Page 75 of Stolen Harmony

The jealousy in his voice was unmistakable, even after all these years. Even after her death. I felt something twist in my stomach, a combination of protectiveness and unwanted understanding.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Victor's smile was sharp as broken glass. “Because I fell in love with her the first time Elias brought her home. She was... luminous. Alive in a way that made everyone else in the room seem half-asleep.”

He reached into his jacket and withdrew a business card, placing it on the bar between us with deliberate precision. “But she chose wrong. Elias never appreciated what he had. Never understood that love like that is rare, precious. He took her for granted, and now she's gone and he's...”

“Still grieving her.”

“Still wallowing in self-pity.” Victor's voice hardened. “While you're here, young and talented and everything she would have wanted for herself, and he's too blind to see it.”

The way he looked at me then made something flutter in my chest, dangerous and intoxicating. Like I was something valuable, something worth fighting for. It was the opposite of how Elias looked at me—with careful distance, with guilt, with the weight of impossible propriety.

“You see it too,” Victor continued, his voice dropping lower. “The way he pulls back every time he gets close to something real. The way he treats you like you're made of glass, like touching you would be a sin instead of salvation.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked, my voice rougher than intended.

Victor's expression softened, just slightly, and for a moment he looked less like a politician and more like a man carrying hisown wounds. “I want you to understand that you deserve better than living in her shadow. Better than being treated like a ghost he's afraid to touch.”

Heat crept up my neck. The alcohol, the proximity, the way Victor seemed to understand exactly what I needed to hear—it was all combining into something reckless and desperate.

“He does treat me like that,” I admitted, hating how bitter I sounded.

“Of course he does.” Victor's voice was gentle, almost paternal. “Because he knows what I know—that you're everything she was, everything he lost. And that terrifies him.”

The way he said it made me feel seen, understood in a way that Elias never allowed himself to. Victor reached out, his fingers briefly touching my wrist.

“She would have wanted you to be happy,” he said quietly. “Not trapped in some half-life, waiting for a man too guilty to claim what he wants.”

Anna appeared beside us, refilling drinks that didn't need refilling. “Everything okay over here?”

“Fine,” I said quickly, though my voice came out rough.

Victor stood, placing money on the bar. “You don't have to keep punishing yourself for wanting to be loved properly,” he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear. “She wouldn't have wanted that for you.”

“I should go,” I said, but I didn't move.

“Should you?” Victor's smile was knowing, but there was something else in it now—something hungry that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the ghost he saw when he looked at my face. “Or should you stop letting his guilt rob you of what you deserve?”

The way he was looking at me—like I was precious, like I was her—made something dangerous flutter inmy chest. It was everything Elias had denied me, everything I'd been craving in the careful spaces between us.

“Come with me,” I said suddenly, the words tumbling out before I could think them through.

Victor's smile widened, and for a moment his eyes went distant, almost reverent. “I thought you'd never ask.”

But as we stood to leave, as Victor placed another oversized bill on the bar and guided me toward the door with a hand that lingered too long at the small of my back, I caught Anna's eye in the mirror behind the bottles.

Her expression was pure alarm, her mouth opening like she wanted to call out, to stop me from making what she clearly saw as a terrible mistake.

I looked away before she could speak, before her concern could penetrate the haze of alcohol and the desperate need to connect with someone who understood what losing her had meant.

Victor held the door open for me, ever the gentleman, but there was something in his smile that made me think of collectors examining rare specimens.

Door shut. Latch clicked. The apartment inhaled.

Victor reached for me like he’d been holding himself back and had finally decided restraint was boring. His mouth hit mine—expensive whiskey, wintergreen, something clean—and I kissed him back like breath was optional. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was a decision, the kind you make at the edge of a cliff with the ocean thundering below and your bones already braced for impact.

My back met the door. His hand came up to my jaw, thumb dragging along the hinge like he was measuring it forpurchase. I opened for him on instinct, on hunger, on that awful animal urge to be taken apart by something that would finally drown out the noise in my head. He kissed like a man who’d studied power until he could reproduce it with his mouth.