Nia - 50718

When Power Walked In

I remember that night by the way my skin shifted—how it prickled before I even saw her.

The bar was quiet, lit in low amber tones that matched the velvet curve of the banquettes and the soft perfume of something spicy and forbidden. I was waiting for Angelica, as I often did, half-lost in the glimmer of my glass, the ice swirling lazily through my drink. There was something decadent in the stillness. Something warm. I liked that.

And then the door opened.

She didn’t enter the room. She claimed it.

The woman was elegance forged into something sharper than steel. Tall, composed, dressed in black that clung to her like authority. Countess Constance Regina walked in with the kind of posture that silenced conversations. Her heels barely whispered over the floor, but my pulse felt each step like a warning.

She turned—and her eyes found me.

I’ve stared down men who thought their money made them gods. I’ve laughed in the face of women who thought my confidence was a threat. But this? This wasn’t a stare. It was a measurement. A cold, deliberate inventory of my presence. I felt her gaze crawl over my collarbones, through my ribcage, until it hit the core of me.

I refused to flinch.

But I won’t lie—I felt something shift inside me. Something primal. Something alert.

I held her stare like a dare. Her lips curled—not into a smile, but into something older. Wiser. Crueler. It was the look of a woman who had walked through fire and come out sovereign, not scarred.

“Interesting,” she said, her voice so low it grazed across my nerves. She said nothing more.

I could see her about to move closer, to take that final step between tension and confrontation, when Angelica appeared at her side like a moon pulling the tide.

“Countess,” she said gently, her fingers barely grazing Constance’s forearm.

A shift.

Constance didn’t break her gaze from mine. Not immediately. Not until Angelica murmured something I couldn’t hear—only feel, from the soft change in the air between them.

Then, she turned. Without another word. Without giving me the satisfaction of knowing what might have happened if she hadn’t.

They disappeared through the double doors behind the bar, leaving only the weight of her presence behind.

I sat there with my pulse racing, my drink forgotten.

I wasn’t intimidated. I’m not the kind of woman who folds beneath the gaze of power. But she made me feel something else. Something I couldn’t name.

And I knew, in that moment, that whatever world the Countess walked in… Angelica belonged to it.

And maybe… maybe could control her Special Request.