Chapter 21 — My Woman

POV: BEATRIX

For half a second, everything else in the room vanished.

Nikolai moved fast. Faster than I had ever seen him move, cutting straight through the crowd like it wasn't even there.

If I hadn’t been caught in Julian’s grip, I’m not sure I would have processed what I was seeing. Then it hit me, sharp and sudden, like a sheet of ice finally cracking all the way through.

I’d watched Nikolai cross plenty of rooms, always calm and deliberate, like a man who never needed to hurry because he knew the universe would wait.

This wasn’t like any of those times. That walk had nothing measured about it, not one bit.

He didn't say a word to me. He didn't say a word to anyone standing between him and Julian, either.

He just kept walking, and the room somehow understood all at once that whatever was about to happen wasn't something to get in the way of.

Julian saw him coming and dropped my wrist so fast, it was almost funny. He stepped back, hands up, already rearranging his face into something charming as he tried to smooth things over.

"Nikolai, we were just talking; I wasn't," he started, the charm already reassembling itself across his face, the same easy smile he'd used on me a minute earlier now aimed at the much more dangerous man closing the distance between them.

It didn't work. Nothing about Nikolai's face suggested he was interested in hearing the end of that sentence.

Nikolai closed the last few feet between them and grabbed him by the throat with one hand, no warning, and slammed him back against the wall hard enough that a framed photo beside them rattled and slid crooked.

Somewhere behind me, a woman gasped.

A glass hit the floor and shattered, nobody stopping to pick up the pieces. I heard someone say, quietly, that they should call security, though nobody actually moved to do it.

Whatever was happening in front of us, it seemed like everyone had silently agreed it wasn't their place to interrupt.

Julian's feet actually left the ground for a second. His hands came up, clawing uselessly at Nikolai's wrist, his face going a deep, startled red.

He was taller than Nikolai by an inch, maybe two, and it didn't matter at all. Height had nothing to do with what was happening to him right now.

The whole room went quiet. Not slowly. All at once, like someone had cut the sound.

Even the music playing softly somewhere in the background seemed to fade under the weight of it, though I knew, logically, that it hadn't actually stopped playing at all.

"Touch her again," Nikolai said, low, so quiet that people ten feet away had to lean in just to catch it, "and I will not stop at your face.

I will buy your entire agency. Every contract, every client, every desk. And then I will burn it to the ground, slowly, just so you have time to watch it happen."

"You have no idea what you're threatening," Julian managed to choke out.

"I know exactly what I'm threatening. That's the difference between us."

Julian made a strangled sound that wasn't quite words.

"Do you understand me?"

Julian nodded, or tried to, the motion barely making it past Nikolai's grip. His eyes had gone wide and glassy, all the practiced charm completely gone from his face, replaced by something far more honest than anything I'd seen from him in four years.

Nikolai held him there one second longer, just long enough to make sure the message had actually landed somewhere behind Julian's panic, and then he let go, stepping back and letting Julian drop straight to the floor at his feet.

Julian landed hard, coughing, one hand going to his own throat, and didn't get up right away.

Someone near the bar had their phone up, filming, though I couldn't find it in myself to care in that moment whether this ended up online by morning.

Nobody moved to help him.

Evelyn, I noticed distantly, hadn't moved either, standing frozen near the bar with a hand pressed over her own mouth.

Whatever she'd expected from tonight, this clearly wasn't it. Good, some small, unkind part of me thought. Let her see exactly what she'd chosen to stand beside.

Nikolai didn't look down at Julian again. Not once.

He turned his back on him completely, like the man on the floor had already stopped existing the moment he'd finished delivering his warning, and crossed the last few feet to me instead.

His arm went around my waist, firm and certain, pulling me into his side, solid and warm against the sudden cold that seemed to have settled into my whole body the moment Julian's hand had let go. His hands were shaking slightly, I noticed, the only sign that whatever had just happened had cost him something too.

"Are you hurt?" he said, not really a question, his eyes moving over my face like he was checking for damage he couldn't see yet.

"No. My wrist, maybe. A little."

His jaw tightened at that, something dark passing behind his eyes, but he didn't say anything else about it right then.

He glanced down at my wrist anyway, gently this time, turning it slightly in the low light to check for bruising, his touch so different from the one that had put it there in the first place that it almost undid me right in the middle of that crowded room.

He just started walking, arm still locked around me, guiding me through a crowd that parted for us the same way it had parted for him a minute earlier, whispers already starting up in our wake, phones already coming out of pockets. I heard fragments of it as we passed.

“Did you see that? I've never seen him like that. Poor girl”. None of it mattered.

All I could feel was the solid weight of his arm around me, the only thing keeping my legs steady enough to actually walk.

I didn't look back at Julian. I didn't need to.

We didn't speak again until we were in the elevator, doors sliding shut on the noise of the party, the sudden quiet almost louder than the room we'd just left.

My reflection in the polished steel doors looked pale, hair slightly disheveled, one hand still cradling my wrist against my chest without my having decided to hold it that way.

Nikolai still hadn't let go of my waist. If anything, his grip tightened once the doors closed, like he needed the reminder that I was actually standing there, actually fine, actually safe.

"You didn't have to do that in front of everyone," I said, my voice coming out smaller than I meant it to.

"Yes, I did."

"Your board is going to hear about this by morning."

"You should care. Meridian. The stadium deal. All of it."

"I said I don't care." His voice hadn't risen, but something underneath it had gone absolutely final. "There is nothing on that list that matters more to me than what just happened to your wrist."

I looked up at him, and something about the flat certainty in his voice, the total absence of doubt, made my chest ache in a way I wasn't ready to name yet.

"Why not?" I asked.

He looked down at me, and for a second the careful control slipped, just enough that I saw exactly how close to the surface his anger had actually been the whole time.

It scared me a little, seeing it that clearly. Not because I thought he would ever turn it on me. Because I understood, for the first time, exactly how much restraint it must take him to keep that particular version of himself locked away most days.

"Because he put his hands on you," he said. "And you are mine to protect. I don't particularly care what it costs me to make that clear to him, or to anyone else in that room tonight."

I didn't have an answer for that. I wasn't sure one existed.

The elevator kept descending, floor numbers ticking down in silence, and Nikolai didn't loosen his arm around me once, not for the entire ride, like letting go was simply not something he was willing to do yet, whatever floor we finally landed on.

I let myself lean into him, just slightly, and felt him adjust his stance to take the weight of it without hesitation, like he'd been waiting the whole ride for exactly that.

Whatever this arrangement had started as, months ago, standing in that elevator with his arm locked around me and my wrist still aching where another man had held it, I understood, with total clarity, that it had stopped being an arrangement a long time before tonight.