Page 35 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #1)
billionaire sanctuary iv
NICOLAI ROMANOV
For another hour, I ran interference between Ueli’s operational efficiency and Lexi’s darting gaze that wrung my heart.
She wasn’t used to being shepherded around because people might try to kill us today.
Maybe we shouldn’t have signed that marriage license.
Maybe I should have let her walk away unscathed, sadder but wiser about trusting what men say during wedding ceremonies.
No, Lexi could become wiser all she wanted by whatever means she desired, but I didn’t want her to be sadder.
After Lexi dressed and finished eating, getting to the security caravan was quick. We moved in formation a few flights down the stairwells and then out a staff door to a back alley where the black SUVs were waiting half a block away.
The white-hot desert sun nearing its apex cooked the air between the building walls like a brick oven.
When Lexi faltered, looking around and starting to dodge the wrong way because she was missing movement cues, I settled my hand on the small of her back so she didn’t get separated from the rest of us.
She trotted mincing steps in her trainers over the pebbles rolling in the pale dirt, reaching with her toes, bobbling her pretty body.
I did not look.
But I was aware, so agonizingly aware, like my skin had eyes.
My head was up, and I scanned the flat rooflines broiling under the desert sun for anything the security guys may have overlooked, a lens flare or people in places they shouldn’t have been, but saw nothing.
Even with six security personnel per shift, one couldn’t be too careful.
We approached the middle SUV, striding with purpose but not running, which might draw attention.
Ueli, always at my left hand, opened the rear door.
I wheeled Lexi in front of me, handing her into the back seat.
Her grip on my hand firmed as she scrambled inside, scooting over the leather seat, and I stepped in after her.
Ueli slammed the door and slapped the metal, stepping back as our SUV took off.
I leaned toward the window to watch him in the driver’s side mirror. As always, the chase vehicle slowed, and Ueli climbed in before it followed us toward the street.
Lexi had curled into the opposite corner of the back seat and was staring at everything through peeled-back eyelids.
Her dark eyes were sweet, sometimes sleepy, sometimes sparkling, but I did not like this frightened iteration where her gaze shifted from side to side as if expecting an attack.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. We have security. They protect us. They’re here so we can think about other things.”
She twisted to look behind us. “Everyone was on high alert. The whole time since we left the hotel room to the SUV, it looked like you were expecting an attack. I’ve never been around something like that in my life.”
I nodded. “It’ll probably take some getting used to. They do their job so we don’t have to worry.”
“If that’s how they have to do their job, then there obviously are reasons to worry.”
“Do you trust me?” I asked her.
She blinked the darkness of her eyes three times. “Maybe.”
“Let me rephrase that.” I tilted my head with a smile, trying to be at least a little charming because I was still mortified about my drunkenness the night we’d met.
“After I sobered up, I have been forthcoming with all pertinent information that you need to know. I told you about my predicament with Volkov and my ancestral relationship with the House of Romanov because that information might have influenced your decision. Right?”
She blinked again, processing. “I guess.”
“You needed to know that information before you entered any sort of formal relationship with me. Withholding it would’ve been unfair.”
Lexi nodded, her dark eyes still locked on mine as her sharp chin bobbed.
I had to be careful of how I phrased what I wanted to say.
The vehicle’s driver and lookout had also been selected by my uncle, and I wasn’t sure about their loyalties, either.
“I understand that marrying me is an imposition. The type of lifestyle I lead, the mannerisms you’ll have to learn, even putting up with a grumpy fool such as myself?—”
The tiniest smile turned her lip.
“—I’m not dismissing the magnitude of the favor. Other women wouldn’t have put up with a quickie wedding in Las Vegas and demanded a spectacle.”
Her eyes finally left mine, flicking to glance at the two security men in the front seat.
Good. She understood why I’d reframed our courtship, such as it was, so it aligned with the lies I’d told Ueli earlier.
I tried to put all that I couldn’t say into my voice. “I’m in your debt. No matter what, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
Her dark eyes scrutinized mine like she was trying to decide something, so I held her gaze and let her look at me. My blank mask was in place because holding my emotions in check was a habit more than anything else.
