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“Shall we begin our evening, darling?” Kat’s voice curled like smoke.

Leo let the mask slide back into place. “Of course, sweetheart.”

They played.

Two hands in, he stayed conservative—folded often, watched always. But Kat surprised him.

Her tells were almost non-existent, her bets calculated with an ease that wasn’t luck. She played like she understood leverage, probability, psychology. The type of player who didn’t just know the odds—she rewrote them.

Midway through the third round, she bluffed the American clean out of a fat pot and raked in the chips without even a glance down.

Leo leaned in, close enough that her perfume invaded his senses—that intoxicating blend of rose and vanilla. “You never mentioned you played poker.”

She didn’t look at him. Just stacked her chips. “You never asked.”

Right—

She smiled at him then—glorious and wicked, like sunlight slicing across glass. Beautiful, and dangerous if you stared too long.

Impossible to ignore.

He smiled back, fighting to keep his expression steady.

They played on and forty-five minutes passed with no sign of Korolov.

A slow tension simmered low in his gut, but he kept his expression blank. Patience was part of the job. Years in the field had taught him to live in the spaces between days of inaction, seconds of violence. That was the rhythm. He could wait.

Still, he sensed it before he saw it—the ripple in the room’s pulse.

Hands stilled. Conversations dipped. The energy of the space contracted, taut as wire. Heads turned toward the entrance.

Adrik Korolov had arrived.

And just like that, the game stopped being theoretical.

23

Leo’s gazelocked on the double-wide doors as they swung open. The murmur of conversation dimmed. Even the chime of crystal stilled.

Korolov.

His tux was precision-tailored. But his eyes betrayed his reality—cold and assessing. The type who smiled while planning out your autopsy.

Two security personnel flanked him, their eyes scanning the room.

“Bloody hell,” Brock’s voice crackled in Leo’s ear. “We’ve got a problem.”

Leo’s face stayed neutral, but his pulse accelerated like a tripwire had snapped. Brock didn’t interrupt unless the stakes had just gone vertical.

He dipped closer to Kat, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “Brock’s got something.”

Her eyes flicked to his, then back to the cards in her hand. “Go,” she breathed, though her fingers tightened imperceptibly on her cards.

Leo rose smoothly. “Gentlemen, my wife’s cleaned me out again.” He forced a rueful chuckle. “Time for reinforcements—only champagne can soothe the sting to my ego.” A final squeeze of Kat’s shoulder before he made his way to the bar, weaving between tables where chips snapped a crisp percussion and the air hung thick with competing colognes.

He positioned himself in a quiet corner. His fingers flexed involuntarily before he forced them still.

“Talk fast,” he said under his breath, scanning the wine list like his life depended on choosing between a Chablis and Sancerre.