Chapter 11 Nikolaj
Nikolaj
The door slams shut behind him, and I don’t move.
I lie there for a moment—on my back, on the cold chapel floor, throat stinging, wrists tingling from where he pinned them down, heart thundering like it’s trying to rip out of my fucking chest. Blood drips slowly down my neck, warm and lazy, like it’s in no rush to remind me what just happened.
My jaw is clenched so tight I hear the crack when I finally grind my teeth together.
He marked me, and not just the X under my ear.
He made it mean something. Something I didn’t permit him to take, and that’s the part that pisses me off more than anything.
Not that he got the last word. Not that he walked away like the fucking heir to Olympus.
But that I let him. That, for a few seconds—just long enough to ruin everything—I wanted it.
I shoot upright, breath jagged and uneven, the world narrowing down to torchlight and fury.
He wasn’t supposed to get under my skin.
I was the one meant to infiltrate his head.
I was the ghost in his shadow, the monster in his bed, the threat sent to slit his pretty Sicilian throat and walk away without ever being seen.
I was raised for this—baptized in bone, trained in silence, and tempered by pain, frost, and blood spilled on command.
My entire fucking life has been leading to this moment, and I’ve let it be derailed for a smirk.
For a voice. For the weight of a name that should mean nothing.
Vieri.
I say it in my head; something I’ll whisper when I finally press steel to his neck and return the favor.
My legs feel unsteady when I get to my feet, but I ignore them. My muscles ache, and my ribs throb. The blood is sticky now, drying in a slow drag down my collarbone, past the edge of my shirt. I let it flow, let it mean something.
I turn back toward the altar, heart pounding harder with every step.
The statue of San Matteo watches in silence, the carved stone face hidden beneath a hood, hands outstretched like he’s waiting for more blood.
This place drinks it like wine, like every heir who ever made a promise here never had a chance of walking out clean.
I step up to him and reach for the wound beneath my ear, smearing my fingers through the blood. It comes away dark and thick, and I press it to the cold black stone with a snarl curling out of my throat.
An X.
Right over the saint’s heart.
“Fuck your clarity,” I mutter under my breath. “And fuck him too.”
This was supposed to be my game. My kill. My rise.
Not his victory.
I press harder, dragging the mark over the smooth chest of the statue like I can grind it deeper. Like the blood itself can brand my rage into the walls. It’s a promise, not a prayer. A vow that whatever Vincenzo thinks he’s taken, I’ll take back twice as hard.
He thinks he’s clever. Thinks he’s back in control. That by licking the blood from my throat and walking away like he won, he’s reminded me of my place.
But I don’t have a place; I’m a Dragovich. We weren’t built to kneel; we were built to burn.
I drag my hand down the statue’s chest, staining it further, then step back and breathe once, hard and shallow.
There’s a heat in my chest now, and not the good kind.
Not the kind that makes me want, but the kind that devours.
I let it rise, let it fill my lungs, let it curl around my spine like smoke.
I’m going to destroy him.
Not just beat him. Not just break his rules.
Destroy him.
Rip apart the pristine image he’s built, make him choke on the shame he’s buried so deep he’s forgotten he even has it. Strip the silk off his skin and show the world what he looks like underneath when he’s nothing but a man with no name to hide behind and no crown to defend him.
I walk out of the chapel without looking back.
My footsteps echo down the corridor, and in my mind, I already see it. The night I pull him into the dark and make him admit he’s mine. Not with kisses, not with cuts. With the truth. With the one thing he swore he’d never say, never want, never be.
And when it happens, when that beautiful mouth opens and the walls collapse, it won’t be on his terms. It’ll be on mine.
He can mark me all he wants, but he forgot something.
He didn’t carve any name into my neck—he gave me his.
But the thing about revenge is that once it gets into your bloodstream, it doesn’t settle.
It consumes. It feeds on every breath, every movement, every half-second of silence that reminds you of what was taken.
And in this case, it’s not just the control Vincenzo stripped from me when he slammed me to the chapel floor, or the sharp sting of the blade carving that fucking X under my ear.
