Chapter 36 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
Three weeks.
That’s how long it’s been since I stopped pretending. Since I stopped calling it a game. Since I let the monster in through the front door and closed it behind him.
Three weeks of bruises traded in private, sneaking into the East and North Wings, and names whispered in the dark.
Of knives against throats that were never cut, and lips that never lied even when they should’ve.
Three weeks of giving in every time I said I wouldn’t.
Every time I promised I’d pull away before it got too far. Before he got too far.
But Nikolaj Dragovich never waits for permission, and I stopped denying him the moment he stopped asking.
Now, I come here alone because it’s the only place left that I haven’t tainted. The only place I haven’t touched him or thought about touching him. Until tonight, at least.
I climb the chapel steps just past midnight, letting the silence bleed into my bones. I need it. Need the weight of the stone walls around me and the stillness of the statues staring down like silent judges—cold, carved, and holy.
San Matteo delle Lame stands in the alcove to the right. The Saint of Knives, patron of silent wars and blood debts. I prayed to him the night before my first order. I came out a murderer and never quite stopped being one.
But I’m not here to pray for a kill, I’m here to confess a betrayal. Not one of blood or name, not of crown or vow. I’ve done the one thing we were raised not to do. I’ve done the thing that would make my father spit in my face and bury me next to his brother without a name on the stone.
I’ve fallen in love with my enemy.
I cross myself, kneel, and drop my head, pressing both hands to the cool edge of the marble. The air is heavy in here as it always is. It’s as if the walls are holding their breath around every whispered sin that’s ever passed through them.
The words come slower than usual. I never stumble in Italian, but tonight, they burn on the way up.
“San Matteo delle Lame…” My voice is low, rasped out like I’m ashamed of even forming the thought. “Proteggi il mio nome, anche se non lo merito.”
Protect my name, even if I don’t deserve it.
I swallow the rest, knuckles tightening where they rest on the stone. I can feel the confession clawing its way up the back of my throat, begging to be vocalized, but even in here—even before a Saint of Killers—I’m not sure I’m ready.
“I’ve given my hands to the family, my loyalty to the code, and my body to the cause. But I have nothing left that belongs to me. He took it… or I gave it.” I exhale, and it shakes through me.
The candlelight dances behind my eyes, and I feel my ruin standing behind me.
I feel the burn across the back of my neck and the way the air thickens in my lungs. That’s what he does to me. That’s what he always does. Even when he isn’t touching me, he’s claiming me.
Then I hear the softest drag of soles against stone, and the bend of a body folding to its knees behind me.
It echoes like thunder in the silence.
I stay frozen, hands still pressed against the altar, the marble beneath my palms slick now with sweat. His breath ghosts the back of my neck a second later, steady, controlled, but there’s a tremble underneath it. A hunger that’s always masked but never gone.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t matter—he’s everywhere. In the way my skin prickles, in the way my spine tightens, in the way my body knows he’s kneeling not out of reverence but to stake his claim in the holiest place I have left.
His fingers touch the edge of my coat first, then he grips it and peels it back off my shoulders without a word. “Don’t,” I manage, voice tight. “Not here.”
He laughs under his breath—dark, amused, mocking. “You brought me here,” he murmurs, voice lower than sin, lips brushing the nape of my neck. “Don’t pretend you didn’t want me to follow.”
My head bows, shame and heat crashing in waves, because he’s right. I did. I always do. Even when I run, I’m just leaving the door unlocked for him to come through, and he knows it.
His hands slide under my shirt, rough palms spreading across my back and ribs, as if he’s counting every bone and every sin. Then he flattens his chest against my spine and breathes me in.
“I said don’t,” I say, my voice cracking, but it’s not a command this time, it’s a plea.
I feel his mouth curling into a grin against my jaw. “And I said nothing,” he whispers. “Because I don’t need to say anything to take what’s mine.”
I shudder when he slowly drags his hand down past my waistband, fingers slipping inside with a quiet confidence that makes my entire body jerk.
“You feel holy now, Vieri?” he taunts, lips dragging down my neck as he grinds his cock against my ass. “You think your Saint’s listening?”
I groan, breath breaking, eyes squeezed shut. He keeps moving behind me—grinding against me like he wants to fuck me right here against the goddamn altar.
