Chapter 41 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
The second the lockdown sirens cut off, I call him.
It’s muscle memory at this point—my thumb already hovering over his name in my encrypted contacts list, the same one I keep locked behind seven layers of security and three decoys. The line rings twice before it cuts off, straight to voicemail.
N.D.:
West A Hall. Weapns wng. DRAGNA TERR. Route comped. 6 of them. Tell A I was right.
Sent: 00:46
My stomach turns to fucking stone.
“Merda.” The curse rips from my throat as I bolt upright from my bed.
It’s been three fucking hours since he sent that.
My coat hits the floor behind me, discarded.
My phone is already to my ear as I storm down the East Wing stairwell, two steps at a time, ignoring the curious stares from lingering heirs who’ve just emerged from lockdown rooms like nothing happened.
They can afford to look casual since they weren’t just handed a possible death certificate.
“Cassandra. Get to my quarters,” I say, not slowing when my medic answers. “Now.”
“Is it a breach, sir?” she replies, already snapping to action.
“No,” I growl. “Nikolaj Dragovich. He’s injured. Probably unconscious. I need full trauma prep ready in my room. Ten minutes.”
“Understood.”
I hang up before she can ask anything else. This academy might be neutral ground, but politics bleed through the walls like rot. Rerouting him to Dragna territory isn’t just suspicious, it’s a declaration. Someone wanted him punished.
I know the kind of enemies he’s made. He doesn’t try to avoid them. He walks up to them, bares his teeth, and dares them to make a move.
And they did.
I pass a cluster of juniors running through safe zone procedures and don’t bother hiding the fury on my face. They move out of my way fast. One of them stammers something about credentials, but I don’t even look at him.
I follow the rerouted corridor path that Dragna’s wing overlays on my map. I’ve walked it before—Nikolaj hasn’t.
I should have known he’d be targeted. The Dragna boys have always been fucking cowards. Arseniy humiliated their fathers, and they waited for a moment like this. A chance to catch a Dragovich heir alone in a place full of weapons and no witnesses.
I hit West A Hall at a dead sprint. The air is thick, stale, and smells faintly of blood and ozone—taser residue.
I follow it like a scent trail, turning left at the emergency weapons room.
The door is half-open, like someone tried to force it shut, but it didn’t lock properly. There’s a dent in the frame.
I push through, and the first thing I see is blood splattered against the far wall, staining the pale tile, trailing along the floor like someone was dragged.
The second thing I see is Nikolaj crumpled against the wall like something tossed aside.
His jacket’s half-torn, one sleeve hanging limp from a dislocated shoulder.
His arm is bent wrong—bone jutted at a sickening angle.
His temple’s split wide open. Blood streaks across his face, his throat, and his chest, and his breathing is shallow.
I stop moving for a second. He’s never looked breakable—not my Nikolaj. I drop to my knees beside him and press my fingers under his jaw, desperate to feel the pulse there. It’s there. Faint, but it’s there.
“Nikolaj,” I murmur, brushing the hair from his face, my voice raspy. His eyelids don’t twitch, and his fingers don’t curl. He doesn’t even flinch when I whisper, “You better fucking wake up.”
I press two fingers to the gash on his temple. The bleeding’s slowed, but that means nothing. His skin’s cold, his body limp, and his split knuckles says he fought until the end. He didn’t go down easy. I know him too well to think otherwise.
The surge of emotion that hits me is vicious—raw and full of rage that I’ve buried for too long. I want to hunt down every single bastard who touched him. Every heir who lifted a weapon against him when he was rerouted on purpose.
This wasn’t a coincidence. This was an orchestration.
“Fuck,” I whisper, letting my forehead rest against his for one long second.
Then I move.
I lift him carefully due to the broken arm, and he groans faintly at the shift, his lips parting, but his eyes don’t open. His weight sags into me, head lolling against my chest as I brace his arm against my side.
He’s always been lean, cut from sinew and spite—but right now, he feels too small. Too human. And I hate it. I hate that I wasn’t there. I hate that I didn’t stop it.
My grip on him tightens as I shift his weight, bracing every part of me around his injuries.
But I can’t carry him through the halls like this, not when he’s supposed to be my enemy.
If anyone sees me like this right now—panicked, exposed, afraid—they’ll know exactly what Nikolaj Dragovich is to me.
