Chapter 33 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
The silence in the marble corridor is deafening. My shoes echo as I walk, each step measured, too slow to be careless and too fast to be reluctant.
My father has always told me the sound of your footsteps is a language. Men like us don’t afford the luxury of stumbling. I’ve never stumbled—not in front of him. I know better.
The guards posted outside the East Conference Wing nod as I pass.
They don’t greet me. No one does when my father is inside the building.
His presence drains the air out of every room like a vacuum, the kind of gravitational pull that warps everyone in its orbit.
The doors are open, of course. My father doesn’t believe in closed-door meetings.
He says only cowards and liars need privacy.
Which is ironic, considering everything about my life has been built on silence and secrets.
He’s already seated, his back straight, his posture terrifying in its ease. He doesn’t turn when I enter, that’s not his style. He waits like the king he is, throne carved from blood and old-world alliances, expectations chiseled into my bones before I could speak my own name.
“Pappa,” I say.
“Sit.”
One word. No inflection. No warmth. No anger, either. Which is worse. At least fury means he feels something.
I take the chair across from him. The table is long, lacquered black, and reflective enough to catch the dull flicker of the overhead chandelier.
The Vieri crest is carved into the center, the only color in the room—deep crimson and gold, our legacy reduced to paint and posturing.
My fingers curl on my thigh beneath the table, hidden, controlled.
His eyes finally meet mine. “You’ve been busy.”
I say nothing. There’s no safe way to answer that.
“You’re finishing the program in five months,” he continues. “Top of your cohort. Clean record. Strategic placement on every board. Nothing short of excellence.”
He doesn’t say “I’m proud of you.” He never has, never will.
I nod. “Yes, sir.”
His gaze sharpens. “And yet.”
That single phrase cleaves through me like a blade dipped in ice, even though he doesn’t raise his voice.
“There are rumors,” he says, resting one gloved hand on the table. He never takes them off anymore. I used to think it was vanity, now I know it’s control. “About the Dragovich heir.”
I say nothing.
He tilts his head slightly. “I taught you better than to get sloppy.”
“I haven’t.”
“No?” His brow lifts, almost curious. “Then why does it look like you’ve been fucking the Bratva’s future prince instead of bleeding him?”
I stare at him. My heart doesn’t race, and my expression doesn’t change. This is how you survive a man like him. You don’t flinch, you don’t react, you don’t breathe until he says you can.
“Because proximity breeds control,” I say.
The lie comes smoothly now. I’ve practiced it every night in the mirror.
“The closer he thinks he is to me, the easier it is to manipulate his alliances. I’ve cut off his contact with the German heirs.
I’ve rerouted his surveillance focus. He’s playing into everything we need him to. ”
“You’re fucking him, Vincenzo.”
He says it like a fact, not an accusation. Just a confirmation of something he’s already dissected and decided.
My jaw tightens, but I keep my voice level. “We both know what men are capable of when they think they’re loved.”
He watches me for a long time. No blink, no shift in posture. Just that silent, unwavering pressure that makes you want to rip your own skin off before he peels it for you.
Then, finally, he leans back. “I don’t care what you let him do to you,” he says. “So long as you remember that you are not the one being manipulated.”
That’s the closest thing to permission I’ll ever get, which shocks the fuck out of me. He should be more furious. He should be dragging me back to Sicily by the throat, chaining me to a cross of expectation and lineage like he always promised he would if I ever betrayed the family.
Instead, he sits there. Regal and expressionless. Dissecting me like I’m a specimen in one of his labs. The crown without the blood on it yet. His monster in waiting.
What would he do if he knew the truth? That it’s not about what Nikolaj is doing to me—it’s about what I’m letting happen.
What I crave. What I keep crawling back to in the dark.
It’s not strategy when your pulse stutters at the sound of someone’s voice.
It’s not control when you wake up haunted by the shape of someone else’s teeth on your skin.
He wouldn’t understand; he would eradicate it.
But…he should be also furious and disgusted. Spitting curses in Italian and threatening to disown me with a bullet between the eyes. But he just sits there—poised, silent, watching me like I’m a fire that hasn’t decided whether to burn down the house or keep it warm.
So I ask, because I need to know.
“Why aren’t you more upset?”
His eyes narrow slightly. Not much, just enough to register.
