Chapter 26 Chapter Twenty-Six
Elena's POV
“Where do you live, Nikolai?” The car felt suddenly too small. Too silent. He tilted his gaze to me and withdrew it so fast that I couldn't even catch his gaze.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles whitening as if he were holding onto something fragile or bracing for impact. His eyes snapped to me the second time for a fraction of a second before darting back to the road. I saw it then. The hesitation. The lie is already forming.
“I...” He swallowed hard. “I live at the mansion. Same place as you. Have you forgotten that I'm a Romano?”
I didn't forget that but I knew he was lying because the words landed wrong. I turned fully toward him. “Don’t lie to me. And I haven't forgotten that but I know when someone is lying to me.”
The effect was immediate. His jaw clenched. His throat bobbed again, more violently this time, and I felt it, his body trembling beneath the calm he tried so desperately to wear.
“Elena please!" He said with gritted teeth, he wasn't mad but fighting something that I couldn't understand. I didn't see the big deal in his telling me where he lives.
"C'mon Nikolai, it's not that difficult to tell me where you live, it's not like I am asking you to kill someone for me?"
"That would be much easier!" He said, and I looked at him in surprise.
"You will kill for me?" I asked him. He threw his head back and shut his eyes. I could see him battling with himself again, he didn't answer, and I didn't push more for that. "So tell me, where do you live?"
"I shouldn’t” he muttered, almost to himself.
“You should,” I said softly. “Just this once.” He exhaled through his nose, a shaky breath that sounded like surrender.
“Fine, I live on the other side of the city,” he said at last. “Far from Don Alessandro. It's just father and Rafael that live there, but I...” he stopped himself. The truth hung between us, fragile and exposed.
“It’s late,” he added quickly, as if needing distance from what he had just confessed or maybe eager to get away from me. “I should take you home.”
Before I could answer, my phone rang. I looked down at the screen and my chest tightened.
Rafael.
I declined the call without giving it a second thought. My eyes widened seeing that he had called more than a thousand times, then a message pinged. I open the message.
\[Elena, please take your calls and I'm on my way to the mansion\]
My fist clenched, he suddenly remembered me, probably after his girl left, my anger flared up, and I ended the call when my phone rang again and slipped the phone back into my bag.
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
Nikolai’s head snapped toward me again, disbelief written all over his face before he shook his head, like he was trying to shake the words from his ear. Or maybe he was trying to act like he didn't hear what I said.
“No,” he said immediately. “Elena, you..."
I placed my hand on his wrist before he could finish. His skin was warm. Tense. Alive.
“Just for tonight,” I pleaded. “Tomorrow morning I’ll be gone. I promise. Tomorrow, I could go back to my life. Tomorrow I will be back to where they wanted me not where I'm not wanted. At least, let me feel wanted even if it's just this night, unless you want to tell me, that you don't want me as well?” His grip on the steering wheel tightened, then loosened. He shook his head once, as if arguing with himself. I was practically blackmailing him.
"Are you trying to blackmail me?" He said quietly, like someone who couldn't say no to me. Even he was fighting it. I didn't reply, I just pouted.
"Please...."
“You shouldn’t be there,” he said quietly.
“I want to be,” I replied. "I promise I will be a good girl"
"Good girls are trouble!" He muttered but I didn't reply to that as well.
"I'm not going to touch your stuff," I added, winking at him.
That did it.
He nodded once, resigned, and pulled the car into traffic. My phone kept ringing.
Once. Twice. Three times. This was unlike Rafael, he would call just once, when I missed it, he just waited for me to return the call, but today is different. He kept calling and calling after each ring ended.
Nikolai glanced at me. “Who keeps calling?”
“No one important,” I lied, ending the call again and shoving the phone into my bag before guilt could soften my resolve.
"Are you sure it's not Rafael?" My gaze tilted to it in shock, but before he could tilt his head back to me, I masked that shocking expression and fake a smile.
"No, it's Shannon, I don't want her scolding me for staying out late." He nodded, I think he bought my alibi.
The city lights blurred past us as we drove in silence, the tension between us thick but not uncomfortable like something waiting.
When the car finally slowed, I realized we weren’t anywhere familiar.
