“No shit,” I say.
Yuri raises a brow. “You don’t look surprised.”
I rub the bridge of my nose. “He’s been a pain in my ass for years, little surprises me nowadays.” Mikhail Voronin is unpredictable, but he is a force to be reckoned with.
I get a text from Anna:Heard your son is dating some heiress now?
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I don’t bother replying to her.
I lean back in the chair and glance toward the windows. Beyond the windows, rain moves in silver lines over the tarmac. The jet waits under the dull glow of the runway lights, sleek and still, while ground crews pass beneath it in bright jackets. Inside, the lounge hums on around us, elegant and forgettable.
I know what I look like reflected in the darkened glass.
A man old enough to unsettle people. Dark hair touched at the temples with silver. A face made harder by years instead of softened by them. Broad shoulders under a cashmere coat, hands that look exactly like what they are capable of. Age has done me favors.
“We board in five,” Yuri says.
I rise, button my coat, and pick up my phone. The room barely changes as we walk out, but eyes follow us just the same. They always do. Some men recognize power and resent it on sight.Some women recognize it and look a little too long before remembering themselves.
We pass through the private doors and into the corridor leading toward the gate.
That’s where I see her.
She stands a little apart from everyone else, near the long stretch of glass overlooking the runway, one hand wrapped around the handle of her carry-on, the other curled around a paper cup she’s forgotten to drink from. Her coat hangs open over a soft sweater and fitted pants, nothing dramatic, nothing designed to be seen, and still she catches my eye so completely that I slow without meaning to.
She looks like she’s wandered into the wrong place by mistake. A lost bird in a room full of predators.
Young, but not girlish. Soft in all the places men dream about in private and deny in public. Dark hair falling over one shoulder. Big eyes scanning the terminal with that careful, guarded look some women have, the look of someone used to taking the measure of a room before the room can take the measure of her. Her mouth is full, a little flushed, and there’s something about the curve of her body that makes the whole polished world around her seem bloodless by comparison.
She looks warm. Alive. A woman made of softness and nerves and quiet beauty, standing under cold airport lights with rain behind her, as if she doesn’t know every man with a pulse would turn to look twice.
Then she glances up.
Our eyes meet.
For one brief second she freezes, and something flickers over her face. Surprise, maybe. Or the simple awareness of being caught looking at a man who is too old, too dangerous, too much.
I hold her gaze a moment longer than I should.
Then I look away.
Because she’s young enough to make restraint necessary. Because she’s a stranger. Because wanting to know how she would sound with my hand around the back of her neck is not a thought I need to indulge in the middle of an airport.
“Viktor.”
Yuri is already moving. I follow him toward the gate. But I feel her at my back all the same, like a question I have no business asking and no interest in forgetting.
Present Day
And now she is here.
Not under airport lights. Not half-hidden behind glass and rain. Not a passing temptation I can dismiss on principle and revisit later in memory.
Here. In front of me.
Her eyes are wide. Not soft. Not dreamy. Shocked. Hurt. Furious. I watch the recognition hit her in real time, see it move across her face like lightning under skin, and something low in my body answers before my mind does.
For a moment, the room disappears.