Chapter 2 Nikolaj
Nikolaj
I don’t look back as I leave him standing there—too still, too fucking clean in his black-on-black arrogance, like a statue sculpted from old money, war crimes, and backroom deals signed in blood.
He’s all sharp collars and colder intent, polished within an inch of humanity, the kind of immaculateness that makes people bow whether they want to or not to avoid being the next name he crosses out behind a smile.
And I hate him for it.
I hate the way the air folds around him like even the wind doesn’t want to fuck with a Vieri.
The way students move aside like he’s some cursed relic—beautiful, dangerous, and better admired from behind bulletproof glass.
I hate the precision in his every movement, the silence he weaponizes, the throne he drags behind him without ever lifting a finger.
But most of all, I hate that he looked at me as if he’d already measured my worth and found it lacking. He smiled—smiled—like he knew what I came here to do… and still didn’t flinch. Still didn’t care.
He should care. He should be scared. I’m not just some Bratva ghost dragged in from the snow to play nice with the heirs of dying dynasties. I’m the fucking blade they sent to kill him.
My father made that perfectly clear the night he summoned me from the estate in Rostov.
His voice echoed in the frostbitten chapel we use for strategy and executions, the stained glass long since replaced by ballistic glass.
He called it justice. I call it what it really is: a reckoning—a homecoming soaked in purpose.
My boots hit the marble with rhythmic weight, echoing off the tall, vaulted archways of the North Wing.
The pristine East Wing that’s dripping in Sicilian influence and stolen wealth may belong to the Vieri family on paper, but this wing?
This corner of the school never learned to kneel. It snarls, and it breathes Russian.
The halls are darker, the shadows thicker.
Red velvet curtains, iron-framed windows, chandeliers that hum when the storm winds pick up.
The scent in the air isn’t eucalyptus or lemon oil.
It’s old leather, gunpowder, and smoke that never cleared.
A thousand memories are pressed into every brick—blood-slick hands, knuckles split open from training, screams swallowed by stone.
To someone like him, it would be claustrophobic. To me, it smells like home.
The Bratva might’ve been exiled from the American underworld—cut out of New York’s criminal elite and blacklisted from council seats at the Five Families’ table for over a decade—but Russia is still ours.
Moscow still bleeds for my name. Still opens its veins when we ask.
Still remembers that exile is not the same thing as surrender.
Vintermoor is just the first step in bleeding the rest of them dry.
My shoulders ache under the weight of the leather duffel, but I don’t shift it.
I don’t ease burdens I haven’t earned the right to put down.
Pain is a companion. Pain is a promise. Pain reminds me I haven’t earned shit until I kill him.
Not until the prince of the East Wing is nothing more than a beautiful corpse rotting beneath the snow.
That’s the mission. The only one that matters.
Vincenzo Vieri. Crown of the Cosa Nostra. Heir to Sicily’s last empire. Groomed from the cradle to wear a crown of knives. I’ve seen his face in files and black-and-white surveillance stills since I was fifteen—while I was chained to the ground in Kaluga, training until I couldn’t walk.
I’ve watched grainy clips of him speaking fluent Mandarin at sixteen, his hand casually gripping the shoulder of a diplomat’s daughter while the ambassador bled out off-camera.
I’ve seen the footage of his twin brother’s disappearance, watched his smile as he stood next to the open grave like it was a fucking coronation.
The world sees refinement and royalty. I see a target.
A threat wrapped in charm, wearing power like perfume so strong it suffocates.
I see a boy who’s never been told no, who’s never had to crawl through mud, kill for food, or prove he deserved to live another day.
A prince who thinks command is inherited instead of earned.
I want nothing more than to ruin him—properly. To watch the polish crack. To force him into the dirt and see if he still smiles when his own blood is the only thing adorning his suit.
Because I don’t need a title. I need my fucking stars.
I need the look on my father’s face when I return with Vieri’s legacy burning behind me.
I need the weight of this mission lifted not with applause, but with the quiet acknowledgment that I did what the rest of them couldn’t.
I finished what Silvano started and what Vincenzo thought he was too untouchable to ever answer for.
I push through the last door and step into the corridor that leads to my room, pausing only when I hear voices ahead.
Maksim’s laughter is the first thing I hear.
It’s the kind of sound that dares you to test him.
He’s leaning against the wall beside my door, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, head tipped back like he owns the ceiling, too.
His brother, Kai, is crouching next to him near an open crate, methodically assembling a rifle piece by piece like it’s a fucking Lego set.
Dragovich blood runs thick in both of them—platinum hair, bad tempers, and no sense of boundaries. Maksim looks like trouble wrapped in denim and arrogance, all sharp grins and dirt under his nails.
Kai’s suit is too nice for this wing. Always is. Three-piece, pinstriped, with a tie so tight around his throat it looks like it’s choking him. Probably is.
“Took you long enough, tsarevich,” Maksim drawls, exhaling a stream of smoke that curls into the air. “Well? Did you meet the future king?”
I shrug out of my coat and hang it on the hook by the fireplace, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a glare. “I met him.”
Maksim smirks around his cigarette. “And? Did he tell you to curtsy or just kiss his ring?”
“And I’ve seen statues with more menace,” I say flatly, ignoring his second question.
Kai hums, tightening a screw on the rifle. “Pretty though.”
“Pretty gets you buried,” I mutter, rolling my sleeves. “He’s too polished. Hands like he’s never held anything heavier than a pen. He doesn’t know what it’s like to kneel with a gun to the back of his head and pray the chamber’s empty.”
