Page 2 of An Heir to Blood and Power

“Famous last fucking words.” His footsteps ceased with one laststomp.“Nicolai, we need to talk about itrighthere.”

The hell we were. Kostya had no sense of propriety or security. I should have prepared him better to be an adult of our lineage, but I’d graduated from our boarding school when he was eleven. Texts, phone calls, and videochats were not adequate media for teaching political survival skills. I’d failed him.

I grabbed Lexi’s fragile little hand again and turned my head as I steered her toward the elevators. “Ueli, bring Kostya upstairs with us.”

With a two-fingered salute, Ueli directed two of our security entourage toward Kostya.

Lexi whispered to me as we were waiting for the elevators, “You can go talk to him in the bar. I’ll just head upstairs with the guys. I don’t mind.”

“Absolutely not. Kostya and I will discuss this matter in private.”

As the elevator doors slid back, I hustled Lexi inside. A scuffle behind us assured me that Ueli’s operators had secured my brother and were bringing him along.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“My younger brother, Konstantin. Nickname is Kostya. He’s twenty-one and in college.”

“Oh, he’s the same age as me.”

The swirling thoughts in my brain screeched to a record-scratch stop.

I hadn’t needed a reminder ofthatthis morning. The throb piercing my eyeballs grew. “You’re the same age as my much-younger brother.Smashing.”

The elevator crawled up to the fourth floor, where we emerged. The RFID chip in my Sanctuary membership card clicked the lock as I waved it in front of the only door on the right side of the hallway.

As my security team operator Nechtan bustled us inside the suite, I glanced back.

The digital number above the other elevator’s door changed from two to three. Kostya was close behind us.

Inside, everything in the suite’s living room was as I’d left it before I’d been driven over to John’s suite at the Waldorf, though tidied, of course.

Lexi turned like she was about to make a run for the stairwell. “I left my gym bag in the car.”

I slid my suit coat off my arms and held it out on one finger. A roving domestic staff person unhooked the jacket from my hand as she walked by, presumably having seen me doffing it, and headed for the closet and hangers. “Don’t worry about your bag. The parking valet will give it to the club’s porters. They’ll bring it up. They always check the vehicles for luggage and shopping bags.”

Lexi turned back to me, her forehead wrinkling in consternation. “Are you sure that’s okay?”

“Our security detail does not carry packages or luggage,ever.They can’t respond to a threat if they’re juggling shopping bags.” I picked up an apple from the customary fruit bowl on the coffee table. “It’s their job. You have to let people do their jobs.”

“So, what’s my job?” Lexi asked me.

Sitting on my lap and looking pretty was definitely the wrong answer, but I wasn’t sure what the right one was just yet.

Luckily, I was saved by a pounding on the door and Kostya’s voice yelling, “Nicolai! What the fuck is going on with you!”

CHAPTER 2

billionaire sanctuary

LEXI

Oh. My. God.

I had never been in a hotel suite that looked likethis one.

Okay, I’d never been in a hotelsuite.

I’m not asuitekind of girl. Before coming to Las Vegas for my wedding to Jimmy, my jilting ex, I had stayed in a hotel exactlyonetime in my life.