“Reyes.”
At the far end of the table is Kieran King—blond hair, mean blue eyes, and American polish over coldness underneath. Senator’s face. Statesman’s voice. Predator’s eyes. Men like him are always more dangerous when they’ve learned how to smile for the cameras and sign death warrants with the same hand.
He inclines his head as much as courtesy demands.
“Pakhan Dragovich.”
“Senator King.”
I take my seat without waiting to be invited. Kai and Maksim position themselves behind me, one on each side—silent and still enough to vanish into the architecture.
I rest my forearms on the table in front of me and let my gaze move across the room, assessing without pretending otherwise. Byrne’s people at both exits. King has one advisor inside and another outside. Reyes brought two but left one in the corridor, suggesting he expects trouble but doesn’t want to insult the host. Which leaves us with—
“Where is our host?” I ask, folding my hands loosely on the table. “I thought the King of all Kings would be here to greet us with wine and apologies.”
“Traffic,” Helena says with a curl of her lip, ash dropping neatly into the crystal tray in front of her. “He let us know his flight was slightly delayed.”
“He’ll come,” King says with that infuriating politician’s calm. “He likes an audience, and won’t miss the chance to make an entrance.”
I roll my shoulder once, easing the tension that has no business being there. This is routine and politics. I know how to assess a room, measure threats, and decide who needs to die first if the doors lock and the lights go out. I know how to sit still and give nothing away—I’ve done it since I was old enough to spell my own name.
Still, there’s a hum under my skin that isn’t normal anticipation. It feels like the moment before a fight, when your body already knows the first blow is coming, and your muscles brace on their own.
We settle into a waiting rhythm. Kai murmurs something low in my ear about security rotations outside. Maksim shifts his weight once, and then stills—eyes roving over faces, exits, and angles.
I check my watch, more for something to do with my hands than because I care about the time. Kai says nothing behind me, but I can feel him reading the slight change in my shoulders all the same because he knows me too well. He knows the difference between boredom and tension, between annoyance and that harder, more volatile thing I rarely let close enough to show.
The doors open again, and I look up.
Vincenzo Vieri walks in, and my pulse gives a brutal thud against my ribs. The room tilts in that sharp, sensory way when a threat enters range and your body recognizes it before your mind finishes the thought.
Heat crawls up the back of my neck, and every muscle goes tight and ready—though for what, I couldn’t say even if someone shoved a gun in my face and demanded it.
He looks nothing like the half-formed ghost from memory, and yet exactly like him.
Thirty, maybe a touch older in the eyes than the rest of him. Tailored dark suit cut with obscene precision, black tie, white shirt, posture so fucking controlled it reads aristocratic until you look closer and realize the stillness is weaponized.
Dark hair brushed back neatly, and a face too composed to be called soft and too handsome to be ignored. There’s an old-world elegance to him that should irritate me on principle, but my body isn’t reacting with irritation. It’s doing something far more treacherous—visceral and deeply unwelcome.
It knows him.
That’s the only phrase that fits, and I hate it the second it forms.
Vincenzo’s gaze moves across the room in one calm sweep and lands on me.
Everything inside me becomes colder.
There’s no obvious reaction on his face, either. If anything, he looks almost bored—the polished king arriving a fraction late to a meeting he assumes will proceed on his terms.
But I catch it, anyway. Some minute change in the eyes; an infinitesimal tightening that most of the room would miss. I don’t know how the fuck I notice it because I shouldn’t know his face well enough to read anything that small.
He inclines his head to the others first, then to me. “Apologies for being late. Traffic was a nightmare.”
My world comes to an immediate fucking stop.
four
Nikolaj
