Chapter 60: I’m looking for an exit

He didn’t loom, that was the unsettling part of him, the thing she’d never quite gotten used to. He simply stood there, perfectly still, his stillness doing more work than any raised voice ever could. It was a kind of weapon she didn’t have a name for, the way he could fill a room without moving an inch.

Sienna didn’t flinch. She made sure of that. But her grip on the laptop tightened, just slightly, betraying her in the smallest way she’d allow.

"I’m looking for an exit, Viktor." She kept her voice level, almost bored, like the conversation cost her nothing. "It’s a survival instinct. You should respect it, considering it’s the only reason you’re still breathing after the library."

A slow smile spread across his face, humorless, sharp at the edges. "Survival instinct." He said it like he was tasting the phrase, testing whether he believed it. "Interesting. Is that what you call it when you walk into a den of wolves and complain about the furniture?"

He started toward her, unhurried, each step measured like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it.

He stopped well within her space, not touching her, never quite touching her, just close enough that the air between them seemed to thin out, close enough that she had to work to keep her breathing even.

She held his gaze, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking away first.

"I’m not your plaything," she said, quiet, hard, every word deliberate. "Not something to be moved around a chessboard whenever it suits you. If you wanted a trophy wife, you should’ve gone back to the society balls and found one who actually wanted the role." Her jaw tightened. "I didn’t walk into this. I was dragged into it."

"If you say so." Viktor’s tone made it clear the conversation, as far as he was concerned, was already over. "Get ready. We’re going to a party. Don Amel’s son is throwing one."

Sienna stared at him, genuinely thrown for a second. "His son? You killed his father, and you’re still buddy-buddy with the son?"

"These kinds of things happen," Viktor said as if he were explaining something obvious to a child. "He made the right choice letting bygones be bygones."

"And you actually believe that?" She shook her head, something between disbelief and disgust flickering across her face. As if grief worked that cleanly. As if a son could simply decide to forgive the man who’d put a bullet in his father and call it diplomacy.

"I’ll pass." Sienna turned back toward the desk, done with the conversation. "I’ve had enough blood for one week, let alone a party celebrating the man who spilled it."

Viktor’s hand closed around her wrist before she’d taken a full step.

"I wasn’t asking." His voice dropped, quiet and final, all trace of amusement gone from it now. "I was telling you. Get ready. Five minutes."

He let go and walked off without waiting for a response, leaving her standing there in stunned, simmering disbelief.

"Five minutes," he added over his shoulder, not bothering to turn around. "Get dressed, or go in that. I don’t mind that you look gorgeous in anything."

Sienna exhaled slowly, jaw tight, and went to change.

It wasn’t that she was obedient. She wanted that distinction clear, if only to herself. It simply wasn’t the moment to push back, not yet, not over something as small as a party.

She filed the anger away with the rest of it, stacking it neatly on top of everything else she was holding onto.

Her moment would come. It always did, eventually. She just had to be patient enough to wait for it.

Sienna had been standing in front of the closet for twenty minutes, and she still hadn’t found anything that didn’t look like it had been chosen by a man with a very specific agenda.

Every dress Viktor had stocked in here was sexy, that was the only word for it. Slits that climbed too high. Necklines that plunged too low. Fabric so thin it would tear if she so much as sneezed wrong. She pulled out a deep red number and held it up against herself in the mirror, scowling at her own reflection.

Who exactly dresses like this to go to a slaughterhouse?

Because that was where they were going, whatever pretty name Viktor had put on it. A party. A negotiation. She’d heard those words used to dress up worse things than this. And if it went sideways, if even half of what she suspected about tonight was true, she needed to be able to run, to fight, to move without some designer’s idea of "effortless elegance" cutting off her circulation at the worst possible second.

She tossed the red dress onto the bed with the rest of the rejects and finally landed on a white jumpsuit tucked at the back of the closet, half-hidden like it had been smuggled in by someone with better sense than whoever did the rest of this shopping. Simple. Tailored. The kind of thing you could sprint in if you had to.

Finally. Something that isn’t begging to be unzipped.

She’d just gotten one arm through the sleeve when the door opened without so much as a knock.

"Do you ever knock?" Sienna snapped, whirling around and yanking the fabric up to cover herself, heart slamming somewhere up near her throat. "This is my room. Mine. The concept of privacy, have you heard of it?"

Viktor leaned against the doorframe like he’d been invited, hands tucked lazily in his pockets, looking entirely too pleased with himself for a man who’d just walked in on someone half-dressed.

"You’re taking forever," he said, gaze drifting over her with an unhurried thoroughness that made her want to throw something heavy at his head. "Need help getting that on?"

There was something underneath the question, amusement, mostly, the particular satisfaction of a man who’d just discovered he could make someone’s hands shake and her glare simultaneously. He was enjoying this. Enjoying watching her scramble for composure, watching her arms cross over a body she was furiously trying to will into invisibility.

Cute, he thought, that she still bothers to cover up. As if that’s ever stopped me from seeing exactly what I want to see.

"Get out," Sienna hissed, clutching the jumpsuit to her chest like it was a shield instead of several yards of cotton-blend fabric.