Chapter 3 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
The first class of the semester is Tactical Legacy and Strategic Elimination. They don’t even try to hide what it is anymore. Vintermoor doesn’t waste time pretending we’re here for economics or international relations.
There’s no fucking syllabus here. No useless notebooks or plastic chairs. No PowerPoint presentation on expectations and no attendance sheets waiting to be signed. At Vintermoor, we open with a lesson in how to make people disappear and keep the world convinced it was an accident.
If you’re not ready to leave with blood on your hands, you shouldn’t have walked through the gate. This place chews up the sentimental and spits the survivors back out as sharper tools.
We’re not groomed for politics; we’re trained for blood and empire. The kind of power you inherit isn’t a birthright here; it’s a weapon you have to sharpen against the throat of everyone you sit beside.
The room itself is underground, buried beneath the East Wing. There are no desks, just a circular war table made of black steel with an inlaid map of Europe scarred by lines and bullet holes from decades of use.
The chairs are heavy enough to be thrones because idiots here once thought tantrums were a substitute for killing, and they learned the furniture doesn’t survive temper tantrums. Or worse.
I take my place at the head of the table, East Wing pin gleaming faintly on the collar of my suit jacket, and I rest my hands lightly on its carved edges. I don’t need a syllabus to tell me the goal.
Dominate. Dissect. Destroy.
Professor Kassov strides in shortly after, a former KGB turned academic psychopath, his limp dragging behind him. He nods at me once, approving. Of course he does. He’s taught my uncle, my cousin, my brother—three generations of men who learned to make enemies into lessons.
More heirs filter in, pretending not to scan the room for the weakest pulse. Everyone is looking for a place to bite through; everyone hopes someone else will bleed first.
Nikolaj saunters in wearing black on black as if he’s in mourning. Combat boots, sleeves pushed up to reveal ink and old bruises, and his North Wing crest barely hanging on to the collar of his jacket.
His hair is slicked back carelessly today, jawline covered in a rough shadow of stubble that makes him look more dangerous than usual—if that’s possible. He strolls in like he owns the floor but doesn’t want the paperwork that comes with it. Eyes half-lidded. Mouth curled.
He stares straight through me, then takes a seat directly opposite me, dragging the chair back with an obnoxious screech. Kai and Maksim flank him, and I see the exchange of glances, the way Maksim smirks and Kai just watches me like I’m a blueprint he’s memorizing.
“You are all here because you earned your place at this table,” Kassov starts. “Some of you by name, some of you by violence. The only thing that keeps you here is proof of evolution. Today, we study historical assassinations. Legacy kills. We ask how they were executed, and why.”
He walks around the table slowly, dragging a cane behind him.
“You are here to learn the art of strategic removal. How to destabilize legacies, crush succession lines, eliminate threats not just through bullets but through reputation. Through planning. Through bloodlines and betrayal and manipulation.”
He stops at Dragovich and lays a heavy hand on his shoulder with the fondness of a man who once taught a child to use a gun with a smile. “Mr. Dragovich. Let us begin with your family’s removal from New York.”
The air stills, but Nikolaj doesn’t even blink. He leans back, arms crossed like he’s already bored with the punchline he’s about to deliver. “My uncle trusted the wrong man,” he says. “Specifically, our Vieri tablemate.”
My mouth forms a smile, slow and surgical. “He was a traitor,” I say, voice syrup-smooth and sharp beneath. “He got what he was due.”
He tilts his head, amusement in the curve. “Six bullets to the chest or the child bride in exchange for silence?”
Kassov doesn’t stop us. Of course not. He wants this.
“That child bride was my cousin,” I say, voice still calm. “She offered herself up to spare your family the embarrassment of being wiped out completely. Unfortunately, your uncle didn’t live long enough to enjoy the marriage.”
“Neither did your cousin,” Dragovich replies, gaze flicking up. “Or did your family forget to mention the suicide note?”
My knuckles press into the steel tabletop. “Careful.”
“There it is,” he says, satisfaction curling his lips. “The Little Prince rises to the bait and remembers how to bite.”
“I don’t bite unless I’m hungry,” I say. “And I get very hungry.”
“Oooh, scary,” he chuckles. “I forgot you only rise for crowns and your father’s applause. Do you kneel when he tells you, too?”
The chair groans behind me as I push it back with a deliberate scrape, and all eyes lock onto the space between us. Kassov watches while the entire class holds its breath.
“You want to test me?” I ask quietly, my voice steady. “You want to start something in this room right now, mutt? You think anyone here will lift a hand to stop me?”
Nikolaj rises slowly and pulls a knife from under the table, laying it flat against his palm. It’s not standard issue or even ceremonial. It’s personal—jagged and worn, and likely taken from a body he made cold.
“Please,” he says with that same damned smirk. “Start something.”
My blade comes out before he can finish his sentence. Sleek, narrow, polished steel with a Vieri-engraved hilt. A blade meant for elegance and blood.
He grins like Christmas came early. “You’re fast,” he murmurs, taking a step closer. “Thought you’d be all flash and no bite.”
“You’re loud,” I reply, circling to meet him in the center of the table’s reach. “And stupid enough to think volume is victory.”
Kassov’s voice finally cuts through the tension.
“Gentlemen.”
We ignore him.
There’s a current pulling between us—magnetic and dark.
My blood is roaring, but my hand is steady.
He moves as if he’s dancing, like the knife in his hand is an extension of his body.
And I hate it. I hate how natural he looks with murder clenched in his fingers.
I hate that a pulse in my chest answers that motion—a pull I would have denied until the shape of it was obvious.
We’re inches apart. Close enough that I can see the pulse in his neck. The smirk on his mouth. The rage buried deep behind those arctic eyes.
“You bring a Vieri knife into a class with a Dragovich and threaten to use it,” Nikolaj whispers. “Brave.”
“You breathe like you think it’s a right, not a privilege,” I whisper back. “Stupid.”
We both lunge at the same time, but Kassov slams his cane down between us with a crack that splits the air like a rifle shot.
The clang of steel on steel against the black war table echoes across the underground chamber, loud enough to rip the tension from the room in one clean tear.
A dozen heirs—killers in training, legacies wrapped in human skin—flinch like rookies.
“That’s enough,” Kassov barks. “You want to kill each other, do it outside my classroom, where I don’t have to clean the blood off my table. If either of you draws again, I’ll shoot you both myself and call it a lesson in self-sabotage.”
I don’t move, and neither does Dragovich, but we both lower our blades because this war deserves patience.
He steps back slowly, running his tongue across his teeth.“Prince of the East Wing,” he says, voice pitched just loud enough for the others to hear, mocking in its elegance. “Pretty little title for a man whose throne is still on layaway.”
“You’ll be dead before I lose it,” I reply.
He winks. “You’ll be kneeling before I am.”
And then he walks away. Knife back in his pocket, swagger back in his spine. And I stand there, pulse still vibrating under my skin, knife still warm in my grip.
First day of classes and I’m already standing knee-deep in the kind of trouble that comes wearing scars and a Dragovich smile.
The kind that doesn’t end with one of us walking away—it ends when one of us stops breathing.