Chapter 31
thirty-one
Nikolaj
The bath is too large and warm for a man like me, which is probably why I like it tonight.
Steam curls slowly off the surface of the water and fogs the edges of the huge windows overlooking the black silk of the sea beyond the villa.
The lights inside are low—gold from the sconces and the candles Vincenzo lit because apparently the King of the Five Families can’t help himself when it comes to atmosphere.
The whole room smells faintly of sandalwood soap, whisky, and salt drifting in through the cracked balcony doors.
It should feel soft enough to make my skin itch. It should feel like the kind of luxury meant for other men, men who know how to rest without turning it into strategy. Men who can sink into warm water without some part of them cataloging exits and weapons.
Instead, it feels like him.
That’s the problem with everything now. It all keeps becoming him.
Vincenzo sits between my legs, his back to my chest, the water lapping high against both of us. One of my arms is draped loosely over his middle, hand resting flat against the wet plane of his stomach, and the other hooks over the rim of the tub with a glass of whisky hanging from my fingers.
His own glass sits on the ledge within reach. He tilted his head back against my shoulder a while ago, comfortable in the kind of unconscious way that still hits me harder than anything deliberate.
For all his elegance and the control he wraps around himself like a second skin, there are these moments when he melts without noticing. Settling, trusting, and giving me the weight of him like it doesn’t cost anything.
It costs everything.
That’s what I never say out loud, because once I do, it’ll sound too much like prayer.
I drag my thumb once over his abs slowly, more to feel him there than because the movement means anything on its own. He takes a sip of whisky and exhales softly.
I glance down at him even though he can’t see it from where he’s leaning against me. He’s been telling me about Arabella and her lover, Marie.
“She asked me why I wasn’t disgusted.”
That pulls my hand still beneath the water.
He tips his head back slightly, looking up at me from where he sits cradled between my legs. Candlelight catches in his dark eyes, turning them softer than they should ever be allowed to look.
“And what did you say?” I ask.
His mouth twitches faintly, not quite a smile. “I showed her my neck.”
The answer hits with a low pulse of satisfaction so immediate, it’s almost embarrassing. Mine. The marks are long faded now, but I know exactly where they were. I can still taste the skin there if I let myself be gone enough to follow the memory all the way down.
“And?”
“And I told her I had the same problem.”
I lean down and press my mouth once to his temple, mostly because I need to touch him right then and because speaking before I do feels impossible. He closes his eyes for a second under the contact and exhales into the heat between us.
“She knows about me,” I say.
“She knows enough.”
I pull back to look at the side of his face. “That’s not dangerous?”
“It is.” He lifts one shoulder slightly in the water. “But less dangerous than forcing her to live the rest of her life beside a man she doesn’t want while pretending loneliness makes her respectable.”
“You pity her,” I say.
Vincenzo is quiet long enough that I know I’ve hit truth instead of theory. “Yes,” he says finally. “And I don’t like that I understand her better now.”
“Because of me?”
He leans his head back against me again, eyes on the windows and the black sea beyond them. “Because of us.”
That should be enough to satisfy something in me. It does, partly. The rest of me stays alert around it, because understanding and peace aren’t the same thing, and I’m still learning what it means to share anything with him that isn’t immediately under threat.
He reaches for his whisky again and takes a sip. The line of his throat works, and water beads and rolls down the curve of his shoulder.
I slide my hand slowly over his stomach once more, because the touch calms me and because some selfish part of me likes that it calms him, too.
“And Lucien,” I say, and brush my thumb lightly over his navel under the water.
His hand comes down to mine briefly, fingers covering the back of it, not stopping the movement so much as acknowledging it. He’s always been good at that with me. Making contact feel like an answer instead of an interruption.
“I should’ve seen it sooner,” he says.
“No.”
His fingers stop moving on my hand. “Nikolaj.”
“No,” I say again, and this time I make him hear it by tightening my arm and tipping my head enough that my mouth nearly grazes his ear.
“You don’t get to sit in my bath and tell me that betrayal is your fault because you trusted the wrong snake.
That’s not leadership failure, that’s just what snakes do. ”
He laughs softly under his breath. “That sounded almost comforting.”
“I can be very fucking comforting when I have to be.”
“You’re doing an excellent job.” His voice dips lower, more private, and I feel the ripple of it along my skin. “Terrifyingly so.”