It’s not even the words he whispered into my skin.
It’s that I let him. For one second too long, I gave him the illusion that he had won. That I’d yield. That I’d bleed and beg and call it desire instead of surrender. I should’ve slit his throat right there. I should’ve ended him. But I didn’t. I wanted him.
And now? Now, I want something else.
I want reckoning.
The burn beneath my skin hasn’t cooled since I walked out of the chapel. It only intensified, fed by the whispers that followed me back to the North Wing, the looks, the stares, the questions no one dared ask aloud. Everyone saw the cut. Everyone noticed the change.
I know how Vieri plays. He’s subtle until he’s not. He’ll drop a word here, a look there, let the rumors build like a slow hurricane until the world believes exactly what he wants them to.
Not this time. Not with me.
I don’t sleep that night. I stay awake—pacing, smoking, plotting.
I sit on the edge of my bed with a blade in one hand and my phone in the other, reading and rereading the surveillance notes I hacked into weeks ago—Vieri’s class schedule, guard rotations, the names of his favored tutors, the hours he’s alone.
My blood is a low drumbeat, steady and loud.
I don’t want to kill him yet, not when I can break him first.
So, I start small and precise.
The next morning, I show up late to Disinformation again, this time with one of his girls wrapped around my arm—Lucia, the cartel heiress with daddy issues and a thing for danger.
I know she’s spent the better part of the semester trying to get on his radar, and now she’s laughing at something I didn’t even say, holding onto me like I’m her favorite sin. Her perfume clings to me like smoke.
Vieri doesn’t look at me when I enter, but I see him stiffen. His fingers pause on the paper he’s pretending to read. One second. Two. Then he flips the page like he didn’t notice.
I smile and sit directly across from him. Lucia traces patterns on my thigh under the desk, her laugh low in my ear. I lean closer just to watch his shoulders tighten.
After class, I leave my knife behind on purpose. Custom, etched in Cyrillic. The kind of message that doesn’t need translation. He’ll know it wasn’t an accident.
Later that day, I take his favorite sparring dummy in the gym and rip the head off it. Leave it at the edge of the mat with another X carved into the foam. Not deep, just familiar. His signature twisted into mine. I make sure he sees me watching when he finds it.
It’s about getting under his skin, into the quiet cracks no one else sees. He walks around like a fortress, perfectly built, unshakable—but I’ve been inside now. I know where it splinters.
By the end of the week, the whole academy is talking. They don’t know what about, they don’t say it outright. But they feel it—this invisible war that’s building between us. Every glance, every pass in the hallways. Every time I show up too close or stay too long. He’s unraveling, and I can see it.
But it’s not enough.
There are moments when everything slows. Not because you’re calm—because you’ve passed calm, passed thought, passed anything close to rational control. You stop thinking in words. You stop reacting like a person, and you become motion. You become fury.
That’s what happens the second one of them grabs my arm and I feel the insult behind it, thick and clumsy and fucking earned.
The courtyard is open, damp from rain, half-shaded by overhanging stone columns.
Early afternoon light glints off the puddles between the cobblestones.
I’d come out here to clear my head, maybe smoke, maybe not—my fists were already tight with too much energy and too few acceptable places to purge it.
I didn’t expect an ambush, but I should have.
There are five of them. Two wearing the polished arrogance of trust fund dogs in custom shoes, two guards in tailored suits pretending to be subtle, and the fifth—standing behind them all like he’s the goddamn Don of this crumbling relic of a school—is Matteo Giovanni Lazzaro, heir to the Ngraheta, and Vieri by blood.
Cousin to him.
The second I spot him, I know what this is: retaliation. I should walk away, or laugh and call it desperate. Instead, I smile because this is the part I understand best.
Matteo’s mouth curls. “Got a lot of nerve, Dragovich. Thought the Bratva raised their dogs better.”
“Strange,” I reply, already stepping closer. “I was just thinking the same thing about your cousin.”
