The Devil Wears Kolovsky. Carol Marinelli

he was going to pull her towards him—for a full second she thought she was about to be kissed—but instead his fingers stole down the nape of her neck to the tender skin there, tucked in a label he couldn’t even have seen beneath her thick blonde hair. And then he mocked her with a black smile. She could see the flash of warning, and she could see something else too—the danger beneath the slick surface of him.

      ‘That’s better,’ Zakahr said, his hand still on the back of her neck. ‘It was annoying me.’

      ‘I was just…’ Lavinia attempted to explain again that she had just been straightening his tie, but her voice faded as Zakahr shook his head.

      ‘No games!’ Zakahr said. ‘Because you have no idea who you are playing with.’

      The applause went up, and without a further word he headed out, leaving Lavinia standing in the wings, her neck prickling from his touch, stunned and unsure as to what had just taken place.

      And then he smiled.

      A slow smile that moved around the room like the rays of the sun.

      Those grey eyes somehow met everyone’s, and before he had even opened his mouth the audience was his.

      ‘There is much fear and speculation today,’ Zakahr said, his accent more pronounced over the microphone. ‘I cannot end the speculation, but I hope to allay your fears.’

      He did.

      Everyone had a voice, he told his captive audience, and he would listen to each one. He expected the House of Kolovsky to continue to flourish, and was looking forward to getting to know the staff.

      A smile of relief swept the room—only it didn’t reach Lavinia, and neither did his speech. It was his earlier words that rang in her ears as she watched from the shadow of the wings.

       ‘You have no idea who you are playing with.’

      But she did.

      Riminic Ivan Kolovsky—a man surely with no allegiance to the empire, a man who had learnt hate from the cradle, a man who had practically warned her himself to steer clear.

      She didn’t trust him. She wasn’t even sure if she liked him. And he was absolutely out of her league. So why, Lavinia asked herself as her hand moved to the back of her neck, as she felt the skin he had branded with his touch, did she really want to know him some more?