Nikolai POV
A week after the gala, I was still thinking about Valentina Moretti, and that unsettled me more than it should have.
It was beginning to irritate me in a way I could not easily dismiss.
I stood in my office with Manhattan spread beneath the windows in cold silver light, one hand braced against the edge of my desk, the other wrapped around a glass of whiskey I had not touched.
The city below moved with its usual indifference. Traffic. Power. Money. Men making promises they would not keep and women pretending not to notice. None of it had changed.
That was the problem.
Too much around me remained exactly the same, while something in my own head had shifted in a direction I did not trust.
A week.
Seven days since the gala.
Seven days since Valentina looked at me across
