Chapter 4
four
Nikolaj
It’s the voice from my dreams.
For a split second, the boardroom is gone, and another scene slams into place behind my eyes. The smell of smoke and a specific cologne I could never identify until now. A murmured insult in Italian that I understand and respond to in Russian.
Books—rows and rows of them around us, floor to ceiling. A library lamp throws a circle of yellow over his face as he looks up at me from where he’s pushed against a shelf, lips swollen, my Makarov pressed under his jaw.
“We were always a slow-motion bullet.”
It hits in less than a second—then pain lances white hot behind my right eye.
It doesn’t feel like a headache, but a fucking spike driven through my skull. My hand flies up before I can stop it, fingers pressing hard against my temple as my vision distorts.
Half the room goes too bright while the other half dims and blurs. The table seems farther away and too close all at once. Sound warps around me, voices suddenly muffled and painfully loud in the same breath.
“Pakhan?”
Kai’s voice brings me out of it, and I force my spine straight and my hand not to tremble where it presses against my skull. I refuse to give the pain any visible shape beyond the one I can pass off as irritation. I’m not going to fucking wince in front of this table.
“Tell me what you need,” Kai whispers in Russian, and I shake my head.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend. My vision clears completely, and I notice that Vincenzo is staring at me. “Jet lag. The city smells different from what I remember.”
Helena’s gaze flicks between Vincenzo and me with amusement and interest in her eyes. Reyes gives nothing away, but King leans back with his politician’s smile curling enough to suggest that he thinks he’s just seen something valuable.
Across the table, Vincenzo’s eyes are dark and intent, and for a heartbeat, everything else might as well not exist. There’s more than recognition in his gaze.
What is going on?
“Pakhan Dragovich,” he says, his voice formal but his eyes still heated. “Welcome to Bucharest.”
The pain throbs once more, then settles into a simmering ache. “King Vieri. Congratulations on the crown.”
He smirks at that. “Congratulations on surviving long enough to take yours,” he returns.
He looks away from me and addresses the others. “Shall we begin? We have a continent to divide and only so many hours before our people start shooting each other out of habit.”
The others chuckle, some more genuinely than others. Papers shuffle. Chairs creak. The meeting shifts into motion, all eyes turning toward the head of the table.
I listen because I have to—shipping routes, port encroachment, cross-border laundering pressure.
Reyes is pushing for revised channel percentages through South America transit.
Byrne wants stricter neutrality over certain Eastern holdings.
King is speaking about exposure, insulation, and optics.
Vincenzo cuts through all of it with a surgeon’s efficiency whenever the conversation starts drifting into posturing instead of business.
Every time that voice moves across the room, some part of me braces for another fucking blow.
He sounds exactly like the man from my dreams—not just similar and not just close. Exact. My mind keeps wanting to reject it because the implications irritate every instinct I’ve got. But my body doesn’t care what my pride wants—it reacts before thought.
Each time Vincenzo speaks, there’s a low pull behind my sternum; an awful sense of familiarity brushing up against rage.
I know this man. I know the shape of his speech, the drag of his consonants, the moments where his tone dips lower. I lean back in my chair, one hand resting loose on the armrest so no one can see the tension in it. Kai notices anyway; he always does.
Just then, Vincenzo turns to me. “The Eastern corridor only works if your people stop treating every customs checkpoint as a provocation.”
I hold his gaze. “Maybe tell your people to stop skulking near routes that don’t belong to them.”
A few eyes flick between us, ready for the show they came here for.
Vincenzo folds his hands on the table. “That would carry more weight if your men hadn’t crossed twice into neutral channels last quarter.”
“Then maybe neutral isn’t as neutral as advertised, King Vieri.”
His eyes narrow a fraction, the first visible crack in all that elegant control, and a violently hot sensation twists low in my gut. Not satisfaction, really, more like the thrill of stepping into something that feels weirdly familiar.
Have I provoked him like this before?
“Careful, Nikolaj,” he says, his voice dipping into a low timbre, and the temperature in the room twists. I hear it for what it is, not what it means. My entire fucking body lights up.
