Chapter 2
two
Vincenzo
The problem with being king is that no one tells you when the crown starts to rot.
They bow, they obey, and they bleed at your word. But no one warns you what it means to sit at the head of a table carved from corpses, with loyalty bought in bodies and silence.
Power comes slowly—then all at once—and when it settles, it stains everything. Even the parts you swore you’d keep clean.
I pour another drink and don’t bother looking at the clock. The house is quiet; it usually is when Arabella is out at one of her functions.
Marriage—I suppose it serves its purpose. She gets freedom, respect, protection, and the full public dignity of my name. I get the same.
We’re polite to each other, useful but not cruel, because we both came into this knowing that we would never love each other. In our world, that counts as a mercy.
Once, I thought indifference would make it easier. Now I know it just makes the silence louder.
The whiskey in my hand is older than some of the men who die for me.
I’ve been working for six hours and drinking for three, which is a better ratio than usual.
If I’m not at the desk, I’m in some meeting with men who would happily kneel if it kept me from stepping on their throats.
If I’m not in a meeting, I’m in a car on my way to something bloody or expensive. And if I’m not doing either, I’m alone.
My ghosts love to come out and play when I’m alone.
I cross the room toward the wall safe behind a painting near the shelves, keying in the code from muscle memory. Inside are passports, sealed files, blackmail material, old photographs I should have burned and never will, and a velvet box I haven’t had the discipline to destroy.
I take the box out and set it on my desk, then lower myself into the chair and stare at it for a second before opening it.
The bullet rests where it always does, my name carved into the metal by a hand I could still recognize blind.
“It wasn’t for you to die by. I carved your name into it because if anyone could kill me, it’d be you.”
I run my thumb over the carved letters, and every year between then and now means nothing for one ugly, aching second.
Eight years.
Eight fucking years, and I still remember him with more clarity than I remember my wedding vows.
The last time I saw Nikolaj, he looked at me as though I were filth. That’s the cruel shape of it. Not even the loss—the disgust. The pure, instinctive revulsion on his face when he woke up after the ambush.
I had spent so long learning every version of his expressions that watching all of them vanish all at once should’ve killed me. Maybe it did. Maybe the part of me capable of living as an ordinary man died right there, and all that remained was the one built to wear the title.
I let him go.
People romanticize ruin after the fact. They talk about love as though it’s always noble to burn down kingdoms for one person. That’s a lie told by people who have never sat with real power in their hands and understood what it costs.
There was no ending for us that didn’t come sharpened—not one. If I had chained him to me, if I had forced memory against a mind already broken by violence, we would’ve only ended in a prettier massacre.
He was Dragovich. I was Vieri. We were heir and enemy before we were anything softer. Whatever we had at Vintermoor lived in the narrow space between duty and desire, and even there it was doomed.
I close the velvet box and lean back in the chair, glass in hand, and I think about my father. He spends most of his time as a hermit now, secluded in the Vieri villa. He never leaves unless it’s to attend an important meeting.
I would have thought he’d be like a shadow once he handed me the crown, telling me what I’m doing wrong and why. But no, he just… left it all to me.
I became everything he wanted. Capo dei Capi.
King of the Five Families. Ruthless. The man other men stand for when he enters a room.
The man senators call privately and denounce publicly.
The man whose signature moves money across borders and whose displeasure gets men buried in concrete or fed to rivers.
I unified a dying faction that was meant to fracture under my leadership. I took the title without begging for permission and kept it without mercy. I host, negotiate, threaten, and smile. I give orders that reshape cities and then attend charity galas in expensive tuxedos.
And not once has any of it felt like winning.
There’s a soft knock on the door, before Lucien steps inside without waiting for me to open. He’s one of the few people alive who can get away with that.
My cousin, my best friend, the closest thing I have to a brother, who didn’t expect a thing from me. Lucien moves through my spaces with an ease no one else has because he was here before I became king.
He’s dressed in charcoal and black, tie loosened, dark hair pushed back, expression stoic. He’s perfected the Vieri polish over the years, something needed to survive in rooms full of predators.
His gaze flicks to the tumbler in my hand, then to the open safe behind me, then back to me. “Comforting,” he says. “You with a drink and your ghosts.”
