Chapter 17 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
The chapel bells toll at six a.m., low and solemn across the frost-bitten spine of Vintermoor. I’ve been awake for hours. The cold seeps through the stone walls, and outside, the world is painted in grayscale—pale sky, dead branches, the horizon split by the school’s eastern tower.
But I don’t pray today.
I stand shirtless in front of the long mirror, my hands still bruised from yesterday’s fight, the fading split on my lower lip an ugly reminder. My knuckles are cracked open and raw. There’s dried blood at my temple from where he slammed me against the wall, dried now, flaking like rust.
Nikolaj Dragovich is not my mission. His blood isn’t the legacy I’m meant to spill.
My father didn’t send me here to entertain fucking stray dogs with attitude problems and death wishes.
He sent me here to learn—to walk the path my brother never could, to prove that the Vieri bloodline didn’t rot with Silvano’s incompetence.
And I’ve wasted too much time feeding into games that don’t serve my end.
I pull a crisp black shirt from the wardrobe, buttoning it without looking down. I don’t need to. Every movement is muscle memory. Every thread of my appearance is engineered. The Vieri heir doesn’t slouch. He doesn’t sulk. He doesn’t flinch when someone dies.
And he sure as hell doesn’t chase after a laughing Bratva prince like a dog in heat.
I shrug into my jacket, smooth down the collar, and walk out of the suite without a word.
The morning seminar is held in the strategy rotunda, a massive domed chamber designed to mimic the inner sanctum of the original Sicilian war council.
There are twenty of us seated around the horseshoe table, the room dim except for the spotlight above the center where our professor is arranging stacks of tactical maps and dossiers.
I sit where I always do: back left, diagonally from the windows. Line of sight to every door.
I can feel the shift in the air when he enters, the way the room bends, breathes, adjusts to his presence like it always does. Like a fucking wound that’s forgotten how to close.
But I don’t look. Not even when he drops into the seat two rows ahead of me and starts clicking his pen in that deliberate rhythm that always used to make my teeth grind.
Not even when he mutters something in Russian under his breath, causing a few of the other heirs to chuckle. I let the noise wash over me.
It continues like that all week.
I bury myself in drills, strategy, and leadership modules. I start showing up to the economic manipulation seminars I used to brush off. I lead three war tables. Win two.
I fuck a girl from the Meridian estate—Vivienne, maybe. Doesn’t matter. She has red lips, a waist like a wineglass, and moans like she’s never been told no. She leaves my suite with bruises on her hips and a smug smile, as if she thinks she’s carved something into me.
She hasn’t. No one ever has but him.
Each day I go back to the gym. Each night, I study long after the halls go quiet. I start briefing with Lucien more often, tracking which smaller families are shifting allegiance behind the scenes. I text my father for the first time in a month and tell him everything he wants to hear.
The Bratva is quiet. The Cerullis are fracturing again. The Morrows are being bought out by the banks they used to fund. I tell him I’ve started identifying targets for acquisition. I tell him the East Wing is secure. I tell him that I’m ready.
Ready to be the heir Silvano never was. Ready to be the king he needs me to be.
He writes back one line.
Father:
Then act like it.
On the fifth day, Kai Dragovich tries to goad me in weapons training. Some dig about how the prince has lost his teeth now that his plaything got bored—I ignore that too. I’m not going to war over Nikolaj Dragovich. I’m going to war over something bigger.
Power isn’t won by violence here; power is built by discipline. By control. By patience so exacting it makes your enemies bleed before you lift a finger.
I’m no longer his audience; I’m his executioner. And I don’t need a crown to bury him—all I need is time.