Chapter 24 #2
The smirk that curves his mouth isn’t amused, it’s predatory. “I wish you would.”
I wipe the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand and say, “Next time, don’t fucking follow me.”
And he answers, without missing a beat, “Next time, don’t almost die.”
Then he turns to walk away, calm as ever, boots clicking against the stone in a slow, steady rhythm. Just before he disappears down the corridor, he glances over his shoulder. “I’ll collect on that debt soon, Vincenzo.”
I stare after him for a long moment before I press my back against the cold wall and slide down again. I should be furious. I should be planning how I’ll rip him apart the next time he steps too close.
But all I feel is heat. Twisting, aching heat curling beneath the bruises. The phantom trace of his fingers on my skin. The weight of his words settling into my bones like a claim.
Your last heartbeat belongs to me.
Somewhere in the chaos of tonight, I realized something I didn’t want to admit.
Nikolaj didn’t save me out of mercy. He saved me because no one else is allowed to have me—and I fucking liked it.
By the time I make it back to my room, the adrenaline has worn off, leaving only the burn of bruised ribs, the sting of open cuts, and the gnawing weight of something heavier pressing beneath my skin.
I shut the door behind me and peel the ruined shirt from my body, watching the fabric stick where the blood’s started to dry.
It peels off in wet patches, tugging skin and reopening one of the smaller cuts on my shoulder.
I don’t flinch. Just toss the shirt onto the floor, step into the bathroom, and flick on the light.
The reflection that meets me is uglier than usual.
There’s a thin, red line across my neck. It doesn’t look fatal, but it’s close enough that the voice in my head—my father’s voice—scoffs at me before I can even reach for the first aid kit.
“Sloppy, ragazzo. Careless. You want to die before your coronation?”
I grit my teeth and shut the medicine cabinet hard enough that the mirror rattles.
My jaw is tight, stained with drying blood.
My chest is blooming purple and red where knees and fists caught their mark.
There’s a shadow of bruising starting to form along my ribs.
I press two fingers to the worst spot and exhale sharply when pain flares like a live wire.
That’ll be broken by morning. Still… it’s not the worst thing that happened tonight.
It wasn’t the idiots thinking they could gut me in a hallway I carved into my kingdom. It wasn’t even the flash of fear I felt when the blade kissed my throat, or the fleeting thought that maybe this would be it—cut down not by a rival but by someone barely worth remembering.
No.
It was that look in Nikolaj’s eyes. The steady way he stood over me like I wasn’t the one bleeding on the floor but a prize he’d claimed and marked without asking. The taste of my blood on his tongue. The promise in his voice when he said I owed him a kill.
It shouldn’t have gotten under my skin the way it did. I should be planning retaliation, a calculated counterstrike to remind him who owns this place and whose name weighs more than old Bratva bones. But I’m not.
I’m standing in front of the mirror, trying to bandage my own throat with shaking fingers and a pulse that won’t fucking calm down.
My phone buzzes on the sink once, then it starts ringing. The moment I see the name flash across the screen, I know the night isn’t over. I press the gauze to my neck with one hand and pick up with the other, jaw clenched so tight it aches.
“Pappa.”
His voice hits like always—steel wrapped in silk, old-world charm carrying a blade beneath every syllable. “Vincenzo. I heard there was an… incident.”
I don’t answer at first. I’m busy pulling the medical tape across the gauze and smoothing it down. When it holds, I step out of the bathroom, grab a clean shirt from the back of my chair, and pull it on slowly. Every movement stings.
“I handled it,” I say finally, my jaw still tight.
A pause stretches on the other end of the line. Silence with my father is never empty. It’s deliberate. Punishing. Every second is weighted.
“You shouldn’t have had to,” he replies eventually. “Not in a territory you built. Not where the marble bears your name.”
I run a hand through my hair and drop onto the edge of the bed, elbows resting on my knees, still trying to calm the residual tremor in my hands.
“They weren’t sanctioned. Low-tier heirs. Kiril’s circle.”
Another pause.
“You humiliated the Bulgarian. You should’ve expected blood.”
“Not like this,” I mutter.
“Then you miscalculated.”
The words sting, and I know they’re meant to.
My father doesn’t waste time on sympathy.
Not even when I was ten and coughing up blood after a sparring match with a boy three years older.
I remember lying on the mat, seeing spots, struggling to breathe.
He didn’t check if I was okay. He only said, “You took your eyes off him. That’s why you’re bleeding. ”
Some lessons never fucking change.
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’ll handle the fallout.”
“You’ll handle it now,” he snaps. “Before the other heirs get the wrong idea. Before anyone else sees Dragovich’s protection of you as a weakness.”
My spine goes rigid—of course he fucking knows. “It wasn’t protection.”
Another silence, but this one is colder. “Is that what you’re telling them, Vincenzo? Or yourself?”
I don’t fucking know.
Because when Nikolaj pressed his thumb to my lip and licked my blood like a king sampling his latest conquest, I didn’t feel protected. I didn’t feel insulted, either. I felt—seen. Claimed. Stripped down to something raw and real and twisted. And worse than all of that?
I wanted more.
“Fix it,” my father says quietly. “Kill the narrative or make it work in your favor. But do not let a Dragovich walk away with the image of you bleeding on the floor while he plays executioner. I don’t care if he saved your life. I care if others saw it.”
“I already have a plan.”
“Then execute it.”
His tone softens just enough to feel like an afterthought. “You are not allowed to lose focus. Not for distraction. Not for sentiment. And especially not for temptation from a fucking man. You’re a Vieri. Act like it.”
The line goes dead before I can answer. I stare at the screen for a moment, letting the weight of that final command settle into my bones. Not for sentiment. Not for temptation.
Too late for both.
I toss the phone onto the bed and lean back against the headboard. My body aches. My ribs scream. But none of it compares to the storm behind my eyes—the memory of Nikolaj standing over me, deadly and calm, claiming me with silence and blood.
I should hate him, but what I feel isn’t hate—it’s obsession. Control slipping like the finest desert sand through my fingers. And the terrifying realization that Dragovich no longer wants to play.
He’s hunting.
And for the first time in my life, I’m not sure if I want to run or be caught.