That’s exactly the kind of answer that guarantees I will worry.
He knows that. I can tell from the look on his face. Still, he doesn’t change it.
He glances once toward Yuri, then back at me. “Sleep, Sienna.”
And before I can push further, he turns and walks out with Yuri. The door closes behind them.
For a few seconds I stay exactly where I am, listening to the silence settle back into the room. My body is warm and used and tired in that deep, satisfying way that should have knocked me out for the rest of the night. My legs still ache faintly. My skin still remembers his hands. The sheets smell like sex and him.
None of it helps.
I lie back down anyway and pull the blanket up, as if doing what he said might somehow make sleep come back.
It doesn’t.
My mind keeps circling the same things. Yuri’s face. The quiet in his voice.You need to see something.Viktor asking if it was about this morning. The poisoned champagne. The bridesmaid. Anna’s warning. Ethan in the hallway telling Camille not to worry because his father would keep the police away.
Nothing in this house feels normal anymore. Maybe it never was.
I close my eyes, but that only makes it worse.
Because now I can still feel the aftershocks of what happened between us, still hear Viktor’s breathing at my throat, still feel his hand over my stomach when he said he didn’t care whose baby it was. And tangled up in all of that is the very real possibility that someone poisoned a glass meant for him.
After another ten minutes of staring at the ceiling, I give up.
I’m not going back to sleep in Viktor’s bed. Not with my mind running the way it is. Not with Yuri’s voice still in my head. Not with the whole room smelling like him and reminding me exactly what we just did.
So I get up. I pull my dress back on, smooth my hair as best I can with my fingers, and take a second to make sure I look less like I just spent the evening in his bed and more like a tired woman who made a bad decision and is trying to outrun it.
Then I slip out of his room and start back toward mine.
The house is quiet now. Not fully asleep, but close. The lamps in the hallway are low, the carpets soft under my feet, the whole place holding that late-night hush that makes every small sound feel louder than it is.
I’m halfway down the corridor when I see her.
Alina.
She’s coming toward me from the other end of the hall in a silk robe the color of champagne, her hair still perfect in a way that makes me tired just looking at it. She slows the second she sees me.
Of course she does.
Her eyes move over me once, taking in my dress, my face, the fact that I’m coming from this side of the house and not the other.
“Well,” she says. “Where are you coming from?”
I stop, and for one awful second my mind goes blank.
Not because I don’t have lies. I do. Too many, probably. But none of them feel ready enough, and she’s looking at me with the kind of cool interest that says she already suspects more than I want her to.
“I—”
Before I can get any further than that, another door opens behind her. Maksim steps into the hallway, sleeves rolled, phone in one hand, looking mildly irritated in the way men like him always seem to look mildly irritated by life in general.
He takes in the scene quickly. Alina. Me. The tension hanging in the middle.
“Good,” he says, like he’s just remembered something important. “There you are.”
I could kiss him.