Chapter 6 - A Cold Dinner
The Grand Ballroom of the Carlyle Hotel was a suffocating sea of black ties, diamonds, and covert security details.
Blythe stepped out of the private elevator with her hand resting lightly on the crook of Soren’s arm.
She had spent three hours having her hair pinned into an elegant, sweeping chignon that exposed the slender line of her neck. She wore a floor-length emerald silk gown with a subtle slit up the left leg—tasteful, striking, and undeniably expensive. Around her throat sat a collar of blackened platinum set with raw diamonds, placed there by Soren himself twenty minutes ago in the penthouse foyer.
*“A statement,”* he had murmured, his warm fingers brushing against the pulse point of her throat, sending a shiver through her entire body. *“Let them wonder what else I’ve given you.”*
As they entered the ballroom, the hum of twenty conversations abruptly died down.
Heads turned. Crystal glasses paused halfway to lips. Whispers rippled through the room like a sudden gust of wind through dry leaves.
Blythe felt every eye on her skin. She felt the judgment, the suspicion, the cold appraisal of dozens of men and women who had spent their lives playing deadly social and political chess.
Her instinct was to shrink back. In the ER, when chaos erupted, she moved forward into the fray—here, she felt completely exposed.
Soren seemed to sense the hesitation in her step. Without breaking his forward stride, he reached over with his free hand and gently covered her fingers resting on his forearm.
The touch was firm, grounding, and possessive.
“Breathe,” he murmured, his lips barely moving as he smiled politely at a passing senator. “You run a trauma ward, Blythe. These people are hyenas in tuxedoes. They only attack if they smell fear.”
Blythe drew in a slow, steady breath through her nose. She straightened her posture, raised her chin, and let the mask she used during multi-casualty code blues slip over her features: cool, impenetrable, completely unbothered.
They made their way toward the center table.
Sitting on the far side was a broad-shouldered man in his late fifties with cropped silver hair, a heavy Slavic jaw, and cold, dead eyes the color of stagnant pond water. He wore a traditional Russian cut of tuxedo with no tie, a heavy gold signet ring on his pinky finger.
Nikolai Volkov.
Flanking him were two younger men with thick necks and ill-fitting jackets that clearly concealed automatic pistols.
As Soren approached, Nikolai slowly rose to his feet. The surrounding tables seemed to lean away, an invisible buffer zone clearing around the two men.
“Soren,” Nikolai rumbled in heavily accented English, extending a massive, scarred hand. “It has been too long.”
Soren took the hand, their grips locking with the brief, crushing force of two tectonic plates colliding.
“Nikolai,” Soren replied, his tone polite and razor-sharp. “I see your logistics team has been busy in New Jersey.”
Nikolai’s lips curved into a yellowed smile. His eyes drifted immediately to Blythe, scanning her from the emerald silk gown to the raw diamonds at her throat, lingering on her face with calculating malice.
“And I see the newspapers do not exaggerate,” Nikolai said, letting his gaze crawl over her. “You have acquired a rare piece of art, Soren. Though she looks fragile. A delicate flower from the borough of Queens, if my sources are correct.”
Blythe felt a surge of cold fury displace her fear.
She didn't wait for Soren to defend her.
“The problem with wild flowers, Mr. Volkov,” Blythe said, her voice clear, calm, and carrying easily over the muted chamber music, “is that people often mistake them for weeds until they realize they're poisonous.”
A dead silence descended on the table.
Nikolai’s two bodyguards stiffened, their hands twitching toward their jackets.
Soren didn't reprimand her. In fact, a faint, razor-sharp smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.
Nikolai stared at Blythe for three agonizing seconds, his heavy brow furrowed in shock that a woman—a civilian—dared speak to him without permission. Then, a low, guttural laugh erupted from his chest.
“Spitfire,” Nikolai barked, leaning forward on the table. “Beautiful and venomous. A dangerous combination, Miss Carver. Especially in a city where accidents happen so frequently.”
“Accidents only happen to people who fail to anticipate their surroundings,” Soren cut in, his voice dropping into that chilling, quiet register that made even the musicians across the room seem to play softer. “Your shipment in Newark was intercepted an hour ago, Nikolai. The federal authorities believe it belonged to an unauthorized splinter cell in your organization. I took the liberty of preserving your plausible deniability.”
Nikolai’s smile vanished completely. The blood drained from his cheeks, replaced by a dark, mottled rage.
“You burned twenty million dollars of my freight?” Nikolai whispered, his knuckles whitening on the table.
“I saved you from a federal indictment,” Soren corrected calmly. “Consider it a courtesy between neighbors. But if another crate crosses the river without my stamp… there will be no federal involvement. Only mine.”
Soren turned smoothly, his hand gently guiding Blythe by the small of her back.
“Enjoy your dinner, Nikolai.”
They walked away, leaving the Volkov patriarch trembling with suppressed fury amidst the silence of the ballroom.
As they reached the outer gallery leading toward the private elevators, Blythe let out the breath she had been holding for ten minutes. Her knees felt weak beneath the silk gown.
“You burned twenty million dollars of his weapons?” she whispered, leaning slightly against Soren’s arm for support.
“He insulted you,” Soren said simply.
Blythe stopped in her tracks, pulling her hand from his arm. “He threatened your business. Don't pretend you did that for me.”
Soren turned to face her. In the dim, amber lighting of the private gallery, his gray eyes burned with an intensity that made her breath hitch.
“He looked at you as if you were an object he could break to wound me,” Soren said, stepping closer until his chest almost brushed hers. “Nobody in this city looks at what is mine that way and walks away with their empire intact.”
“I am not *yours*,” Blythe whispered, though her voice lacked conviction, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath his gaze.
Soren reached out, his thumb gently brushing against the curve of her jawline, his touch searing hot against her skin.
“Aren't you, Blythe?”
May you like
Before she could answer, the glass dome of the skylight thirty feet above their heads shattered inward in an explosion of deafening gunfire.
***
