Nikolai POV
There are very few things that linger in my mind after a long day.
A business negotiation.
A tactical mistake.
An unresolved problem.
A threat.
These are the usual suspects, problems that demand solutions, puzzles that keep my mind restless even as the world slows around me, the kind of thoughts that refuse to let go.
But the way Valentina laughed when she stepped on my foot during the waltz should not have been one of them.
Yet somehow… it was.
The estate was quiet when I returned. Most of the lights had already been dimmed, leaving the hallway sconces to cast warm pools of light across the polished marble floors.
The hush of the night pressed in, the solitude broken only by the distant ticking of the old grandfather clock in the foyer and the faint, familiar s