And that’s a risk I can’t afford. Not with the crown already too heavy on my head. Not with my father watching from afar like a vulture and waiting for me to slip up.
So, I take the back route. The one we carved into a routine with a dozen stolen nights and too many secrets. A forgotten service corridor that runs beneath the East Wing, mapped only in the earliest Vintermoor blueprints.
This is our route—our secret.
The walls are narrow, old stone warped with time. But it’s the only way to get him back without questions and prying eyes.
I adjust him in my arms, gritting my teeth as I nudge the panel in the West Hall janitor’s alcove with my knee.
It gives way with a soft groan, and I slip us into the dark.
I can feel the weight of him sagging and getting heavier—his head against my chest, blood soaking into my shirt.
My pulse hammers with every step, beating at a rhythm that borders on desperation.
“You don’t get to fucking die on me, Nikolaj,” I whisper, more to myself than him. “Not here. Not like this.”
The only answer is his ragged breathing, and I count each exhale like a goddamn prayer.
The passage winds left, then down. It connects under the barracks, skirts the edge of the surveillance dead zone, and then loops into the underfloor of the East Wing.
A few more paces, and I reach the steel hatch beneath my quarters.
I press my palm to the sensor, and it takes a moment to register my biometrics.
Come on. Come on.
The lock disengages with a hiss, and I shoulder it open, stepping directly into my bedroom to see Cassandra already suited up in surgical gloves and prepping the trauma kit.
“He needs compression,” I bark as I move over to my bed. The med team moves fast, laying him out on my bed and cutting away his clothing. I hover next to the bed, hands clenched, and my throat closing up.
Cassandra looks me over with a frown. “Sir,” she says, way too calmly. “You need to breathe.”
My head snaps towards her. “Don’t you fucking tell me to breathe. Just fix him.”
She doesn’t flinch at my tone, just nods and gets to work while I pace like I’ve got a goddamn noose around my neck.
“His arm’s fractured at the ulna and dislocated at the shoulder,” Cassandra says. “He has a concussion. Probably grade three. Skull swelling possible. Ribs—bruised or cracked. We’ll scan everything. We’ll need to get the blade fragments out.”
Blade.
I glance down and see there’s a slash in his shirt I hadn’t noticed—deep, across his chest, maybe a rib-cutter. Dried blood crusts the edges.
“How long’s he been like this?” she asks.
“Three hours, maybe longer.”
She swears under her breath and injects something into a vein at his neck. “We need to lower swelling and stabilize his blood pressure. I’ll handle it.”
I drag my fingers through my hair, again and again.
I press my palm to the glass, looking out over the dark campus where everything looks exactly as it did earlier, like nothing happened.
Like he isn’t in the next room unconscious because some coward bastards decided to settle a grudge under the veil of a lockdown.
I grip the edge of the window frame hard enough to feel the metal bite.
Fischer Dragna. Lorenz. Their fucking little circle. I’ll deal with them, but right now, all I care about is Nikolaj waking up. I hear something behind me and turn as Cassandra walks out.
She’s pale but calm. “He’s stable.”
I exhale. “But?” I ask.
“But there’s severe swelling in the occipital lobe that is pushing on and affecting other areas of his brain. We’ve given him something to reduce it, and we’ll monitor. If he wakes in the next twelve hours, that’s good. If not…” She doesn’t finish.
I nod slowly. “I’ll stay.”
“I figured. I’ll post two guards outside and bring more supplies.”
When she’s gone, I step into the room. He’s under my sheets now, cleaned up. Bandaged. His chest rises and falls slowly. The oxygen’s still clipped under his nose. His hand lies limp against the mattress, skin pale against the bandages wrapping his forearm.
I sit beside him, and I look at him for a long time.
“You fucking idiot,” I whisper, brushing a finger over his wrist. “You should’ve told me. Should’ve sent more than one text.”
He doesn’t stir, even when I lean in and press my lips to his hairline, careful not to touch the bandages. “You’re not allowed to leave me,” I whisper into his skin. “Not like this.”
They’ve started a war by touching what’s mine, and I’ll make them beg for death before I’m done.
