Torture was preferable to that.

Nikolai Korovin made his way through the crowd without hesitation and without hiding his displeasure. The nightclub was one of London's most elegant and very fashionable, so it was packed with celebrities and celebrities of all kinds.

This meant that Veronika, with her aspirations for greatness, could not be far away.

"Would you like something to drink?" a creature with dark eyes, black hair, and full lips asked him as she leaned against him, trying, he thought, to seduce him. "Or would you like something else?"

Nikolai waited for her to stop giggling stupidly and look at his face, and when she did, the woman paled, just as he expected. She looked as if she'd seen the devil.

And I had seen it.

He didn't need to say anything. She let go of him, and Nikolai forgot about her as soon as he lost sight of her.

After wandering around the club a few times, scrutinizing and cataloging each person in the audience, he leaned against one of the enormous speakers and simply waited. He felt the music reverberating down his spine as if he were being attacked with grenades. And he almost hoped it was true.

I hated that place and all the similar places I had been to since I started searching. I hated

The spectacle and the extravagance. Veronika, of course, would love to be seen in a place like that and in that company.
"Veronika." His ex-wife's name slithered through his brain like the snake it was, reminding him why he was there.

He wanted to know the truth. She was the only loose end he'd left, and he wanted to cut it off once and for all. After that, what happened to Veronika wouldn't matter to him at all.

"I've never loved you," she'd said, her baggage already packed. "I've only been faithful to you accidentally." And then

He had smiled at her. "It goes without saying that Stefan isn't yours. What woman in her right mind would want your child?"

At that time, his greedy ex-wife's tastes centered on big parties, wherever they were.

were celebrated around the world, and by the wealthy men who flocked to them. But he knew he was in London. His time in the Russian Special Forces had taught him many things that were etched into the cold, hard stone that occupied his heart, so finding an ambitious woman with loose morals was a piece of cake.

It didn't take long for him to discover that he was living with the son of a wealthy sheikh, surrounded by security measures. Dismantling them would be easy, but, unfortunately, it would cause an international incident.

Because Nikolai had stopped being a soldier seven years earlier and could not do what was necessary to achieve his purpose with the deadly precision that had earned him a respect bordering on fear among his colleagues and enemies.

And, ironically, he had become an internationally renowned philanthropist, a wolf in sheep's clothing. He directed

The Korovin Foundation, together with his brother, Ivan, which they founded after he stopped making action movies in Hollywood. Nikolai looked after his brother's fortune, and had amassed his own thanks to his innate ability
to invest . And they considered him a compassionate and caring man, despite his cruelty, which he did nothing to hide.