Page 52 of An Heir to Blood and Power

Fardown. He was really tall. I was eye-level with hischest,his broad, barrel chest. I hadn’t been that far off the mark, thinking there might be something unearthly in how tall they all were.

My other hand moved, and I didn’t stop it. I reached up and slipped my fingers along his smooth jaw, cradling it.

The flashing lights from the kinetic chandelier and the dance floor reflected in his eyes like blue lightning arcing in his irises.

He didn’t move for a moment, and neither did I, while the music blared around us and the nightclub’s lights strobed.

In that moment, one of us could have swooped or reached or crushed.

But Clementine might have come back.

Or someone else might have interrupted.

Or things might have gone wrong.

So I didn’t.

He whispered, “Next time, suspect me of being a dragon rider or a fallen angel, something that can fly.” Nicolai leaned down and whispered over the thumping music. “Actually, I can fly, in my Bombardier Global 8000.”

Yeah, okay. They were just rich. “But does it breathe fire?”

“No, but it can fly us to Italy in ten hours and has lie-flat seats with lovely pillows for a nap.”

CHAPTER 15

nicolai romanov’s mistake

DEMYAN VOLKOV

Demyan Volkov glared at the fucking phone in his fucking hand.

This video he’d received of Tsesarevich Nicolai and his blond woman fondling each other in some dark corner of the damned nightclub had confirmed his worst suspicions and morphed his irritation to rage.

The still photos had matched to a stupid girl from Nebraska, Alexandra F. Byrne.

Nicolai fucking Romanov had married an American trollop in a Russian Orthodox church with baptizing and chrismating his fucking bride right before the sacrament like she was a Prussian mail-order princess, and now Demyan’s daughter would have no chance with him.

God, Demyan hated the fucking leisure-class weasels. Put them all against the wall like in the good old days.

Demyan Volkov and his family were not leisure class, of course. They had fucking jobs and worked their asses off every damned day, like dogs.

HowdareRomanov go off and marry that American peasant when they had only begun to negotiate?

Not only was the video of Romanov’s Orthodox marriage sacrament plastered all over the internet, but the caller had assured him that Romanov had introduced that new wife to his elite society contacts, the kind of people who would not give Volkov or his daughter the shit off their shoe.

And those effete elites had accepted that stupid American peasant in that ugly brown dress, or at least they were polite with her to Romanov’s face.

Nicolai Romanov had underestimated how much Volkov desired this alliance for business and his daughter, and that was Romanov’s mistake.

Michel Pictet had assured Volkov that Nicolai would be amenable to a union with his daughter. Volkov did not like to be fooled by a Scandinavian hanger-on like Pictet.

Fucking Swedes.

All of this would come to a very bad end unless Romanov did as Volkov wished.

In the end, Demyan Volkov always won.

He picked up his phone and tapped his captain’s name. “Take two dozen stout men. I need to make point.”