“You interrupted me to comment on my hobbies?”
“No,” he says, then he crosses the room and pours himself water from the cut crystal decanter at the sideboard. Lucien treats my office like it’s a family room instead of one belonging to an underworld monarch. “I interrupted you because I’ve got your answer.”
I set the tumbler down and watch him over steepled fingers. “Is that so?”
Lucien takes a sip of his water, then looks at me for a beat longer than necessary. He knows exactly which answer I care about. He also knows exactly what name he’s about to unleash into the room.
“Dragovich accepted.”
It’s strange, the body’s instincts for old catastrophes. My face stays calm, and my posture doesn’t change. Even my breathing remains steady, because I learned a long time ago that men notice the smallest shifts when they’re looking for weakness.
But underneath that control, something cold and ugly tears awake. Not hope; I killed that years ago. Not even fear, though there’s enough history there to breed it.
It’s recognition—violence of recognition. The name has lived under my skin for nearly a decade, buried so deep I can go weeks without speaking it and still feel its pulse when the darkness gets too still.
Nikolaj Dragovich accepted my invitation.
“Formally?” I ask.
Lucien gives a short nod. “Formal acceptance. His team confirmed within the hour. He’ll attend the summit in person, along with Kai and Maksim.”
Of course he will. Nikolaj was never a man to send substitutes once power became something he could wear openly. Even at twenty, he had that lethal pride in him; that refusal to cower behind other people’s shields when the matter was worth his attention. I should’ve expected nothing less now.
I reach for the tumbler again and let out a quiet hum, moving toward the window again because sitting suddenly feels too much like being cornered.
The city below hasn’t changed. Lights. Roads. Wealth. Distance. Somewhere in that ordered sprawl are men who would sell their firstborn to know what expression just crossed my face, if any. Lucien already knows. He always has.
Behind me, he sets the glass down. “You knew he’d say yes.”
“I knew there was no reason for him to refuse.”
“That’s not what I said, Enzo.”
I turn my head slightly, enough to catch him in the reflection. “Don’t start.”
Lucien’s reflection leans one shoulder against the sideboard, arms folding over his chest.
“I’m not starting anything. I’m stating the obvious. You’ve been waiting for this since the invitation went out.”
I give him a flat look over my shoulder. “I’ve been preparing for a summit.”
“With Nikolaj Dragovich. A man you haven’t seen since Vintermoor.”
“With the Pakhan of the Russian sectors,” I correct. “Try not to sound like a gossiping aunt.”
That earns me the ghost of a smile, but it fades quickly.
Lucien was there for the aftermath, though he was kind enough then to pretend ignorance where it counted.
He knew there had been something at Vintermoor between Nikolaj and me.
He knew it had gone deeper than rivalry because he’s not a fucking idiot, and because men don’t come back from ordinary hatred looking as ruined as I did.
Still, he never cornered me with it. Never made me speak it aloud when silence was the only thing holding me together.
He watched me marry Arabella.
He watched me become King.
He watched me drink more than I should, fuck less than rumor suggested, and work like exhaustion might one day cauterize a memory.
He knows exactly how much of me never came back from that academy, and he’s tactful enough not to say it in crude terms.
Most of the time.
He pushes off the sideboard and comes closer. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
“Pretend what?”
“That hearing his name doesn’t still hit you in the throat.”
I look out at the city a moment longer and decide I’m too tired to lie to the only man here who’d hear it for what it is.
“It doesn’t hit me in the throat,” I say at last. “It hits lower. Happy?”
“No.” His tone softens, which is somehow worse. “I’d be happier if you weren’t still carrying this around like it happened last week.”
“That’s inconvenient,” I say with a scoff. “Because it happened eight years ago, and I’ve still got no interest in setting it down.”
Lucien studies me for a second. “What are you going to do when you see him?”
I swirl the whiskey and watch the liquid. It’s an absurd question in one sense. I know exactly what I’m going to do:
I’m going to wear a suit worth more than most families make in a year.
I’m going to greet him as the King of the Five Families.
I’m going to sit across from him at a table full of polished enemies and talk business in a voice that never shakes.