Chapter 2
Sugar – Sleep Token
Ifix my cufflinks in the backseat of the car, and watch my own reflection in the window until my face becomes someone else’s.
That’s the trick of survival in a family like mine. It isn’t just learning how to lie well, though I do that, too. It isn’t learning how to kill cleanly, either, though I’ve been trained for that since I was old enough to hold a knife without shaking.
The real trick is learning how to choose which version of yourself gets to live in which room.
Men like my father don’t demand loyalty; they demand shape. They decide early what kind of son they need, then spend years carving him up until they get it.
By the time the car turns into the Dragovich compound, I’ve already put myself back together in the form they know best.
My mouth settles into that faint, arrogant curve people mistake for ease. My shoulders loosen, and my gaze cools. Every trace of softness is sealed away where no one can smell it on me.
The man stepping out of this car in a few minutes will be the one my father built on and with purpose. The one my brother trusts because he understands the rules that made him.
Cocky. Ruthless. Sharp enough to make older men uneasy and younger ones eager to prove something stupid. The softness stays hidden; that belongs to no one.
… No one except Salvatore Vieri.
Gods. Just thinking those words is treasonous in itself. I drag in a slow breath and tip my head back against the seat. I know every move waiting for me in the meeting ahead. My father will ask questions while my brother stands at his shoulder.
They’ll expect information, clarity, and strategic use of my body and mind. They’ll expect me to hand over pieces of the Vieri Mafia without letting any blood show on my fingers.
And I’ll do it. I always do.
No matter how I tell myself that I am loyal and disciplined, the truth is uglier, and it makes me a coward.
I’m not sure how it got this bad or how it escalated this far. I could tell myself that I never meant for any of this to happen. That one minute, Salvatore was just a name in a file, and the next, he got under my skin so deeply that I couldn’t scrape him out without removing something vital.
But that would be a lie, and I’m sick enough of those without adding another to the pile. I know exactly how it started—at Vintermoor.
The mission was simple enough to sound clean on paper:
Get close to the Vieri heir and soften him. Seduce him if needed. Learn his habits, his blind spots, his father’s routines, and the private fractures inside the Italian line.
A man in love is easier to wound. A man who thinks he is easily chosen usually doesn’t realize he’s being positioned until the knife is already in.
I’m good at that kind of work—better than good. I’m built for it. My father has been shaping me for the Pakhan’s chair since before I lost my first tooth.
People always assume the eldest son is the heir because that’s how weak dynasties work. But not ours. In the Dragovich bloodline, the eldest protects the name while the youngest carries it forward.
Viktor is the shield, and I am the future. That means everything around me is instruction—every fight is a lesson. Every warm body slipped beneath mine as a teenager was to see what desire can unlock in people.
Seduction isn’t a pleasure in our world; it’s a weapon. The men of the Dragovich Bratva don’t care about sexuality, and see it as a tool to be used—especially around rigid mafia men who still cling to their old ways.
You’d be surprised at how many powerful men prefer cock to pussy.
So, yes, I know how it started. I walked toward Salvatore with purpose and became his friend before becoming his lover.
He sees me as the bumbling, cocky youngest son of Mikhail Dragovich, not knowing I’m being groomed for the throne as well.
I touched him with the intention to seduce and destroy.
What I don’t count on is the first time he really laughs with me. Not the polished laugh he gives men in rooms when he’s pretending to be charmed. Not the bitter, offended sound he makes when I provoke him to temper.
I mean a real laugh—caught off guard, head tipped back, dark eyes lit up from the inside.
I don’t count on the first time he falls asleep on my chest with one hand twisted in my shirt. I don’t count on the way my chest starts to hurt every time I see the way he shrinks under his father’s gaze.
I don’t count on the fact that at some point, I stopped gathering information I’m ordered to, and started memorizing him because I’m hungry for things I shouldn’t want.
That’s when the mission rots. That’s when I realize I’ve been kneeling in front of him with my heart in my hands.
When we stop, I wait until the driver opens my door, then step into the morning cold, one hand buttoning my jacket and the other already relaxed at my side.
