Tonight I sit on the floor with a bottle of bourbon and the weight of eight years pressing my lungs flat, and I let myself feel the full, ugly shape of loving someone who still exists everywhere except where I need him most.
With a sigh, I get to my feet, lie back on the bed without bothering to get under the covers, and stare at the ceiling until my eyes finally close.
When sleep comes, predictably, it brings him with it.
six
Vincenzo
Iwakeupwithadagger at my throat and a man straddling my hips, and the first clear thought I have is that grief has finally developed a sense of humor.
Expensive cologne and clove cigarettes.
My head pounds with the blunt punishment of too much bourbon and not enough sense, my tongue tastes like smoke, and my shirt is half untucked from passing out on top of the covers instead of getting myself into bed like a grown man with an empire to manage and security to trust.
My eyes focus, and I see Nikolaj Dragovich above me.
For a moment, I forget how to breathe. Not because I’m afraid—I know I should be. There’s a dagger kissing the pulse in my throat, and the man holding it has turned entire territories into ghost stories.
He looks like violence made flesh. His hair isn’t as sleek as it was in the boardroom; a few blond strands have fallen loose around his forehead. It makes him look less like the Pakhan whosat across from four Kings a few hours ago, and more like the boy who used to sneak into my wing at Vintermoor.
Déjà vu is a weak word for it. This is a haunting with teeth.
I can’t help but smirk. God forgive me, I can’t. A rough chuckle scrapes out of me before I can decide whether it’s wise, and his eyes narrow with immediate hostility.
Nikolaj’s eyes narrow. “You’re laughing.”
Sleep and bourbon still have their hands around my thoughts, but that voice slices straight through the fog. It takes me back with humiliating ease—a room at Vintermoor.
“I am,” I say, and my own voice comes out hoarse from sleep, whiskey, and the wreckage of the night before. “You’ll have to forgive me. This brings back memories.”
The second the word leaves my mouth, his whole expression hardens.
“Careful,” he says. “You’re lying under my knife and smiling like you’ve lost your fucking mind.”
“I’ve been accused of worse.”
“Nobody’s coming for you,” he continues, dipping the blade enough that the sting sharpens. “Your men are breathing because I allowed it. Your locks are embarrassing, security is too pretty, and your room has three perimeter flaws and two camera blind spots. You should kill whoever swept it.”
Despite everything, another huffed laugh leaves me. “I’ll pass along your feedback and let them know their performance disappointed you.”
His mouth curls with contempt, but it’s forced. Anger laid over the shape of something else. “Do you always talk this much when someone has a knife to your throat?”
“Only when I know they won’t use it.”
He stares down at me with the full force of that cold, furious attention, and any other man would take it as proof he’s about to die. I know better, even though I know I shouldn’t. Everysensible instinct I have should be screaming. He could open my throat with one clean motion and be gone before my men discovered the breach.
But I know he won’t do it with the same certainty I had years ago that he loved me, before he ever found the courage to say it without turning it into an insult.
His eyes dip to my mouth for half a second, then snap back up. “You don’t know what the fuck I’ll do.”
“I know enough.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
There it is. The lie he needs so badly that he has to snarl it.
I look at him too openly because I’m tired, hungover, and past the point of protecting myself from whatever damage his nearness can do.