“He won’t kneel,” Maksim says. “His family would rather die.”
“I’m counting on it,” I reply, then cross to the cabinet and pour myself a drink. It’s early for vodka, but time stopped meaning anything the day I watched a man’s throat split open and didn’t blink. “Makes it easier to aim for the heart when a man insists he still has one.”
Kai finally stands, his hands covered in oil, the stock of the rifle slung over his shoulder. He watches me like he always does—quiet, calculating, the way our uncle used to when we were kids. Kai never says much. But when he does, it lands like a goddamn bullet. “You shook?”
“No.” I meet his eyes. “I’m ready.”
“You better be,” he says softly. “The last heir that hesitated didn’t make it out of the compound.”
I don’t need the reminder of Nikolai—the boy named after me, the cousin who cracked under pressure during the Vladikavkaz trials. His screams still echo in the lower halls. They fed him to the dogs because he didn’t finish his assignment in time. His stars were stripped and his name erased.
I won’t be him. I’d rather die than go back to Moscow empty-handed.
Maksim flicks a knife from his sleeve and spins it lazily between his fingers. “So what’s the plan, tsarevich? Flash those baby blues, make him fall for your tragic backstory, then stick a shiv between his ribs while he’s coming?”
I grab the knife from his hand and hurl it across the room. It slams into the doorframe with a thud; the handle vibrating. He raises his hands, grinning. “Temper, temper. Must’ve hit a nerve.”
“He looked at me like he already knew why I was here,” I say. “Didn’t blink. Didn’t back down.”
Kai retrieves the knife and spins it once before setting it down. “Then make him regret that.”
“I will,” I say, voice low. “I’ll make him break.”
It’s not about the mission anymore. It’s not about the star burned into my spine—the first marks given to prove you’ve earned the right to breathe.
It’s about the way he stood there like he thought God had made him bulletproof.
The way my name on his tongue felt like a dare.
I wanted to cut him open just to check if he bled red or gold.
“You think he’s as cold as they say?” I ask quietly.
Kai shrugs. “You just watched him in action.”
“No, that was a performance.” I pace the room, running a hand through my hair. “What I saw in his eyes… that was something else.”
“You’re getting too in your head again,” Kai warns.
“I’m not,” I growl. “I’m observing the threat.”
Maksim chuckles. “You’re obsessing.”
“Maybe.” I pause. “But obsession gets the job done.”
“It also gets you killed,” Kai counters. “Pick which outcome you want before you start writing poetry about Italian princes.”
The room falls silent, tension stretching like a wire between us.
In Bratva culture, obsession is a weapon.
But it’s also a weakness if you don’t wield it right.
I know that. They trained it into me, flayed the softness out of me until I couldn’t even look in a mirror without hearing the voice of my brother, Arseniy, behind my ear.
You’re not a man, you’re a knife. Until you kill the one they fear most, you’re nothing but dull steel.
And right now, that knife is pointed straight at Vincenzo Vieri.
I’ll gut him clean. I’ll do it when he least expects it. I’ll put my blade between his ribs and whisper thank you against his mouth while I watch the light leave his eyes.
And then I’ll earn the stars on my shoulders and knees. The true mark of a sanctioned heir. The right to return to Russia not as a soldier, but as a prince. A future king. An heir who didn’t flinch.
Kai exhales through his nose. He and Maksim watch me in silence for a beat, and then I tip the glass back and let the burn coat my throat.
Maksim sits up straighter, his eyes sharpening. “So, what’s the plan? Fast and loud? Or slow enough to make him beg?”
I set it down with a soft thud and my knuckles tighten against the edge of the counter. For a moment, I imagine carving my name into Vieri’s skin. Not out of rage; out of necessity. I want him to know who killed him. I want his last thought to be regret.
“Slow,” I say. “He needs to know he’s losing before he dies.”
Maksim whistles low. “Savage. I’m impressed. Maybe you’re not just Arseniy’s shadow after all.”
Kai leans beside me, watching my reflection in the glass. “You sure you can stay detached? He’s… magnetic. Dangerous men usually are.”
“He’s a means to an end.”
Kai’s smirk is quiet and cruel. “You keep saying that, but your eyes look like they’ve already picked a side.”
I stare him down until the smirk fades, until even Maksim stops pretending to breathe.
“He’s my target,” I say evenly. “That’s all.”
I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling.
Vintermoor’s charm wears thin when you’ve seen what real power looks like.
The walls here are old but weak. Built to impress, not to protect.
My father would’ve burned this whole place to the ground just to make a point.
My brother would’ve smiled while watching it crumble.
I just want to set the fuse and walk away.
“You all settled in yet?” a voice calls from the hall. It’s Levin, one of the lesser heirs from a side family no one respects, but he tries to ride our coattails, anyway. He pokes his head into the common room and freezes when Kai turns to look at him.
Levin pales and ducks away, and Maksim snorts. “We should start charging rent for idiots who think standing in our shadow makes them powerful.”
“We’re not here to make friends,” I say.
“Good,” Maksim says. “Because you’re shit at it.”
“I’m not here to play their games, Maks.”
Kai raises a brow. “Then what are you here for, little prince?”
I drain the glass, feel the burn claw its way down my throat, and smile without warmth. “War.”
The game has started. The pieces are moving.
And Vieri doesn’t know I’m the checkmate waiting at the end.