Chapter 29
twenty-nine
Vincenzo
By the time I realize something’s wrong with the flight plan, we’re already too far in the air for me to pretend it’s a minor clerical error.
I’m sitting in the cream leather seat of my private jet with one ankle over my knee, a glass of bourbon untouched at my elbow, and three separate sets of documents open on the table in front of me.
The original plan was simple enough by our standards. Fly east. Land in Russia. Nikolaj wanted me there, though he’d been deliberately vague about why, which in itself wasn’t unusual. Nikolaj and clarity have never had a stable relationship unless blood is already on the floor.
I expected some half-hostile reunion at one of his compounds, maybe Saint Helena, maybe one of the old safe houses, somewhere cold and severe where the walls are thicker than honesty, and every room feels like a test.
Instead, somewhere over open water, the route display on the side monitor updates and keeps updating, and none of the coordinates look even remotely Russian.
At first, I assumed I was reading it wrong because I’ve had almost no sleep and even less patience lately. Then I assume the pilot has rerouted around weather, traffic, or some security concern my team decided not to wake me for.
Then, when the map keeps insisting we are headed toward what looks suspiciously like the middle of nowhere, I sit all the way upright and read the line twice more just to make sure I’m not losing my fucking mind.
I’m not.
This is not Russia.
The flicker of unease starts low and moves fast. Not fear exactly. I’ve spent too many years around men with guns and agendas to mistake every wrong turn for panic. But the feeling is close enough to set my nerves on edge.
I reach for my phone, realize the signal’s already too patchy to be useful, and glance toward the cockpit with growing irritation.
My security detail is on the support jet behind us, which was supposed to be unnecessary because I was explicitly informed, “the Pakhan’s invitation covers the landing.”
If Nikolaj has decided to make a game out of this, I’m going to kill him beautifully.
A flight attendant appears before I can ring for one, no doubt having sensed the shift in my expression and valuing her own safety. She’s one of my regular crew, competent enough to know the difference between an inconvenienced king and a king whose temper has started doing arithmetic.
“Sir,” she says carefully, stepping just inside the cabin. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes.” I tap on the route map with two fingers. “Unless Russia has moved dramatically overnight, where exactly are we going?”
She blinks once, clearly having expected a champagne or blanket request, not geographical outrage. Then she glances toward the monitor, and some faint tension leaves her shoulders.
“Oh,” she says. “The updated flight plan was forwarded before departure.”
“By who?”
She hesitates for exactly the wrong amount of time. “By Nikolaj Dragovich’s office, sir.”
That does not help. If anything, it makes everything worse, because now the confusion has a face and the face is blond, filthy-mouthed, and insane enough to absolutely reroute a private jet without explanation just to see what expression I make when I notice.
I lean back slowly in the seat and stare at the map again as if it might rearrange itself into something sensible if I look hard enough.
“Nikolaj sent this,” I say.
“Yes, sir.”
“And no one thought to mention that to me before takeoff.”
Her professionalism sharpens around the edges. “The instructions indicated you were aware.”
Of course they did. I laugh humorlessly and drag a hand down my face. “Marvelous.”
The attendant, to her credit, does not react to my laughter beyond the smallest easing of her shoulders.
“He submitted authorization through the secure channel,” she adds. “All codes were valid.”
“Of course they were,” I say.
“Would you like me to confirm with the cockpit, sir?”
“No.” I wave her off before she can flee or apologize further. “Go. And send me another bourbon. If I’m being kidnapped by a Russian, I’d prefer to be hydrated.”
That startles the faintest smile out of her before she disappears again. Good. Someone in this situation should have a sense of humor.
Left alone, I turn my attention back to the window, because annoyance does absolutely nothing to solve the mystery, and at least the view is honest.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter where we’re going so long as Nikolaj is the one waiting there.
That should be enough reassurance. It almost is.
The rest of me is still too busy imagining the man smirking while he signs off on this route change with some unbearable line about how I needed a surprise or how my life has lacked chaos lately.
By the time the captain announces descent, I am leaning toward the window like a child at Christmas and hating myself for it.
Not a coastline or a mainland edge with roads and ports and cities arranged in sensible relation to one another.
