Chapter 61: I’ve seen all of it

"There’s nothing here I haven’t already seen," Viktor said, infuriatingly unbothered, like he was commenting on the weather. "I’ve seen all of it. So get dressed already, we don’t have all night."

I will end you, Sienna thought, with the calm, settled certainty of someone filing away a promise for later use. Not tonight. But one day, when you’re not looking, when you’ve gotten careless enough to believe I’m exactly as harmless as you want me to be, that’s when I’ll do it. And I won’t even feel bad.

She wouldn’t be weak the next time the opportunity came. She’d be ready.

For now, she settled for the only weapon currently available to her: a glare sharp enough to draw blood, followed by an eye-roll so aggressive it nearly gave her a headache. Viktor, of course, didn’t move an inch, didn’t so much as glance toward the door, content to stand there like a man supervising a job he had no business supervising.

Fine. Fine. She’d just have to relocate.

Sienna stalked past him into the washroom, shoulders stiff, spine straight, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching her hurry. She shut the door not quite a slam, but close enough to make a point, and finished dressing in record time, muttering things under her breath that would’ve made her grandmother faint.

A few seconds later, she stepped back out, fully zipped, fully composed, fully done with this conversation.

"Let’s go," Viktor said, already moving toward the door like the matter was settled.

"Can I at least have a gun? To protect myself?" Sienna asked, hurrying to keep pace with him, doing the mental math on exactly how unprotected she felt walking into the unknown in a borrowed jumpsuit and someone else’s idea of safety.

"You’re going to a party, not a battlefield," Viktor said, as that distinction had ever meant anything in his world. He caught her hand in his, lacing their fingers together as they walked out, the gesture so casual it almost felt like an afterthought, except nothing Viktor did was ever really an afterthought.

A party, Sienna thought dryly. Said the man who probably keeps a body count higher than his guest list.

"Hey," Marco said, falling into step near the door, looking considerably more upright than the last time she’d seen him.

Sienna stopped, blinking at him. "Shouldn’t you be in bed? You were shot last night."

"Thank you for saving me. I’m fine now," Marco said, with the easy, unbothered grin of a man who treated bullet wounds as minor scheduling inconveniences.

She opened her mouth to argue fine was a strong word for someone who’d been bleeding out twelve hours ago, but Viktor was already pulling her toward the car, his grip firm enough that resistance wasn’t really on the table.

The drive took thirty minutes, most of which Sienna spent watching the city blur past the window and bracing herself for whatever waited on the other side of it.

Nothing could have braced her for this.

This was nothing like the party his father had hosted back in Philadelphia, the one with the crystal chandeliers and the orchestra tucked discreetly in the corner, where everyone had been elegantly dressed, and even the worst people in the room had at least pretended to have manners. This was something else entirely. Something feral.

The women here were practically naked, and practically was doing a lot of generous work in that sentence. This wasn’t a party, it was a strip club that had wandered out of its lane and forgotten to put clothes back on.

People kissed against walls like there was no one else in the room to see them. Lap dances unfolded in plain view. A pole in the corner had its own small, devoted audience of men who cheered every time the woman on it did something physically improbable. Drinks flowed like the building had a personal grudge against sobriety.

Sienna felt something curl in her stomach, disgust, mostly, with a thin thread of something closer to alarm running underneath it.

This is what "party" means to these people, she thought. No wonder Viktor laughed when I asked for a gun. A gun wouldn’t even be the strangest thing in this room.

And then, in a development she would later refuse to examine too closely, she found herself gripping Viktor’s hand as her life depended on it. Pressing closer to his side like they were exactly what they looked like: a couple, easy and devoted, the kind of pair no one would think to bother.

Because here, surrounded by all of this, Viktor was infuriatingly, inconveniently the safest thing in the room.

If anyone asks, she told herself, we’re madly in love. I would rather die than explain that thought to anyone, including myself.

"Hey, the boss himself," Lion said, spreading his arms slightly as Viktor approached, the smile on his face wide and easy. "Viktor. Good to see you."

"You’re welcome," he added, though no one had thanked him for anything yet, the kind of small, careless arrogance that came from a man used to people being grateful for his attention regardless of whether they’d asked for it.

His gaze landed on Sienna, and she made herself hold still under it, the way she’d learned to hold still under worse.

Short dark hair. No beard. No tattoos that she could see, nothing inked into his skin to announce what he was.

He was, and she hated noticing this, hated that her brain offered up the observation anyway handsome. Broad-shouldered, easy in his own posture, the kind of face that probably made people’s guards drop before they had a chance to think better of it.

That’s the problem with him, she thought, studying the line of his jaw, the casual confidence in his stance. He doesn’t look like danger. He looks like someone’s charming older brother.

It was only when he grinned that she saw it the thing underneath. Something cold flickering behind his eyes, there and gone so fast that if she hadn’t been watching for it, she would’ve missed it entirely.

Don’t let appearances deceive you, she reminded herself. He has that look. The one that says the smile costs him nothing, and neither would whatever comes after it.

"You must be the famous Mrs. Kessler," Lion said, extending a hand toward her with theatrical politeness.