“Turn around.”
When I take too long, he spins and slams me back against the altar so hard the candle behind me flickers. His mouth crashes into mine, teeth and tongue, and fucking need.
He breaks the kiss only to mutter, “On your knees, Vieri.”
My legs buckle from the way he says my name. No one says it like that. No one spits it out like a prayer and a curse all at once.
Then I’m kneeling in front of the man I was raised to hate, and there’s not a single part of me that wants to stand back up.
Nikolaj Dragovich is standing above me, eyes dark and dangerous, jaw clenched like he’s fighting not to touch me. And I don’t want him to fight. I want him to burn with me.
Those eyes don’t look human in this light; they look hungry.
His thumbs brush my cheekbones. I don’t know what I expected—maybe cruelty, maybe mockery—but not the reverence I see reflected in his gaze. Not the way his fingers tremble slightly, like touching me costs him something. He tips my head back and stares down at me.
“You came to kneel for your saint,” he says, voice raspy with need. “Now you’re kneeling for your God instead.”
I keep my eyes on him. My hands rest gently on my thighs. I breathe in the tension like smoke, tilt my chin higher, and part my lips.
He breathes out hard. “You’ve never looked holier than you do right now,” he murmurs, brushing a knuckle along my cheekbone. I whimper and lean forward, mouthing over the fabric of his pants where he’s hard, and he chokes on a sound that might be my new religion.
He trembles. It’s small, just a flicker of motion in his hands, a twitch beneath the sharp edge of control he wears like armor. But I feel it.
Nikolaj Dragovich doesn’t tremble for anyone.
But here he is—his thumb resting on my cheekbone, his jaw locked tight, his eyes fucking burning as I mouth over the thick line of his cock through expensive tailored fabric. My lips drag over him slowly, like worship and confession, and he shudders like the sinner he is.
“Vincenzo,” he breathes—hoarse, broken, like my name physically wounds him. “If you keep looking up at me like that, I’ll do something you won’t be able to absolve.”
I smirk against the thick bulge in his pants, lips still parted, breath ghosting over him. Gods, he always smells so good. “I don’t want absolution,” I murmur, the words vibrating through my throat and into him. “I want ruin.”
Nikolaj groans low in his chest, and I swear to God it sounds like it comes from somewhere ancient. Somewhere deeper than lust.
I tilt my head up to him; spine straight, but it’s not submission—I need him to know that. I’m not kneeling for the Bratva, and I’m sure as hell not kneeling for Dragovich blood.
I’m kneeling for him.
Because that’s the problem with monsters who learn how to be gentle—when they choose you, even the blade feels like a kiss.
“There he is,” he whispers. “My pretty fucking downfall.”
His hand slides up to cup my jaw, tilting my head further back. My neck arches for him, open and exposed, and the bastard licks his lips like he’s about to feast.
“Take my cock out.”
The words scorch the last of my restraint. I should flinch. I should spit in his face. I should remember who the fuck I am and what I swore I’d never let myself become. But instead, I look up at him—still on my knees in a chapel—and I reach.
He groans like I’ve hit a nerve and he likes the pain.
His belt clinks softly as I work it loose, one hand on the buckle, the other still resting on his thigh for balance.
He doesn’t move—doesn’t even breathe loud enough to break the tension.
He just watches me silently; caged heat coiled behind his ribs.
I feel it in every inhale. Every restrained twitch of his fingers.
Every second he doesn’t shove me down and take what he wants.
Because he wants me to choose this.
That’s what makes him sick.
That’s what makes me worse.
I undo the button. Lower the zip. His cock springs free, thick and already leaking, like he’s been hard since the chapel doors opened.
Flushed, curving slightly to the left with that perfect taper near the head that always makes my mouth ache to taste him.
He’s beautiful in the way that weapons are—designed to hurt, forged for destruction.
I curl my fingers around the base and stroke slowly, just to watch his body twitch. Just to hear the soft breath catch in his throat.
“You should be ashamed,” he says, tone sharpened with filth and awe, like it’s a prayer only he gets to whisper. “Kneeling in front of me. Parted lips. Pretty mouth waiting for cock. ”
“I am, but that won’t stop me.” I lower my head, nuzzling his thigh first, brushing my nose along the crease where muscle meets silk; his soft blond curls tickling my nose. He smells like leather, clean musk, and his cologne that never fails to make me hard.
