of his shoulders, followed by a dark, burning realization in his eyes.
The name had surprised him.
I waited for a bigger reaction—a curse, a rant,somethingthat would indicate his acknowledgment of what happened. Instead, he stepped down from the ring, wiped his face with a towel, and unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. If it weren’t for his tightly controlled movements and the tension cording his neck, I would’ve thought he hadn’t heard me.
I walked toward him with the caution of a hiker approaching a rattlesnake.
When I saw the news about Russell’s selection, my stomach had pitched like I was the one who’d lost. I couldn’t imagine how Kai must’ve felt. This washisfamily. His company. His legacy.
A sympathetic Alessandra gave me the day off. She’d gotten ahold of Dominic and somehow convinced him to get me access to Valhalla, where I knew Kai was boxing with Dante.
I didn’t know what to do or how I could help, but I just wanted to be here for him.
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” I ventured. I’d rushed here as soon as I could and hadn’t read the article in its entirety. “Maybe they—”
“It’s not a mistake.” Kai sounded eerily calm. He looked up, his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. The uneven rise and fall of his chest betrayed his masked emotions.
My heart wrenched. “Kai—”
He crushed the rest of my words between our mouths. The kiss was so sudden, so unexpected, that I stumbled back a step before I caught myself.
We’d kissed before, many times. Sweet, scorching, hungry, languorous…the nature of our embraces ebbed and flowed depending on our moods, but he’d never kissed me likethis. Hands tangling in my hair, teeth scraping across my lips, muscles vibrating with coiled energy. Desperate and feverish, like he was drowning and I was his only lifeline.
Pieces of his stony mask clattered to the floor around us. Emotions poured through the jagged cracks, dragging my hands to his shoulders, his teeth down my neck, and his fist around the hem of my skirt.