The way he says my name hits harder than the headaches ever did—and that pisses me off. I didn’t claw my way to the top of the Bratva by playing verbal games with a King who inherited his throne instead of bleeding for it.
I feel my mouth curve. “Or what?” I say, almost bored. As if I’m not sitting here with my heartbeat a riot in my chest in a room full of people who would kill for a fraction of what I’ve built. “You’ll give me a lecture?”
Vincenzo seems to still—not outwardly, but I see it. In the same way I notice the exact second his attention sharpens and narrows down to me only. There’s something deeply fucked about how much I enjoy that.
“No,” he says, his voice calm and that fake composure back in place. “I’ll correct you.”
That sentence has two meanings, and only one of them is meant for everyone else. And I feel it—fuck me, I feel it low in my gut. That same strange electric pull that’s been riding under my skin since he walked in.
It’s not anger, or even irritation—it’s fucking recognition.
I tilt my head slightly and smirk, watching the minute way his jaw tightens. “You’re welcome to try, Vincenzo.”
There’s that flicker in his composure again—gone before anyone else can catch it. God, why the fuck am I clocking every small thing on his face? And why do I enjoy it?
There’s something deeply fucking wrong with the way this feels. A buried part of me recognizes this exact dynamic—this back and forth, this push and pull—and responds to it like it’s stepping into a role it already knows how to play.
“You mistake patience for weakness, and territory for ownership,” he says.
“That sounds like something a man says when he doesn’t have control of either,” I shoot back without hesitation.
“Control isn’t loud,” he replies. “It doesn’t need to be.”
“Right,” I say, letting a faint smile pull at my lips. “It just walks in late and expects everyone else to adjust.”
“Careful,” he says in a low growl—and it’s that fucking word again. Why does it hit so hard? I don’t fucking like it.
“Please try me,” I straighten slightly, rolling my shoulders back and forcing my body back into control. “I’d hate to think all that reputation is just talk.”
“As entertaining as this is,” Helena cuts in with perfect timing, “we do have an agenda.”
The spell breaks, and Vincenzo huffs a soft breath that might have been a laugh. “Of course. Where were we?” he says, all composed calm again.
The meeting moves on, but I’m not hearing half of it. Every time Vincenzo speaks now, that pull is stronger. Every time I look at him, I can see the cracks I’ve put there.
And every instinct tells me this isn’t new. This isn’t the first time we’ve sat across from each other—pushing, provoking, and testing the line just to see who crosses it first.
When the meeting concludes, Kai’s voice reaches me in Russian, low enough not to carry. “You’re done for today.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
I turn my head to look at him. “You’re forgetting who the fuck you work for,” I shoot back in Russian as well.
“Never,” he says, clearly unbothered, but there’s worry in his eyes. “You’re forgetting you nearly went blind in one eye at the start of this meeting.”
“I can drag you out if you want to make it theatrical,” Maksim comments from my left shoulder.
“I’m surrounded by traitors,” I mutter. Normally, his quips would earn him a warning look or a dry comment, but right now I haven’t got the bandwidth.
What the fuck is everyone keeping from me?
I slowly push to my feet, making sure nothing in the motion reads unsteady. Across the room, Vincenzo stands at the same time. Lucien says something low to him, but he doesn’t seem to hear it, because his eyes come back to mine again. This time, I hold it without flinching.
I’ve learned three things from this meeting.
One: the summit is a real negotiation, not just theater, though there is certainly plenty of theater around the edges.
Two: everyone here is watching the two of us more than they admit.
And three: whatever is buried in my head has Vincenzo Vieri’s fingerprints all over it.
I want answers. I want them with a violence that makes my skin feel too tight. I want to know why my own fucking body reacts to him like this. I want to know why the sound of his voice opens rooms in my head that pain immediately slams shut.
Whatever this is, whatever’s been buried, erased, withheld, or locked behind years of everyone’s fucking silence, I know one thing with absolute certainty:
I now have a face to put to the voice in my dreams—and it’s his.