Page 56 of Reign
Behind me, glass shatters.
The sound is sharp enough to cut through string music, conversation, and every layer of polished civility in the room. Heads turn, mine among them, because I have all the restraint of a saint until Nikolaj gives me a reason not to.
Across the ballroom, he is still standing by the mirrored column, but the broken glass is at his feet.
His expression has not changed much, which makes the scene infinitely better. He looks as though the stem cracked itself out of pure fear of being held by him too long. One of the servers has already hurried in with a cloth. Nikolaj says something to the staffer without taking his eyes off me, and that’s when I really understand.
He isn’t merely irritated, he is jealous in that dark, ugly, involuntary way men get when they see something marked in public that they believe belongs to them in private.
I nearly grin into my champagne.
God help me, I finally get it.
The kitchen, asking for distance, and the five months of silence that were apparently long enough for memory to return but not long enough to make him civilized about the thought of my hand on somebody else.
All that caution, all that measured space, and still one gala with Arabella on my arm has him snapping crystal in his fist.
It is, I admit, deeply flattering.
It is also irresistible.
So, I decide—with all the maturity of a man who should know better, and the impulse control of the twenty-two-year-old version of myself that Nikolaj first fell in love with against his own better judgment—to be petty.
Arabella smiles up at me, pleased and unsuspecting, and I smile back with practiced gentleness while my pulse kicks under my collar and every mean, hungry part of me pays attention to the man across the room instead of the wife in my arms.
sixteen
Nikolaj
I’mshakingwithfurywatching Vincenzo across the ballroom.
Not visibly—I’m not a fucking amateur. From a distance, I probably still look composed enough to terrify waiters and bore diplomats. One hand in my pocket, the other curling too tightly around an untouched replacement glass I have no intention of drinking from.
But under the tuxedo, the polished posture and the cultivated stillness I’ve spent years refining into something other men mistake for control, I’m vibrating with it. Every muscle in me is locked so hard it hurts. My jaw aches, and my pulse feels like a live wire under my skin. I can still see his hand on her waist every time I blink.
That’s the worst part.
Not that he touched her. He’s married—publicly and politically. I knew that long before the summit, and long before the files. Long before the gym, the kitchen, and the five-month silence I asked for like a man with any fucking business pretending distance could fix what we are.
I know who Arabella is and what she means in the structure of his life. I know how our world works. I know all of that with the kind of rational clarity I bring to every problem that should be simple.
This is not simple because knowing something and seeing it are two very different kinds of injury.
He wanted me to watch and see it. He wanted to drag his hand over someone else while looking straight at me and watch whether I bled.
The answer, apparently, is yes.
If that was a lesson in patience, I’m done learning.
Vincenzo lasts another eighteen minutes before he excuses himself from the cluster surrounding Arabella. He doesn’t look at me when he leaves; he doesn’t need to since he knows I’m watching.
He slips through the crowd with the smooth efficiency of a man leaving without drawing attention.
Toward the side corridor.
Toward the private restrooms and the quieter wing where donors go to make discreet calls, fix lipstick, or fuck people they shouldn’t.
I don’t go after him immediately; that would be too obvious. However badly I want to drag him out of the center of the room by his throat, I’m not stupid enough to do it in front of half the ruling rot of Europe.