A fucking island.
“Oh, you did not.”
Small enough that my first reaction is disbelief, then amusement so sudden it hits me in the chest like a burst of heat. Green jungle at its spine, pale beaches at the edges, one tidy private airstrip cut into it like a deliberate slash. The sea around it glitters brilliantly in the sun.
There’s something absurdly idyllic about the whole scene, the sort of place men like us usually buy under shell companies and never actually live on because paradise is more useful as a rumor than a reality.
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
The jet banks, giving me a better view. There’s a villa visible near the highest point, all white stone and glass, and farther down, tucked close to the trees, what looks like a smaller cottage or guest house.
The place is immaculate. Purpose-built. Expensive in the quiet, insane way that suggests one man with too much money and too much attachment to a bad idea followed it all the way through without stopping for feedback.
He bought the fucking island.
I put a hand over my mouth like that’s somehow going to stop the grin trying to break free and fail completely.
The landing is smooth enough that I barely feel it. My heart, however, has apparently mistaken this for a romantic ambush and starts pounding hard enough to be humiliating.
When the jet taxis to a stop on the strip, I’ve gone from irritated to deeply entertained to something worse, something warmer and far more dangerous.
The door opens, and heat spills into the cabin immediately, rich, salt-thick, and bright enough to feel like a second atmosphere after Rome’s marble. I stand, straighten my jacket out of reflex, and tell myself to at least try to enter this situation with a semblance of kingly dignity.
That plan dies the second I see Nikolaj waiting on the tarmac.
I stop halfway down, and for one profoundly humiliating moment, all coherent thought leaves my body.
I have seen him in many states now. Tuxedos, blood, half-dressed in my bed, shirtless in my kitchen, and leaning over coffee like a very large, very dangerous domestic hallucination.
None of that prepared me for this.
Sun on his skin. Arms bare and tattooed.
Those absurdly broad shoulders outlined in a dark tank top that does exactly nothing to hide what he is.
Black shorts hanging low on his hips, as if he dressed for the weather and forgot decency exists.
Sunglasses hide his eyes and somehow only make him more offensive to my basic self-control.
He tips his face up toward me and grins.
I make it down the rest of the stairs with all the dignity available to a man whose lover has apparently bought an island and chosen to greet him dressed like sin after the gym.
The moment my shoes hit the tarmac, the jet begins to prepare for departure again behind me. I hear the engines deepen.
There’s no support convoy and no swarm of guards. Just sun and sea and Nikolaj looking entirely too pleased with himself.
The jet begins taxiing away behind me. The sound of it swells, then fades, and just like that, we’re alone on a private airstrip in the middle of nowhere with only water and sky and one terrible man between me and any remaining common sense.
I laugh helplessly this time and shake my head at him.
Nikolaj tips the sunglasses down with one finger just long enough to look at me over them. “Problem, Vieri?”
“You actually did it.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Told you I could.”
“You bought a fucking island, Nikolaj.”
He shrugs one shoulder like we’re discussing shoes and not geography. “Needed neutral ground.”
“I suggested we work something out.”
“This is me working something out.”
I laugh again, because what else is left?
Nikolaj steps closer, slow enough to let me look as much as I want and obvious enough that he knows exactly what he’s doing. The sunglasses come off, and ice-blue eyes in full sunlight are almost unfair.
“Welcome to Isle Lucia.”
The name punches the rest of the laughter right out of me. “Lucia,” I repeat.
He nods once, watching me carefully now.
My mind goes immediately, involuntarily, to my father’s sister. Lucia Vieri. Dead too young. Beloved by everyone who knew her and the only person in my family who ever managed to scold Salvatore and be kissed on the forehead for it instead of being threatened.
The same Lucia whose name still lives in too many rooms and stories for me not to feel it in my bones when I hear it.
I look back at Nikolaj. “You named an island after my aunt.”
His mouth curves. Then, without warning or any apparent concern for runway protocol, he steps in, catches my face in both hands, and kisses me.
The heat, the sun, the sea, the absurdity of the island, all of it collapses into the contact. He tastes like coffee and the faint salt of the air and himself, and I make a low sound into his mouth that has far too much feeling in it for a tarmac in daylight.