“You’re so different from last night,” she said.
Her words sucker-punched me right in the gut, but I didn’t show that, either. “I was highly inebriated last night. I apologize for anything I did or said that was inappropriate. Hell, I apologize for everything that happened last night.”
Lexi still didn’t look away from my eyes, and I fell into the depths of pain I saw in hers. “Everything?” she asked.
The two guys in the front seat weren’t talking to each other, so they were listening to us. “I’m sorry the wedding wasn’t everything you’ve dreamt of.”
At that point, she did break eye contact with me and looked out the front windscreen. “I liked our wedding.”
“You deserved better.”
Her shoulders hunched. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters, really. Are we ever going to be alone again?”
With that, I settled back in my seat and chuckled a little. “Of course, we will. I’m not the king of England.”
Her head was still down, and she looked like she was staring at the back of the seat where Dushyanta was sitting. “No, you’re not the king of England.”
Lexi didn’t speak the rest of the short trip.
I’d lived with operational security my whole life.
The security detail had been less intrusive when I was young, but it gained more and more operators and protocols as each of my parents and relatives was murdered.
I wasn’t rude and didn’t ignore them, but their presence didn’t feel prying to me anymore.
Ueli and his crew were simply there.
Although I did, occasionally, ditch them.
The ride to Billionaire Sanctuary would be short, so I slipped one earbud out of my suit jacket pocket and twisted it into my ear canal, tapping my phone screen to pull up our wedding video that literally everyone else in the world had had a chance to watch more closely than I had.
I listened again to what Lexi had said to me, that momentary glimpse of vulnerability when she begged me to love her.
And I listened to what I had said to her.
My words seemed so heartfelt, emerging from somewhere deep within me, and then the sarcastic part of my brain overwrote the sentiment as maudlin and prosaic, criticizing everything from the pauses and vocabulary and doubting my sliver of a soul’s ability to produce such ostentatious emotion.
The feelings shining in my eyes felt decadent and indulgent, like overwrought teenage poetry. No adult should be swamped by emotions like that.
I watched myself. My own face was so often hidden by that neutral mask of mine in photographs, even candid ones.
The openness, the eagerness to be trampled, the shining middlebrow happiness in my eyes looked uncultured from this lofty position where I now perched, alone.
How uncouth.
Perhaps the alcoholic blackout had saved me from some embarrassment at the memories.
But oh, I wished I could remember kissing her.
The camera shot panned down to Lexi’s fathomless dark eyes watching my face. The wide-open, desperate hope as she watched me, her gaze flicking back and forth from one of my eyes to another, made me touch the car door’s armrest for balance.
This woman had saved me last night. Considering how absolutely trolleyed I’d been, I might have awakened this morning bound and naked in a bathtub full of ice, short one kidney and with drained bank accounts.
Instead, she’d humored me and simultaneously prevented anyone else from taking advantage of me. She’d even refused to let me destroy myself, even though if I’d been in a car on the verge of a cliff, I would have shoved the pedal to the metal.
Even now, she was saving me by continuing this unlikely pretense of being married.
What kind of sweet soul did it take to save a debauched robber baron such as myself?
All Lexi had really wanted was for someone to tell her that they loved her, and she hadn’t demanded even that, only asked.
Maybe I could valiantly attempt to be slightly less of a toxic dickhead, at least when we were alone.
Bloody unlikely.
On my phone screen, I watched myself fall in love with her and promise her the world and my soul.
I looked up and over at Lexi, her blond hair curling around her shoulders and down her back, as she gazed out the car window at Las Vegas, the afternoon sun shining on her skin.
Her eyes lingered on a homeless man on a sidewalk no one else had seemed to notice, and she touched the door handle like she wanted to jump out to help him.
But we’d already sped on, and she turned her head to try to see what had happened to him.
I watched the video of our wedding again, at my eyes glistening in the candlelight, at the utter lack of guile in my open, searching expression as I smiled down at her.
Damn, I looked . . . happy.
Is that what I looked like when I was happy, parted lips, searching eyes, and a release of the rigidity in my constantly clenched jaw?
I’d never seen it in a picture of myself before.