Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I nodded dumbly and my heart gave a huge, hot, thump-thump.
He squeezed my hand again. “Then let’s go in there.” And he threw open the doors.
Cheers and applause rose into a deafening roar, engulfing us. Konstantin led me gently forward and I managed to stumble along beside him, trying to remember to nod and smile and wave. What he’d said to me kept spinning around my head, giving me the confidence to walk down the length of that massive room, and the feel of his arm hooked through mine did the rest.
At last, we reached the far end and the applause died down. The string quartet started to play and everyone relaxed and started to mingle. I let out a silent sigh of relief. It felt like something had shifted inside me. I felt...different.
For the next hour, we moved around the floor. There were politicians and celebrities. There were industry leaders I recognized from Time magazine and notorious underworld figures I recognized from FBI files. And yet, whoever they were, however important meeting them was to expanding his empire, Konstantin never let me feel that they were more important than me. Even as he talked to them, his gaze kept flicking my way, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off me. My feet were in agony after the first twenty minutes, but I didn’t care, not when he looked at me like that.
He finished the conversation he was having and then led me decisively off across the room. My eyes widened when I saw what was in front of us. An area had been set aside for dancing, right next to the string quartet, and a handful of couples were gliding elegantly around in some sort of waltz. My first thought was God, no: I had no idea how to do it, and my feet felt like they were on fire. But then I thought about dancing with Konstantin. Being swept around the floor in his arms, that muscled body guiding me. That was worth any amount of pain and embarrassment. So as we stepped onto the floor, I turned to him with a nervous smile, lifting my hand to take his like the other couples were doing….
He looked at me blankly. My face fell. Then he realized what I’d been trying to do and his face fell. “I’m sorry, golub. I wasn’t—” He nodded towards the far side of the room. Through a set of open doors and across the hallway, I could see the poker room. Of course: he’d just been cutting across the dance floor on his way to make some deals. Even at a ball, he had to build his empire. He looked at the dancing couples around us. “I don’t...dance.”
I went scarlet. Of course he wasn’t taking you to dance! You idiot! Have you forgotten what he is? I nodded frantically. “I don’t dance either,” I told him. I didn’t want him to think I was disappointed. Because I wasn’t...right? Of course I wasn’t. I was relieved. “Go do some business,” I told him. And I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, the way Christina would have, and turned and hurried away as fast as my aching feet would allow.
As soon as they saw I was on my own, a gaggle of women surrounded me. They were all desperate to know about Konstantin: did he really kill any man who looked at me? Did he really sleep in a coffin? One of them grabbed my arm, her eyes huge. “Did he brand you with his mark?”
They reminded me of me, back when I used to watch him from a distance. I wanted to tell them that he was more than just a bunch of myths, that he was complex... damaged. That sometimes, I could see a whole different man underneath all the coldness. Or I thought I could.
“Excuse me,” said Konstantin from behind me. “I need to borrow her.”
I slowly turned around.
He held his hand out: would you like to dance?
I looked around us. Everyone was pretending not to look, but I could hear the amazed murmurs spreading through the room. Is Konstantin going to dance?
But he ignored the crowd. He ignored the group of whispering women and the men waiting for him in the poker room. There was only one thing that was important to him. That made my heart fill and lift, tugging me up so hard that my throbbing feet didn’t seem to even touch the floor. I took his hand and he led me past the other couples and over to the string quartet, just as they finished the current piece. He spoke to the cellist, a tiny woman with glasses who wasn’t much bigger than her instrument. “Can you play the slow movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto?” he asked her.