Chapter One
~ Vivienne ~
Moscow was quiet tonight. Not in the usual way—where traffic hummed in the distance and late-night footsteps echoed off alley walls—but in a way that made the silence feel deliberate. Like the city knew something I didn’t.
I stood at the window of my brother’s estate, fingers lightly touching the chilled glass, watching snow drift under the soft glow of street lamps. The world looked peaceful from up here. Calm. Ordinary.
But nothing in my life had ever been ordinary, and calm was just the space between storms.
It had been three days since the first threat arrived. A phone call with no voice. A photograph left on the windshield of my car—my own face circled in red.
I hadn’t told Andrei at first. Part of me didn’t want to give him another reason to tighten the leash he kept around my life.
But of course, he found out. He always did.
And just like that, the quiet I had tried to build around myself shattered.
Now the guards at the gate had doubled. I wasn’t allowed to leave without a convoy. My phone was replaced. My staff rotated.
And worst of all, Andrei had senthim.
Nikandor Yevdokimov.
I hadn’t seen him in months—maybe a year—but I’d felt his presence in every inch of this place since the second Andrei told me he was coming. Nik had always been a ghost haunting the edges of my life.
My brother’s best friend. His right hand. Loyal. Deadly. Untouchable.
When we were younger, he barely looked at me. I was just the little sister—off-limits and inconvenient.
But now... now I wasn’t a girl anymore. And the way he’d looked at me the last time we crossed paths—quick, conflicted, as if he wished he hadn’t seen what he had—still lingered in my memory, whether I wanted it to or not.
Nikandor was six-foot-six. His muscles bulged beneath the T-shirt he wore. His black slacks were held up by a Louis Vuitton belt. His shoes gleamed, and his tattoos were on full display.
His beard had filled in nicely, and his emerald eyes met mine beneath hair slicked back to perfection.
He looked good for thirty-two.
Nikandor was an imposing figure, but there was more to him—something only Andrei and I knew.
I didn’t know what scared me more: the fact that someone was trying to kill me, or that Nikandor might actually be the one person I couldn’t hide from anymore.
A soft knock tapped once on the door behind me. No words. No follow-up. Just one knock, deliberate.
I didn’t turn around right away. Instead, I watched the snow a little longer, my breath fogging the window.
My long waves settled down my back, enhancing the pallid hue of my skin. My amber eyes had brightened in the dim light of the lamps, casting a soft, warm glow. The crackling fireplace in my bedroom gently broke the silence—aside from Nikandor’s rap at the door.
My silver piercings reflected the light as it bounced off the windowpane.
Looking down at the guards changing shifts, I saw snow covering their hats and jackets. Winters in Moscow could be cold and unforgiving, but they were beautiful.
Nikandor knocked again, heavier this time against the mahogany door.
Let him wait.
“Vivienne.”
His voice slid through the room like velvet over steel. Deep. Familiar. Anchored in memories I didn’t want to examine too closely.
I turned slowly, carefully schooling my face before I faced him.
He stood just inside the doorway, a shadow in a fitted black coat, the collar turned up against the cold. His hair was darker than I remembered, his eyes greener—colder.
There was a heaviness about him, the kind you carry after too many years of doing things no one talks about.
He stalked inside and closed the door.
“You’re late,” I said.
He didn’t flinch. “Traffic.”
We stared at each other in that brittle silence only people with too much shared history can manage. There were things I wanted to say—angry things, maybe curious ones too—but none of them made it to my lips.
“Andrei said you’d explain the situation,” he said.
I shrugged. “You know the basics. Someone wants to use me to hurt him.”
“More than the basics, Vivienne. What aren’t you telling him?”
That made me pause.
I crossed the room slowly, deliberately, keeping my steps measured and my expression blank.
“Maybe I’m tired of being watched. Being locked away like a secret he doesn’t know what to do with.”
“This isn’t about your freedom. It’s about your life.”
“Is there a difference?” I challenged.
His jaw flexed. For a moment, I thought he might walk away.
Instead, he stepped closer. One step. Then another. And I hated how my breath caught in my throat.
He was close enough now that his cologne filled my nose, nostrils flaring as I breathed him in.
Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Elixir. It radiated notes of honey, tempered with tonka bean and tobacco.
It killed me, the way I secretly clenched my thighs at the sight—and scent—of this man.
“I’ll be staying here,” he said. “In the next room.”
“Of course you will.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, his eyes scanned the room—fireplace, doorways, shadows.
Always calculating.
“Do you think they’ll come here?” I asked quietly. I looked down and away. I didn’t want him to see the anxiety rising to the surface.
“I know they will.”
His certainty hit like ice.
I turned back toward the window, needing distance.
“Then let’s not waste time pretending this is normal.”
He stepped up behind me, close enough that I felt the warmth radiating off him.
Nikandor put a hand on my shoulder as I stood facing away. I could still see his reflection in the windowpane before me.
“I’m not here to play games, Vivienne. I’m here to keep you alive. Whatever that takes.”
I closed my eyes, the weight of his words settling into my spine.
Because buried beneath the steel of his voice was something I hadn’t heard before: fear.
And that terrified me more than any threat outside these walls.