Men watch me pass and look away first. Good. Let them see the confidence of the future Pakhan, and not the bastard who still has the taste of an Italian heir in his mouth.
I had him three nights ago, and I can still feel his nails down my back.
My mouth at his throat, whispering what I convince myself are lies when I don’t think too much about it. I love the way he flushes when he’s half pissed, and half turned on, trying and failing to be angry with me.
It’s later, when he finally slept, that I slipped out of his bed and knew I should leave. I should’ve put on my clothes, kissed his shoulder once—because I am already weak enough to do tender things like that—and walked out before I became something even uglier than a liar.
Instead, I stayed and walked over to where he draped his jacket over the chair by the writing desk. It’s an expensive dark wool thing with the inside lining half-exposed, where he carelessly tossed it before getting into bed with me.
I reached into the inner pocket, and my fingers brushed paper. Not a note folded once and forgotten—an envelope. Thick, cream-colored, the flap tucked in rather than glued—a hand-off.
My stomach tightened the second I pulled it out, because I already knew this was worse than overhearing something careless.
I stood there in the dark with his coat in one hand and the envelope in the other, listening to him breathing while the guilt crawled up my spine.
Some men deserve betrayal; Salvatore doesn’t. But that didn’t stop me.
I eased the contents out and scanned them, my eyes widening at the typed pages inside.
There was more than I expected; more than Salvatore should have left lying around, even hidden.
That should have made me think less of him, but it didn’t. It means that my mission is succeeding, because my enemy trusts me.
It means the sickness is spreading. I know exactly what kind of trust lets a man leave something like this in the same room where he sleeps beside someone he shouldn’t want.
When I returned the envelope to the inner pocket of his coat, I smoothed down the fabric as if that could erase what I had just done.
The memory cuts off as I step through the compound doors. One of the house staff takes my coat the moment I shrug it off, and I make my way to my father’s office without being announced.
Another thing power does—it teaches doors to open before you even touch them.
Viktor is already inside, standing near the fireplace with both hands clasped behind his back.
Our father sits behind his desk—a heavy slab of dark wood, scarred by years of rings set down too hard and knives used absentmindedly while listening to bad news.
A green banker’s lamp throws muted light across the ledgers and a crystal ashtray already crowned with half-smoked cigarettes.
He doesn’t rise when I enter; he doesn’t need to. Authority clings to him whether he moves or not.
Mikhail Dragovich is the kind of man who looks more dangerous sitting still than most men look with a gun in his hand.
“You’re late,” he says.
I look at my watch. “By two minutes.”
“That’s late.”
I smile faintly and take the chair opposite the desk without waiting to be told. “Then I’ll make those two minutes worth it, Pappa.”
Viktor snorts once under his breath. My father’s face doesn’t change, but I know him well enough to see the interest in his eyes. He likes my confidence as long as it’s useful. He likes it even more when it comes with results.
“Talk,” he says, so I do.
I give him the broad structure first, the things I know are safe to hand over because they can be sourced elsewhere if anyone gets suspicious.
Shipping concerns and internal friction among the Italians regarding expansion routes. Tension between old money families and newer American interests. Which council members lean cautious, which ones are impatient, and which ones are easier to flatter or threaten.
I speak calmly, with just enough irreverence to sound like myself and not a man reading from prepared notes. That part matters because my father trusts instincts more than he trusts perfection.
Perfection makes men look rehearsed.
Viktor interrupts twice to ask for names, and I give him some, but not all. A lieutenant in Naples, A courier out of Bari, one of Marchetti’s accountants who drinks too much when he travels and gets chatty after midnight.
It’s enough truth to build on, but even I know better than to give up all my ammunition.
Then I get closer to what they actually want.
“Vincenzo’s father is tightening control around the Trieste line, despite the agreement at the summit the other day,” I start, looking at both him and Viktor.
“Not because customs are close—at least not only because of that. He’s worried about internal leakage.
Something has been off in his manifests for weeks now. ”
My father folds his hands on top of the ledger in front of him. “How worried?”
“Worried enough that he’s double-checking routes personally. Worried enough that he’s cut two men out of the chain last month.”