Not frantic.
Calculated.
It’s the look of a man who has just added his father’s name to a list and fully intends to cross it out. I keep my hand on him, not to comfort, but to remind him he’s not alone as he becomes whatever this moment is forging.
A king, not a son.
A weapon, but one no longer willing to be wielded. Nico watches us both, pain swimming in his eyes. Stephano finally looks at me, and what’s in his gaze is raw—ragged—unmasked. Hurt. Rage. Betrayal.
And beneath it all, the cold, black dawning of something else.
Power.
Responsibility.
Ruthlessness.
The kingdom is shifting inside him.
This is it. The moment he stops being the man his father raised and becomes the man who will tear that legacy apart.
A king is born in blood.
Even if it’s his own.
I haven’t slept.Not because of the hospital chairs meant for saints or masochists, not because Oksana keeps stealing my coffee, not because every time Nico shifts in his bed, my heart tries to tear itself in half, but because every time I close my eyes, I see the truths he spilled earlier.
I see my father staging a call. A call designed to put a target on Nico’s back.
A call meant to test Valverde. Probe him. Force his hand.
If Valverde had nothing to hide, Nico would’ve come home—no harm, no war. If Valverdedidhave something to hide… my brother would’ve been a corpse, and Gustave would’ve stood over the ashes a hero.
A martyr.
My father didn’t send Nico to die. He sent him to reveal the enemy. He sent him, knowing death was anacceptableoutcome. I’ve been replaying that logic for hours. The cold calculus. The way he wins no matter which son bleeds.
I thought I understood my father.
That he was cold-blooded in the service of survival, of legacy, of keeping us strong. I was wrong. He wasn’t protecting the family. He was serving his own ego.
Nico is awake—barely—propped against the pillows. His color is better. His voice is stronger. Oksana sits on the armrest of a chair, picking the stitching of her jeans with a bored assassin’s precision.
I should feel relief.
I feel… hollow.
Hollow, and something else simmering beneath it—dark, exact, surgical.
A man can only be lied to for so long before the truth becomes a blade.
Nico finishes a sip of water and looks at me with eyes that are too old. "You’re staring," he croaks.
"I’m thinking," I correct. Thinking about the ledger. About the payments Gustave hid. About the lies he fed me while my brother was trapped in Venezuela. Thinking about the mine in Mexico. About the call that was never meant for Nico’s ears. Thinking about howclose Gustave came to burying both of his sons— one in foreign soil, the other in ignorance. Thinking about how to end a man who wanted to create kings out of corpses.
"Same thing," Oksana mutters and flicks the cap of the water bottle at me.
She hits my temple without looking.
