Chapter 4 - The Lion's DenBy midnight, the storm of the century was breaking over the Chicago skyline.
Rain slammed against the bulletproof glass windows of Nikolai’s sprawling penthouse suite on the top floor of the Moretti Tower. The city below looked like a grid of golden lights drowned in dark water.
Inside, the penthouse was a masterpiece of cold steel, dark velvet, and priceless Italian art.
I sat on a leather sofa near the marble fireplace, holding a glass of sparkling water. The adrenaline that had sustained me through the ballroom confrontation had finally begun to ebb, leaving behind a deep, aching exhaustion.
The heavy oak doors of the study opened, and Nikolai walked out. He had discarded his suit jacket, unbuttoned the top three buttons of his black dress shirt, and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, revealing thick forearms corded with muscle and faint, dark tattoos.
He held two glasses of dark wine, stepping over to sit on the opposite end of the sofa.
"Your father called my father four times in the last hour," Nikolai said, handing me a glass.
I took a slow sip. "What did he say?"
"He tried to bargain," Nikolai said with a cold, dry chuckle. "He offered to lower the interest rates on the West Loop project if I agreed to let Julian keep the senior council seat."
"And what did your father say?"
"My father told your father that if he called again before the wedding, he would foreclose on the entire Hart estate by Monday morning," Nikolai replied, looking at me over the rim of his glass. "My father may be old, Evelyn, but he isn't blind. He watched the broadcast from the hotel. He saw how you held yourself."
"He saw a woman who was publicly discarded," I murmured, staring into the red depths of my wine.
"He saw a queen who refused to bow," Nikolai corrected sharply, his voice commanding my attention. "In our world, weakness is a disease that gets people killed. You walked out of that ballroom like a woman who owned the ground beneath her feet. That is why my father approved our union twenty minutes ago."
I looked up, my eyes meeting his. "So it's official then. The council approved us."
"The wedding is set for fourteen days from now at St. Michael's Cathedral," Nikolai said softly. "It will be the largest gathering of underworld and political power this city has seen in twenty years."
I took a deep breath, setting my glass on the table. "Nikolai... why did you really do this? I know what you said in the hallway about Julian being incompetent, but you could have picked any high-society heiress in Manhattan or Miami. Why me?"
Nikolai leaned back against the leather cushions, his intense gray eyes searching my face with a terrifying depth.
"Because for three years, I watched my brother take you for granted," Nikolai confessed, his voice dropping into a rough, honest murmur. "I watched you fix his business reports when he was too drunk to read them. I watched you organize his charity events while he flirted with waiters. I watched you carry the weight of two families while everyone treated you like a background shadow."
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My heart did a dangerous, erratic flip inside my chest. "You were watching me?"
"I notice everything that possesses high value, Evelyn," Nikolai whispered, leaning across the small distance between us until his face was inches from mine. "And I never let valuable things stay in the hands of fools."
