Chapter 33 Vincenzo #2
He studies me for a long moment, then nods. “After the kill, we’ll announce your engagement.”
I look up. “To whom?”
“Arabella Morrow.”
The name rings familiar. Daughter of Charles Morrow—stateside arms broker, old family money, too many skeletons in closets the FBI pretends not to see. I remember she’s beautiful, but completely dead-eyed.
“She’s been vetted. Her father is eager to merge with a European family. And after your brother’s elimination, the Vieri line will be untangled. Your ascension will be clean.”
So that’s the reward. Kill the spare. Inherit the throne. Marry the cold-blooded virgin with diplomatic immunity and a smile that could split a jugular.
“Of course,” I murmur.
He doesn’t praise me. He doesn’t ask if I have questions. He simply rises. “We’ll have one more formal briefing before you leave for the States. Until then, keep Dragovich docile. I want to know everything he does, everyone he meets, every breath he takes.”
“Understood,” I say again, because there’s nothing else to say. Not here. Not in this room where language is a currency too valuable to waste.
He stands, the conversation over by declaration. His coat hangs on the back of the chair, but he doesn’t reach for it yet. Instead, he walks to the fireplace and stares at the unlit logs as if they’ll whisper back everything I’ve refused to confess.
Before I can rise, his voice stops me again. “I raised you to love no one, Vincenzo. Not even me. You’ll remember that when it’s time to choose.”
“I always do.”
He glances over his shoulder, and there’s something darker in his expression now. Not anger. Not pride. Just inevitability. “No. You always pretend to.”
He straightens his suit jacket and walks toward the far exit, never looking back.
The doors part before he reaches them, like even the building knows not to make him wait.
I sit there for a moment longer, still as stone, staring at the crimson Vieri crest in the table’s center.
I trace the edges of it with my eyes until I can’t see anything else.
Not the chandelier above me, not the leather chair beneath me. Just the symbol. Just the legacy.
Just the cage.
My fingers unclench under the table, faint crescent marks imprinted into my palm. I sit in that room for another five minutes, staring at the photo of my brother. He looks older now. Tired. But still him.
I haven’t seen him in four years, and now I’m supposed to kill him. I’m supposed to smile at him during graduation, shake his hand for the cameras, then put a bullet between his ribs and call it legacy.
There’s no point in rage. No point in grief; not in this world, not in this family. All that’s left is obedience, and the bitter ache that comes with knowing no one gets out alive. Not even the ones who look just like you.
Not even the ones you used to love.
The cold is sharp when I step outside, the night air slamming into me as I cross the quad, but I don’t stop.
I can’t. I make it to the North Wing on instinct alone, fists tight, jaw clenched so hard my teeth ache.
I don’t knock gently. I slam my knuckles into the wood like I need it to hurt, like I want someone to come out and stop me.
Then the door cracks open, and there my ruin stands.
Shirtless, eyes heavy with sleep, hair a mess, and mouth parted like he’s about to tell me to fuck off. But I don’t give him the chance.
I lunge forward, grab the front of his sweatpants with one hand and the back of his neck with the other, and crash into him like a man possessed. His body catches mine, stumbles back, but I don’t care. I slam the door shut behind us, spin him around, pin him to it with my body, and don’t let go.
I kiss him hard—too hard—like I’m trying to bruise his mouth, to brand it with every word I’m too scared to say out loud.
He grips my arms instantly and tries to push me off just enough to breathe. “Enzo—what the fuck—”
“Don’t talk.”
His brows knit. “Vincenzo—”
“I said, don’t fucking talk,” I snap, voice hoarse and wild. “Just—just make me forget. Please.”
Before him, I never used to plead, but it comes out raw, gutted, strangled by the fist lodged in my throat.
He hears it. I know he does. He studies me for a beat too long.
His fingers flex on my biceps, and I know he wants to ask what happened.
I can see it in his face, but I shake my head before he can speak.
“I’ll tell you later,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to his. “Right now, I need you to fuck me like I’m nothing. I want to forget who I am.”
“You sure?” he asks.
I take a step back as my belt hits the floor with a snap, and buttons pop when I pull off my shirt. “I need you to take me apart,” I say quietly. “Now.”
His breath catches. Then his mouth twitches into something not quite a smile, more like the start of a storm. When I’m bare, I stand there, trembling and breathless, and let him look at me.
He locks the door behind him and closes the distance between us in three slow, controlled steps.
One hand grabs my jaw. The other slides into my hair and fists it hard enough to wrench my head back.
Then he lowers his mouth toward mine but doesn’t kiss me—not fully.
His breath brushes my lips, his voice stroking the edges of my sanity.
“No safeword tonight, Prince?”
“No words at all,” I rasp.
