KAIREN
The car ride back to the city was the quietest hour of my life.
Viktor drove. He didn't look at me. He didn't speak. His hands were tight on the wheel, his posture so rigid I thought the leather seat might crack. The silence wasn't empty. It was full of everything we didn't say, every charged word from the cabin hanging in the air between us, thick as the mountain fog.
I stared out the window at the blurring pines. My ankle throbbed in time with my heartbeat. But the pain was background noise. The main show was playing on a loop behind my eyes: Viktor kneeling, his hand on my leg, the look on his face when I called him out. The fury. The retreat.
A strange, hot feeling settled low in my chest. It wasn't happiness. It was power. A sharp, clean kind I'd never felt before. I'd gotten under his skin. I'd made the unshakable man flinch. I'd seen the crack in the wall, and for a second, I'd put my finger right in it.
He'd practically run from the room.