Six names, and I know every one of them. I’ve watched them in the halls. Watched them, watching him. I knew they didn’t like him—knew they smelled blood after whatever Arseniy did in Berlin—but I didn’t think they’d be this fucking bold.
I stare at the crumpled paper with the written names until the letters blur, then I reach for Nikolaj’s phone. It’s cracked in the corner, smudged with blood. But it unlocks with his thumbprint. I pull up the international line saved under A and press call. It rings twice.
His voice is flat and clipped when he answers. “Kolya?”
“It’s me,” I say. My voice is low, but it cuts like broken glass.
“Vieri?” I can hear the shift, the breath, the calculation. “Why are you using my brother’s phone?”
“Because he can’t speak.”
That’s all it takes. The silence after that is different. It hums and coils. I can feel the tension rolling across the line like a coming storm.
“What happened?” Arseniy’s voice is steel as I hear rustling, as if he’s grabbing clothing.
I look down at Nikolaj’s battered body, at the bruises spreading like spilled ink across skin I touched just last night. My throat burns. I want to scream. I want to kill.
“Dragna.” Just the word, nothing more.
Arseniy breathes in sharply. “Which ones?”
I list the names. One by one. My voice doesn’t shake, but my hands do.
“Fuck,” Arseniy says under his breath, and the fury in his voice is thick enough to drown in. “I didn’t—”
“No,” I snap. “You didn’t plan it. But you left him here after you tore through their bloodline. You handed them a target and didn’t think they’d take the shot.”
“I told him to keep his head down,” Arseniy mutters. “I didn’t think they’d retaliate like this. He was supposed to be protected at Vintermoor. I left him there because I thought—”
“You thought what?” I spit. “That they’d just glare at him in the halls?
That they’d snarl at his last name and throw a few threats his way?
You broke their front lines, Dragovich. You tore through their upper echelon and left their leaders in body bags.
Did you think they wouldn’t take it out on the next heir carrying your name? ”
“I told him to stay quiet,” Arseniy murmurs, and it’s not an excuse but a confession.
“He’s Dragovich,” I snap. “There’s no quiet in that name.”
Arseniy sighs. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“You’d better be,” I growl. “They’re dying by my hands.”
“All six?” he asks, surprised.
“Every last one of them.”
Arseniy exhales, a sound so hollow I almost hang up before he can say anything else. “Make it clean.”
“No,” I say and end the call.
Make it clean. As if this will ever be clean. As if any of this ever was ever clean.
I drop the phone back on the table and walk back to Nikolaj, who still hasn’t moved. I pull a chair closer and sit.
Cassandra looks up at me. “He’ll sleep for a while. The sedative will help with the swelling. You did well, Enzo.”
I nod once. “Leave us.”
She hesitates. “You’ll call if he worsens?”
I don’t answer, but she takes the hint and packs up, leaving quietly through the door. Nikolaj’s chest rises and falls in shallow movements. His body is limp but stubborn. He fought; I know he fought. There’s no way my stray would have taken a beating without ripping through them with his teeth.
They tried to erase him.
I’ll erase them.
I brush his hair back from his face. There’s a cut along his temple that makes me nauseous to look at, but I look anyway. I want to memorize every wound, every injury, every place they touched. So I know what to make them suffer for.
I lean forward, elbows braced on my knees, and run both hands through my hair, tugging hard enough to sting. Then I glance at the paper again.
Six names.
I don’t know when the Dragna decided to act, and I don’t care. Whether it was a group decision or one bitter ringleader frothing at the mouth over Arseniy’s last move—it ends here.
Vincenzo Vieri doesn’t leave enemies breathing.
Especially not the ones who touched what’s his.
I reach out and gently brush his fingers where they rest limp on the sheet. “I’ll make it right,” I whisper, leaning closer. “I’ll make them bleed for you.”
His hand doesn’t tighten. His lips don’t move. But I watch his pulse, and it stutters—just once—like maybe somewhere deep inside, he heard me. Like maybe the part of him that’s all instinct, all fight, all fire, is still burning. Still with me.
And when Arseniy arrives, when the blood starts flowing and the halls of Vintermoor learn what retribution really means, I’ll make sure Nikolaj sees it from the highest tower.
I stare at the six names again.
Six people who thought they were gods for three hours.
Six people who touched what’s mine.
Six bodies waiting to fall.