Most people wouldn’t notice the difference, but I’ve spent twenty-six years studying this man the way others study scripture.
His emotions come in microscopic shifts—the twitch of a knuckle, the tightening of a jawline, the exhale that’s just a beat too sharp.
That slight narrowing now? That’s interest. That’s calculation.
That’s him deciding how much of the truth to show me.
I grit my teeth. “I just figured this was the part where you call me weak. Or sick. Or say I’m shaming the bloodline for wanting a man.”
He exhales through his nose, then steeples his gloved fingers together in front of him. “You’re already ashamed, Vincenzo. You don’t need me to name it.”
“Then why aren’t you angrier?”
The question shouldn’t matter, but it does. I want him to yell. I want him to throw the ledger book, curse my name, bark out a monologue about weakness and Vieri pride, and how I’ve dishonored centuries of blood-soaked loyalty by letting someone get that close to me. Someone like him.
Instead, my father smirks.
And not the polished kind he wears at summits. This one is carved from something old. Faint. Brittle. It cracks the hard line of his mouth for half a second before fading again.
“Dragovich men are… intoxicating when they want to be,” he says at last. “Danger wears well on them. Loyalty is a trick of the blade. And betrayal—” he stops, looking somewhere behind me “—betrayal feels like seduction right up until it kills you.”
It’s the most he’s ever said about anything personal, and I should let it go. I should. But there’s a fracture in his tone. A single flash of something that doesn’t belong in this room.
“What did he do to you?” I ask.
His eyes cut back to mine, and for the first time in my life, I see pain on his face, but it’s gone a second later. Replaced by the same steel mask he’s always worn. “You think you’re the first Vieri to bleed for a Dragovich?”
My chest tightens. “What happened?”
He laughs once, and it’s a bitter sound. “You don’t get to ask me that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you haven’t lost everything yet.” His voice drops, jagged now. “Because you still have time to cut it out before it ruins you.”
I stare at him, heartbeat loud in my ears. “Is that what you did? Cut it out?”
His gaze holds mine, and this time, it burns. “No,” he says, like the word tastes like rust. “I let someone else do it.”
My heart fucking breaks because I know what that means.
He didn’t walk away—he was forced to. Whether by blade, betrayal, or blood pact, I don’t know.
But I see it now. The reason for his silence.
The reason he hasn’t screamed at me or thrown me into the sea like he threatened to when I was fifteen and refused my arranged engagement.
He’s not being soft, he’s being haunted.
“You’re not angry I fucked a Dragovich because you’re still haunted from when you fell for one.”
I search his expression for more, but he gives me nothing. Only that ghost of knowing in his eyes and the slight tremor at the edge of one knuckle before he curls it beneath the weight of his glove.
He’s lived a thousand lives I’ll never know. Made sacrifices I was never meant to understand. And maybe this—this indifference to my sins—isn’t indifference at all. Maybe it’s resignation.
And now I think I have a clearer understanding of why the Five Families exiled the Dragovichs.
“Do I need to remind you who you are?” he asks, changing the subject.
“No,” I answer quietly.
“Good,” he says, and finally, finally, there’s a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes.
“Because weakness in the East Wing makes the whole house crumble. The Americans are watching. The Council is watching. And Dragovich might think he’s a firestorm now, but he’s still just a broken weapon in someone else’s war.
If you break first, they will all follow. ”
“Now,” he says, reaching into the folder beside him and sliding out a photo. I don’t need to see it to know what’s coming. But I look anyway.
It’s a surveillance shot of Silvano—he’s walking through a terminal in New York, suitcase in hand, sunglasses perched high on his head, mouth twisted in that crooked half-smile that made him everyone’s favorite.
Golden boy. Beloved. Reckless. Exile didn’t take that from him.
“He returns in five months,” my father says. “He’ll attend your graduation ceremony under the guise of family reconciliation. We’ve prepared the narrative.”
“And after?” I ask, already knowing.
My father folds his hands. “You eliminate him.”
The words hang there, too clinical, too casual, like it’s no different than a signature or a handshake.
He doesn’t wait for my agreement. He never does. “You’ll do it yourself. There will be no third party. No accidents. No deniability. He dies by your hand, public enough to warn our enemies, quiet enough not to disturb our American partners.”
My stomach churns. “I understand.”