Page 6 of Mile High Ex's Dad
By the time we reach the main dining room, I’m already slotting myself into the machinery of the weekend, mentally rearranging timelines, checking pressure points, calculating where the trouble is likely to come from first.
Round tables dressed in linen and candlelight glow softly beneath crystal chandeliers. Staff move around them in efficient silence, adjusting place cards, polishing glassware, aligningchairs to a degree of precision no guest will consciously notice and every guest will subconsciously expect.
“It looks beautiful,” I say.
Nadine inclines her head. “Thank you.”
I set the binder down on an empty service station and flip it open, checking the latest version of the seating layout against the room in front of me.
“Bride and groom table stays centered here?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And family placement?”
She points. “Immediate family there. Extended there. Bride’s cousins requested to be moved farther from the bar, though from what I understand, they are the ones who emptied it at the engagement party.”
I glance up. “That tracks.”
This time she does smile, briefly.
I make a note, then another. My pulse has mostly evened out now. The room is running, the staff are competent, and if the universe is feeling merciful, all I need to do is keep wealthy people from melting down in decorative clothing until Sunday.
I’m bent over the binder, scanning the vendor arrival times, when a voice cuts through the room from behind me.
“Well. What do we have here?”
Male. Amused. Taunting in a way that raises the hairs on the back of my neck before I even turn around.
I know that tone. God, I know that tone.
My hand stills on the page. For one stupid, suspended second, I just stare at the neat black lines of the schedule without seeing any of them.
Then I straighten slowly and turn.
And there he is.
Ethan.
My ex.
2
VIKTOR
I hearhim before I see him.
Boots pounding wet pavement. Breath tearing out of him in ragged bursts. Panic has a sound all its own. High, thin, desperate. The sound of a man who already knows how this ends and runs anyway.
I turn the corner at an easy pace.
No need to rush.
Rain slicks the narrow alley in silver, washing the city in neon blur and cold shine. Somewhere behind me, one of my men mutters into his earpiece, but I barely listen. My attention stays fixed on the bastard stumbling ahead of me, clutching one side like he thinks pressure on the wound will save him.
It won’t.
He glances back. That’s his mistake.