I mouth my way up the length of his cock, dragging my tongue along the vein on the underside before flicking it over the slit. He moans and fists my hair. “You taste like my only sin,” I whisper against the head. “Like something I’d bleed for.”
This is mine. This is the part they’d carve out of history if they could. The heir to the Five Families, kneeling in a church, mouth open for the boy who was meant to kill him.
“Look at my saint, Nikolaj. Look at him while you turn me into your personal fucktoy.”
He stares over my shoulder at the statue behind the altar. At San Matteo delle Lame, cold and bloodless in stone.
And I swallow him whole.
He gasps, his hips jerk, and one hand shoots out and grabs my shoulder as I suck him harder. Deeper. I hollow my cheeks and let his cock hit the back of my throat, let him feel every part of what he’s taken from me—and what I’m giving him back.
“What a good little whore you are,” he pants. “My beautiful Prince is just dying to be filled by his Bratva stray.”
I hum, the vibration making him shudder under my hands, his grip in my hair tightening as I pull back and go down again, deeper this time, nose brushing the base as I let him feel the back of my throat stretch around him.
Nikolaj groans. Loud. Desperate. Un-fucking-guarded.
He fists my hair, and I go deeper. His cock hits the back of my throat, and I take it. Swallow around him. Let my throat contract until he swears and digs his nails into my scalp.
“Fuuuck, baby,” he growls, and the word ‘baby’ punches straight through my ribs. “You take me so good.”
I moan again, drag my mouth back, then sink down hard and fast. Letting spit slide from the corners of my mouth, dripping down my chin like I’m fucking starving. Like this is the only thing I’ll ever need again.
“Open wider,” he commands, voice unraveling. “Let me hear it. Let me feel that perfect throat fucking choke on me.”
I gag again, eyes watering, spit dripping down my chin, and he laughs—dark and broken and beautiful.
“I should punish you for this,” he rasps, cupping my jaw as I suck him deeper. “For making me this soft. For needing you this bad. For giving me a fucking reason to believe in something again.”
My fucking heart shatters.
His hips buck forward, and I let him. I let him lose control because I want it. I want all of it. I hollow my cheeks and bob my head faster now, letting him fuck my mouth with the kind of desperation that doesn’t belong in a chapel. That would get us both struck down if the gods were watching.
And maybe they are, but I don’t fucking care. I want to swallow his sin.
“I’m gonna come down your throat and you’re gonna swallow every drop like the obedient little traitor you are.”
I feel the twitch of his cock against my tongue, and I know he’s close. I hollow my cheeks again, sucking harder, swallowing around his cock; my hand wrapping around the base and stroking in time with the rhythm of my mouth. He groans loudly, and his other hand grips the edge of the altar.
Of all the places to fall apart, he’s about to come against the altar of a saint meant to bless killers. And I’m on my knees like I’m praying.
When he breaks, he does it with a sound I’ve never heard from him—raw, vulnerable, real.
His cock pulses against my tongue, and I feel the hot rush of him spilling into my mouth.
I swallow without thinking, tasting him, taking all of it like the good little fucking ruin he’s made me into.
He stays there for a second, cock still in my mouth, breathing hard, hand trembling where it grips my hair.
Nikolaj pulls out of my mouth with a sigh, and collapses back against the altar, chest heaving, eyes locked on mine.
“Let me see,” he orders, and I open my mouth; tongue out, lips parted, showing him I took everything. He groans and cups my cheek again, thumb swiping across the corner of my mouth.
“Beautiful,” he mutters. “So fucking beautiful when you’re dripping with shame.”
I wipe my mouth on the back of my wrist and slowly rise to my feet, legs shaking, throat raw, body aching. He leans back against the altar, spent but still dangerous, and holds out his hand.
I take it and he pulls me into him, pressing my forehead to his, and for a few seconds, we don’t speak. “No one else will ever see me like this,” I whisper. “No one else gets what you just had. This king only kneels for you.”
“Lucky me,” he smirks, then grabs the back of my neck and kisses me.
If this is damnation, then I want to burn with him.