I ignore that because if I engage, he’ll start smiling like he’s won something, and I’m trying very hard to keep this evening on the softer side of dangerous until he has to leave again. I’m already failing. He makes failure feel too much like instinct.
“So, tell me,” I say. “How long?”
His face changes.
There. That shift. The one I’m learning to hate because it means the answer cuts deeper than the question did.
“Five years,” he says.
My jaw tightens. “He really said that while looking you in the eye?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” I let out a slow breath through my nose. “That means when I kill him, I’ll know it wasn’t based on a misunderstanding.”
Vincenzo actually reaches back then, one wet hand finding my jaw where it hovers near his shoulder, fingers pressing there in gentle admonishment. “You’re not killing him.”
“Mhm.”
“Nikolaj.”
“He spent five years moving shit through your structure and making it look like the Vieri family was turning against the Five Families. He slept with your wife in your bed.” I kiss the side of his head, not gently enough to count as innocent.
“You’re right, actually. I’ll have someone else do it. No need to make the morning untidy.”
That earns me a splash from his free hand, cool water thrown back over my forearm in retaliation. I laugh and trap him tighter before he can do it again, dragging him fully against my chest.
“You are impossible,” he huffs.
“I’m practical,” I counter.
“You’re homicidal.”
“That too.”
He sighs like I’m a burden he personally requested from a very expensive catalog.
“He admitted all of it. The shipments. The names. The handlers. Ryazan, Naples, Marseille. Enough that I know where to start cutting.” He goes quiet briefly, staring into the whisky before finishing.
“I just didn’t expect the worst part to be how stupid it made me feel. ”
I knew that was the wound under the anger. Of course I did. I know him well enough to hear where his pride gets damaged and where the damage goes when he’s too controlled to let it show cleanly.
I lower my face to his shoulder and rest my mouth there for a second before speaking. “It doesn’t make you stupid.”
“It makes me blind.”
“It makes you human.”
He snorts softly. “That’s not an improvement.”
“It is if you’re the one trying to love somebody properly.”
The words leave me before I can decide whether I meant to let them out. But I don’t take it back. I don’t know when I got brave enough not to, but I’m glad of it now.
Vincenzo’s hand leaves the glass and comes up to my wrist. “I don’t know how to do that,” he says very quietly.
“Neither do I.”
He laughs once under his breath, a wrecked little sound. “You say that like it helps.”
“It should.” I kiss the wet curve of his shoulder. “It means when we get it wrong, we’ll at least be failing equally.”
That gets another laugh, softer this time, more real. Good. I’ll take any sound from him that isn’t grief.
He tips his head back just enough that it rests lightly against my shoulder again. I brush my lips against the side of his neck and feel the tension ease under the contact so subtly that anyone else would miss it.
Not me.
Not anymore.
“I hate that Lucien made you doubt yourself,” I say.
His eyes close. “I hate that you know me well enough to hear that.”
“Tough.”
“One day,” he says, very dryly, “I’m going to be difficult just to make your reading less accurate.”
“You’ve always been difficult.”
“Yes, but before it was charming.”
I laugh into his skin. “You’re still charming.”
“Liar.”
“Self-pitying cunt.”
He tilts his head farther back so I can finally see his face, and the smile there is small and tired and so fucking beautiful it almost puts me under.
“There he is,” he murmurs. “I was wondering how long it would take you to insult me.”
“I’ve been soft for at least twenty minutes. That’s saint-level patience for me.”
“That’s disgusting. Never call yourself saintly again.”
“I live in a monastery, lyubimiy. It’s all very aspirational.”
He gives me a look over his shoulder, and I know exactly what he sees reflected in me because I feel it too hard to mistake it for anything else.
Affection. Possession. Something dangerously close to peace trying to work its way into my bones where it has no business settling.
I won’t tell him I feel more in love with him right now than I did in the bed, or the kitchen, or the runway, or any of the stolen places we used to make do with.
I won’t tell him it’s this that destroys me more—the bath, the talk, the ridiculous intimacy of hearing about his wife, his traitor, and his quiet little failures while he sits naked between my legs and trusts me not to weaponize any of it.
I won’t tell him that hearing him speak in this room with no rush and no need to protect my pride makes loving him feel so fucking easy, it scares me.