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Faces seemed to swarm around me, unsteady and out of focus in the flashing lights and semi-dark. My stomach roiled, and my mouth was dry. I’d been drunk before, but this wasn’t at all like Vienna. I felt almost detached from my body, and I could barely feel my feet on the floor.

In fact, my legs didn’t seem to want to work at all. It was like they were encased in concrete. I stumbled, barely staying upright as I moved toward the glowing bathroom sign.

It was when the sign became blurry as well that I realized something was very, very wrong. My hands groped blindly, looking for something, anything to grab onto, but there was nothing but confused faces turning my way and then dancing bodies moving away from me.

My pulse skyrocketed. The edges of the room were going black. I was going to pass out.

I tried to turn back, tried to find Gavin in the crowd, but I couldn’t focus on anyone or anything. My head was pounding, my tongue heavy in my mouth.Everythingfelt heavy. My legs couldn’t hold me up.

This whole night had been a terrible idea. I never should have come here.

I’d been trying to escape Stefan, to forget him, to force my heart to get over him, but that hadn’t worked at all. Instead, as my knees hit the floor, the tiles suddenly hot against my cheek as I slumped over, I saw my husband’s face in the crowd. Impossible.

But as I lay there on the floor, the darkness creeping in, it was his face I saw again, leaning down over me as he reached out a hand.

Even in this state, I couldn’t escape him.

His blazing green eyes were the last thing I hallucinated before I completely passed out.

Stefan

Chapter 8

“Do not take your eyes off my wife for one second until I get there,” I growled into my phone, after directing my driver to take me straight to the club. “And whatever you do, donotlet her walk out of there with that piece of shit.”

I had to go after her.

And if Tori thought she was going home with Gavin tonight, she had another thing coming.

At first I hadn’t cared when she didn’t show up at 7 for dinner at the penthouse; despite my father’s fury at her absence I’d believed my own excuses for why she’d stood us up.

“She’s got midterms coming up,” I had said. “All she does is study. It’s not the kind of program you can just skate by in, and she cares about her grades. She’s learning sign language.”

“Sign language? What the hell’s she gonna do with this degree anyway?” my father scoffed. “Plenty of cheaper decorations if she wants something pretty to hang on the wall.”

“I think it’s cool,” my sister Emzee had cut in. “And I’m glad she has her own passion. The way she talks about linguistics, it really does sound like it’s worth exploring.”

I had shot my younger sister a grateful look, knowing she’d intentionally interrupted the argument to try getting us back on track to a peaceful evening.

Sure, I was pissed that my wife had disobeyed a direct order. But I hadn’t been lying about her intense study habits, and to be honest I would have gladly skipped out on dinner with my father too, if I’d been able to get away with it.

The meal dragged on, my brother Luka unusually sullen and refusing to contribute much to the conversation. Emzee did her best, regaling us with stories about her most recent trip to Istanbul for a photography assignment, but I was relieved when I finally got a text from Dmitri, the secret bodyguard that I’d hired to follow Tori around. I excused myself to read it.

She’s at the 312 Club, his text read.Popular with college kids. Not dangerous.

Studying, my ass. She’d have a lot to answer for when she got home tonight.

I had returned to the table and tried to play the role of good son and brother, even though I’d lost my appetite. The wine helped.

But when Dmitri texted me again soon after to say Tori was getting handsy with that Gavin asshole, I couldn’t not go after her. Especially when I watched the videos that he sent. The sight of Gavin grinding up on my wife’s ass, the way she held his hand at the bar, their easy laughter—all I saw was red. There was no way I was letting her get away with this.

I left dinner early, citing a non-existent business meeting I had to prepare for the next morning, and whipped out my phone to call Dmitri as soon as I got into my private car. And now I was on my way to confront her.

If anything, I was more pissed about the fact that she’d turned off her phone, intentionally making it impossible for me to track her with the app I’d installed. I didn’t like the idea of her being out there in the city on her own, without me able to protect her, but that’s exactly why I had contingencies in place. Contingencies like Dmitri.

I leaned back into the plush leather seat of the Town Car and scrolled back through the photos Dmitri had sent. Fucking Gavin. I really didn’t like that guy. There was something about him that made me want to punch him in the face. Probably something to do with the fact that he knew Tori was married and underage, yet he kept asking her out to dinner and taking her out to bars and clubs she wasn’t even old enough to get into. He had a lot of nerve.

I almost crushed my phone in my hand when I zoomed in on the pictures of them dancing. Sure, she was also surrounded by her female friends, but that didn’t stop Gavin from putting his hands all over her. That wasmywife he was touching. I could kill him.