He asks again, quieter this time. “How do you know him?”
I swallow.
“We have history.”
The answer hangs there, thin and unsatisfying.
He knows it too.
“What kind of history?”
I shake my head. “The kind I don’t want to discuss right now.”
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “And yet it followed you to your room.”
That gets under my skin because it’s true.
I fold my arms more tightly across myself. Not over my stomach. Never there. Just enough to feel like I’m holding something in place.
“I took this job because my friend had an emergency,” I say. “I got here, realized this weekend was going to be a mess, and decided I could either do the work or fall apart. I chose the work.”
“And Ethan?”
I let out a breath. “Ethan has always thought he has the right to say whatever he wants.”
“To you.”
“Yes.” The word comes out flat.
Viktor is quiet for a moment. He glances toward my wrist, where the marks are darkening, then back to my face. “And tonight he came here because he was drunk and angry.”
“Yes.”
“Angry about what?”
I almost laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Take your pick.”
He studies me for another second, and I can feel him deciding whether to push harder. I can almost see the questions forming.
I can’t let him get there. Not tonight. Not when one wrong answer might pull everything else after it. So I say, more softly, “Please don’t ask me for more than I can give you right now.”
That finally stops him.
Not because he’s satisfied. He clearly isn’t. But because he hears what I mean. I’m holding on by my fingernails, and one more sharp question might be enough to rip the whole thing open.
His face changes a little. Less heat. More restraint.
“All right,” he says.
I blink. “All right?”
“For tonight.”
There’s still too much in the room. Too much unsaid. I lean back against the wall and close my eyes for a second. Relief comes mixed with dread. This isn’t over. It’s only paused.
When I look at him again, he’s still watching me with that same unsettling steadiness.
“You should have told someone he was a problem,” he says.