The mansion loomed ahead of us, dark stone, tall gates, iron and glass, and quiet power. It was nothing like Don Alessandro’s place. This one felt lived in. Private. Dangerous in a way that whispered rather than shouted.
Nikolai opened the door for me, his movements stiff, controlled. As we walked towards the building. He pushed the door open, ushering me inside while the door closed behind us with a soft decisive click.
I took one step forward and stopped. For a heartbeat, my mind refused to process what my eyes were seeing.
The walls of Nikolai Rossetti Romano's mansion were covered in art. Not landscapes. Not abstract statements meant to impress politicians or donors. Women.
Nude women. Painted, sculpted, sketched bodies frozen in oil and stone and shadow. Some reclined in quiet confidence, others stood unapologetic, curves celebrated, rather than hidden.
My breath caught.
I turned slowly, taking it all in, unsure whether I should feel shocked, offended, or strangely awed.
Before I could say a word, Nikolai stiffened beside me.
“Shit.”
The word slipped out under his breath, sharp and unguarded. I looked at him.
Color, actual color rose in his face. He didn’t look like the feared man who ruled the city from shadows. He looked like someone who had been caught unprepared, stripped of control most humanly.
“I...” He ran a hand through his hair, already moving while he stuttered. “This isn’t... I didn’t expect... I’ll take them down.”
Before I could react, he was already pulling at the nearest frame, lifting it off the wall with hurried, almost clumsy movements.
“Nikolai,"
He didn’t stop. One painting came down. Then another. A sculpture was hastily turned toward the wall. He avoided looking at me, jaw tight, muttering curses in Italian under his breath as if the art itself had personally betrayed him.
I watched, stunned, as the infamous Nikolai Romano rushed ahead of me like a man trying to erase evidence of his own tastes.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Rafael would never have been embarrassed. Rafael would have smirked, made a joke, turned it into a performance, into something meant to intimidate or impress. He would have owned it loudly. But not with the man standing in front of me. Nikolai was trying to hide it.
“There are too many,” I said finally, my voice gentler than I expected. He froze mid-motion, hands gripping the edge of a frame.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I should have warned you.” I took another step forward, then another, until I was close enough for him to hear the sincerity in my voice.
“Just… leave them,” I said. “You’ll exhaust yourself at this rate.”
He hesitated, then nodded once, sharp and restrained, as if accepting defeat.
“If you would prefer,” he added, clearing his throat, “I can show you to your room.”
I smiled faintly. “That would be nice.”
We moved toward the staircase, the tension easing slightly as our footsteps echoed upward. My eyes wandered again despising myself, tracing the lines of art as we passed.
And then I saw it.
Halfway up the stairs, framed deliberately and lit more dramatically than the rest, was a painting that made me stop short.
A nude man. A nude woman. His lips pressed against her breast in a moment so intimate it felt almost stolen rather than displayed. It wasn’t crude but it was unmistakably sensual.
My eyebrows lifted.
Slowly, I turned my head toward Nikolai. He followed my gaze and visibly flinched.
(Fuck)
"Cazzo!” he muttered, immediately reaching out and yanking the painting off the wall with far more force than necessary.
The frame hit the floor with a dull thud.
I stared at him for half a second.
Then I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
The sound burst out of me, light and genuine, echoing up the stairwell. Nikolai straightened, mortified, looking exactly like a teenage boy caught watching something he absolutely should not have.
“This is not funny,” he muttered.
“Oh, it really is,” I said between laughs. “You look like your mother just walked in on you.”
He groaned, rubbing his face. “I assure you, I am never this careless.”
“That’s what makes it worse,” I teased, still smiling.
He glanced at me, then really looked, and something shifted. The embarrassment remained, but it softened, edged now with reluctant amusement.
“You are enjoying this far too much,” he said.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I appreciate that you’re embarrassed.”
His brow furrowed. “You do?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. “It means you care about what I think.” For a moment, the noise of the world seemed to fade. He nodded once, quiet and thoughtful.
“Come,” he said, gesturing upward. “Before I find something else to humiliate myself with.”
I followed him up the stairs, still smiling, knowing I’d just seen something no one else ever did. Not the art.
But the man behind it. After that, we walked and didn't say anything else. He pushed the door to one of the rooms, “Go shower,” he said. “I’ll order food,” he said, wanting to leave
"Wait!" He stops, "Please, I want you..."