The guards shift behind him, and the two at his sides square up. I welcome it.
“You think this is smart?” Matteo continues. “You think pushing Vincenzo’s buttons buys you safety?”
“I don’t want his safety,” I say, stretching my neck until it pops. “I want his crown.”
He moves first. Not a punch, but a slap meant to humiliate. He should’ve used his fists. I catch his wrist mid-swing, twist it until he drops, and drive my elbow into his solar plexus before he can breathe. He goes down with a grunt, not out, but winded. Then the others are on me.
The guards come from both sides, fast and trained, but they’re not me.
The first throws a jab—I duck, slam a fist into his ribs hard enough to hear the crack, pivot, and shove him into the next one who’s trying to blindside me.
I hear the crunch of a nose breaking. One of them yells.
The other stumbles back, blood pouring down his mouth.
Matteo tries again, this time with a blade.
Wrong move.
I catch the glint just before it reaches me, twist his wrist, and disarm him. My boot connects with his knee, and he drops with a scream, hands scrambling over the shattered joint. I yank him forward by the lapel and drive his head into the stone column.
The last one hesitates just a second too long. I lunge, grab the front of his shirt, and headbutt him twice until he folds like paper, crumpling to the wet stone like the rest.
Silence follows.
My chest rises and falls, my fists ache, but all five of them are on the ground.
Breathing shallow, but alive. Except for Matteo, who’s twitching, jaw clenched, making a sound I’ve only heard come from men right before they pass out from pain.
His kneecap is busted. He’ll walk again, but not without remembering me every step.
I wipe the sweat from my lip and look up.
Vincenzo is standing at the edge of the courtyard under the far arch, arms crossed, coat open over his pressed shirt, watching like he’s studying a lecture.
His expression doesn’t change, not even when I step over Matteo’s limp body and walk toward him with blood singing in my veins and fire still flickering in my lungs.
He holds my gaze, unreadable.
“I didn’t spill any blood,” I say when I’m close enough for only him to hear. “But next time, I won’t hold back.”
He raises a brow. “That was you holding back?”
I grin. “Surprised?”
His jaw tightens, and his hands curl where they rest at his elbows. I see the war inside him. He wants to smile, wants to scowl. He wants to fucking touch me, whether to hit me or do something else, I don’t know anymore. And maybe he doesn’t either.
“I suppose I should thank you,” he says at last. “You did my job for me. Matteo’s been running his mouth for years.”
“You’re welcome,” I say.
We stare, and around us, the silence stretches wide. No guards rush in, there are no sirens, and no alarms. Vintermoor doesn’t interfere when heirs fight; it only intervenes when bodies go cold. And no one’s dead.
Yet.
“What happens now?” I ask.
He cocks his head, that perfect cold mask slipping over his face again. “There’ll be no punishment since it was five against one. You walked out clean, and technically it was self-defense.”
I nod slowly.
“But you knew that would happen,” he adds, quieter now. “Didn’t you?”
“I counted the cameras,” I admit. “I knew which ones were down for maintenance. The blind spot covers eighty percent of that walkway. The other twenty I stayed just inside the frame. Enough to prove I didn’t swing first, not enough to catch what I did.”
He exhales like it’s almost a laugh, then his eyes flick to the X under my ear, still healing. “You planned this.”
“No,” I say. “But I used it.”
“And him?”
“Collateral.”
“He’s in a coma.”
I nod once. “He’ll wake up.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
I smile. “Then I guess the Five Families are down one heir.”
Vincenzo’s eyes darken. “You think you’ve made your point,” he says quietly.
I lean in, close enough to be felt. “No,” I whisper. “I’m still making it.”
He doesn’t flinch; he just watches me like a man watching the tide roll in, knowing the wave will hit but still refusing to move.
I realize then he’s not afraid of me, not really. He’s afraid of what I prove: that control can be cracked, that the crown can slip. That all it takes is one stray dog with nothing to lose and too much blood in his teeth to remind a king he’s only ever one wrong move away from the fall.