Chapter 28 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
The ballroom gleams like something out of a nightmare, draped in silk.
Candles drip wax from towering candelabras and masked heirs glide over marble as if the floor itself has been tamed by their birthrights. Everywhere I look, opulence hangs like a threat—champagne laughter too practiced, smiles a little too sharp beneath filigree and feathered masks.
These events are always the same: thinly veiled fundraisers designed to wash bloody hands in public with elegance. Tonight’s charity theme is education. Fitting, really. Nothing educates like power, and nothing lectures louder than silence.
My partner tonight is Elena Caraval, daughter of one of the biggest drug kingpins back in Chicago, and also one of my closest allies. She knows the ins and outs of my family and knows the image we need to project in public.
She’s also not into men, so I don’t have to worry about her thinking this is more than what we want everyone else to see.
I stand in the corner, watching through the gold and onyx mask I didn’t choose.
I haven’t said much since we walked in. I let her do the talking, the charming, the smiling.
She plays her role well—sharp, poised, perfectly composed—but her eyes keep flicking to the entrance. She knows. She always fucking knows.
He arrives late, not enough to insult the host, but enough to draw eyes. The room shifts around him the moment he steps inside. He’s dressed in black, of course. Tailored to perfection. Mask styled like a wolf’s skull, silver etched into bone-white, and somehow it suits him too well.
Every line of his body screams menace masked as poise. And when I see who is hanging off his arm, and my fingers clench so tightly inside my gloves, I’m surprised the leather doesn’t tear.
Matthias Konig.
One of the German heirs. Polished. Blond. Harmless in the way a scalpel is harmless until you’re on the table. His family runs one of the largest arms tech contracts in Europe, but that isn’t why he’s here. He’s here because Nikolaj chose him.
He leans in close to whisper something against Matthias’ ear, and the bastard laughs. Loud enough to make sure it draws attention. It’s all a show, I know it. And from the way half the ballroom tilts their heads, they all know it too.
“I told you not to wear the gloves,” Elena murmurs at my side, sipping from a glass of something red and expensive. Her voice is too soft for anyone else to hear. “Now you’re going to split a seam.”
“He brought Konig,” I mutter, jaw clenched so tight I can feel my molars grinding.
“He brought bait,” she corrects, tilting her glass slightly. “And you’re biting.”
I exhale through my nose, slow and measured, because if I let the heat in my chest reach my throat, I’ll either burn the whole event to the ground or say something that can’t be unsaid.
I turn my gaze away from Nikolaj long enough to sip from my own drink, but the taste hits wrong—sweet and dry and too smooth. I glance at her. “You sound so sure.”
She shrugs, adjusting one of the diamond clips in her hair. “I’m always sure when I see a man walk into a room like the blade he’s holding is made of someone else’s heartbeat.”
I don’t answer.
Nikolaj moves through the crowd with that fucking liquid arrogance, smiling at donors, nodding at rivals, dragging Konig like a pet behind him.
Every flicker of attention from him is precise and controlled.
Until someone brushes too close. A blonde heir from Lisbon—young, overeager—says something into Konig’s ear and lingers a second too long.
His smile doesn’t shift, but his hand tightens on Matthias’s waist possessively.
“Well,” Elena hums, “would you look at that. I do believe our boy’s a little territorial.”
I drain my drink and pass the glass to a waiter without looking. My eyes haven’t left Nikolaj in ten minutes, and I swear the bastard can feel it. Even if he won’t show it.
He stops at the edge of the dance floor, turns, and finally—finally—his eyes find mine. There’s no mask in the world that can hide what lives in that stare.
Longing.
We look at each other like gods in disguise, dressed for war in expensive suits and velvet.
The ballroom continues around us, but nothing else exists.
The noise fades, the lights dim, my blood thunders, and for one solid, violent second, I don’t see the German heir on his arm or Elena at my side or the cold, calculated violence he’s spent the last month stitching into my chest.
All I see is him.
And it hurts.