Page 54 of His Contract Queen

ALEKSANDR

Ifeel a shift in the air before it happens.

The estate is never truly quiet. There is always the low murmur of my men moving through the halls, the distant clink of glassware from the kitchen staff preparing meals throughout the day. Right as the clock over the door in my office chimes for noon, everything around me stills unnaturally.

The murmur in the hallway cuts off mid-sentence, footsteps halt. The sudden absence of sound is louder than any noise, pressing against my eardrums like a held breath.

My pulse kicks instinctively inside my chest when I raise my head up from my desk with the same hard, warning thud it used to make when I was a boy and my father was roaming the halls during one of his drunk rages looking for a punching bag. Back then, the silence was always the prelude.

The moment the shouting stopped, the moment the heavy footsteps paused outside a door, that was when the real danger arrived.

Nikolai Malyshko doesn’t announce himself whenever he arrives at my estate.

He never does.

It’s his way of keeping the three of us on our toes, using the same playbook I do when I want to catch an enemy off guard. His sudden, overwhelming presence does the work of a dozen men standing at the ready with their guns raised in front of them.

By the time I reach the entry hall, he’s already there waiting for me.

He stands in the exact center of the black-and-white marble floor, hands lifted in front of him as he slowly pulls a set of driving gloves off his long fingers. His ice-gray eyes scan the room with detached interest, mapping the interior of my home the way he does every visit, cataloguing the differences since the last time he was here.

My people are buzzing around him nervously. Both of my lieutenants stand at awkward attention near the front doors, hovering close by while a set of guards quickly takes the layers Malyshko sheds. One of the younger ones actually backs up a step when that icy gaze flicks toward him for a brief moment. None of them were prepared to receive anyone, let alone a guest like him.

I scan his face as I approach.

He doesn’t look angry.

Unfortunate because that would have been easier to manage. Anger is predictable, something I can counter with deflection the same way I used to with my father. Malyshko’s expression is colder than anger—measured curiosity tinged with suspicion ofa man who already knows the answer to the question he’s about to ask and is only waiting to see if I’ll lie about it.

My mouth opens to greet him with some neutral pleasantry, or attempt to buy a few seconds to gauge his mood further, but the words die on my tongue when movement catches the corner of my eye.

I turn and find Katerina frozen at the top of the grand staircase.

She’s wearing the gala dress that arrived earlier this morning, the dark silk clinging to her like liquid shadow, the skirt flowing behind her in a dramatic sweep that makes her look like she’s descending from some other world entirely.

Her hair is pinned back with the curled ends gently cascading over her shoulders in soft waves. At her throat sits the diamond dew-drop pendant I purchased for her a few days ago. Simple, elegant, catching every flicker of light from the sconces beside her and throwing tiny prisms across her pale skin.

She looks absolutely breathtaking.

And completely out of place at a moment like this.

Her eyes dart between us both, first to me then to the head of the Iron Pact, then back again. Her brow pulls together when she notices how on edge everyone is. Confusion flickers across her face as she registers the weight of his presence without fully understanding why it’s so oppressive in the first place.

She doesn’t know his arrival is never for drinks or small talk.

It’s for judgment day.

When I slowly turn back to him, his eyes are fixed on Katerina.

They trail down from her hair to the diamond at her throat, over the silk that hugs her curves, down the long sweep of the gown to the heels that make her legs look endless. Suspicion solidifies into confirmation in the span of a single heartbeat. His gaze flicks back to me, cool and unreadable.

“So,” he says mildly, “I see you both have been busy.”

Any other person in this world, I would take the comment as an attempt to break the ice, a roundabout way to inquire why Katerina is dressed for a ball on a Tuesday afternoon. I would smile, offer a drink while deflecting with charm to throw them off the scent before they dig too deeply and discover the real reason..

With Nikolai Malyshko, that is never the case.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that showing up here was a means to confirm whatever intel had come down his channels. Whispers from his own network, or surveillance that I have suspected since he first brought her up in our meeting, must have suggested Katerina and I were up to more than just a private affair meant to pass the time.