Nikolaj stares at me. His pupils expand. His breath catches. And for a single, suspended second, I see the shift—it rolls through him like a silent detonation. A man who goes from careful to carnivorous. From patient to predator. From curious to mine.
He lifts his hand and drags his thumb across my bottom lip, then slides that thumb into my mouth. I don’t break eye contact. I take it in. I close my lips around it and suck—not sweet, not teasing, but hungry. Desperate. His jaw clenches, the tendon in his neck tightening like a live wire.
“Tell me what you need,” he murmurs.
I swallow hard, pulse kicking like I’m jumping off a cliff. My voice comes out wrecked, trembling, stripped bare.
“I need you to fuck it all out of me.”
His fingers tighten in my hair.
“I need you to ruin me.”
His breath shivers.
“I need you,” I whisper, “to make me belong to something that isn’t the Vieri name.”
A long silence.
A long, dangerous silence.
Then Nikolaj laughs quietly, almost reverently. “My poor king,” he murmurs, brushing his knuckles down my cheek. “You came to the wrong man if you wanted mercy.”
His mouth crashes against mine before I can say anything else. He bites my lip open like he wants to taste whatever’s still human in me and spit it back out. My knees nearly buckle when he pulls away and drags me backward by the hair, slamming me against the wall.
“You come into my room looking like this,” he growls, dragging his knuckles down my bare chest, “and expect me to be gentle?”
“I came here to be fucked out of myself,” I choke out. “So do it.”
He snarls something in Russian I don’t understand, but I feel it. Feel it in the way he grips my throat, just enough pressure to make the edges of the room blur. My cock is already hard, and I hate it. Hate that this is what it takes. That this is what I want. That I’m already begging for it.
He spins me and shoves me toward the bed.
I fall across it, hands braced, spine exposed.
I don’t even look back. Don’t have to. I hear the tear of elastic.
The spit. The snap of lube being opened from inside a drawer.
And then I feel his fingers slip between my thighs, tracing where I’m already desperate for him.
He presses in once—just enough to make me jolt—and then pulls away entirely.
I whine. Actually whine.
His laugh is low. “So fucking needy,” he murmurs. “You want to forget? Then beg for it.”
“Please,” I gasp immediately. There’s no hesitation. No pride. Nothing left of the heir, the strategist, the king-to-be. “Please, Nikolaj—fuck—please just take me.”
He clicks his teeth. “Not good enough.”
I grip the sheets so hard my knuckles ache. My voice cracks. “Please. Please, I want you. I need… you’re the only—”
His hand clamps over my mouth before I can finish.
“Careful,” he whispers in my ear. “You sound like you love me.”
The words hit like a blade to the ribs. Then before I can comment, he pulls out his fingers and thrusts into me in one brutal, merciless motion.
There’s no hesitation. Pain. Heat. Relief.
All at once. All-consuming. It rips through me so violently I think I’m going to black out.
I groan, fists clenched against the bed, teeth gritted so tight my jaw might crack.
He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t give me a second to adjust. He pounds into me like he’s trying to fuck the confession out of my bones, each thrust brutal, devastating, final.
“Louder,” he hisses, snapping his hips harder. “Let them hear you fall apart.”
“I—fuck—”
My voice breaks on a moan, loud and ragged and filthy. It echoes through the room, bounces off the walls like a sin.
His hand slides down, wraps around me, stroking in sync with the rhythm of his thrusts. “You think they’d still fear you if they saw you like this?” he whispers. “The East Wing’s crown jewel, moaning like a whore for the enemy.”
“Yes,” I gasp. “Because they’ll never have this. Only you.”
His rhythm falters for a half-second before he fucks me harder. Deeper. “Say my name.”
“Nikolaj,” I choke out. “Fuck—Nikolaj.”
He groans, deep and guttural, and I feel it vibrate against my spine. “That’s right,” he growls. “You beg for me. No one else. You fucking belong to me.”
My body answers for me, spasming around him, legs shaking, every part of me trembling like the string on a bow that’s just snapped. He presses his forehead to my back as he slams into me one final time, gritting my name between his teeth as he comes.
We collapse in a tangle of limbs and sweat and wreckage. Nikolaj pulls out of me and rolls onto his side, hair sticking to his forehead, and stares at me. “What happened?”
I close my eyes and swallow hard. “I have to kill my brother, and after that… I’m being married off. It’s all decided.”
Nikolaj doesn’t speak for a long time. Just watches me like he’s memorizing the shape of my downfall. “I’m not letting them take you,” he finally says.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Neither do you.”
We lie there in silence, our bodies still trembling, our hearts hammering out broken rhythms against the floor. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is solved.
But at least I’m not alone in it.
Not tonight.