I rub the bridge of my nose. “That is not what I meant.”
“It is what yousaid.”
“Then let me say it better.”
“You should have done that weeks ago.”
My temper flares because his fear on my behalf does that to me. I don’t know what to do with being cared about when I’m in the middle of blood and threat and responsibility, and the easiest response is still to bare my teeth like an idiot.
“You do not get to order me. I’m not one of your men,” I say.
The second it leaves my mouth, I want to kill the sentence myself.
Vincenzo’s silence goes absolute.
Tatiana winces visibly in the corner.
Maksim mutters, almost inaudibly, “Oh, fuck.”
Kai does not look up, which is wise.
When Vincenzo speaks again, his voice is very calm. Too calm. “No,” he says. “You are not one of my men.”
“Vincenzo—”
“No, let’s be clear,” Vincenzo says. “You are not one of my men. You are not under my command. You are not a subject in my house or an ally I acquired through a treaty. You are the man I waited eight years to get back, and I am apparently expected to learn about a bounty on your head through my fucking intelligence channels because you decided I didn’t need to know yet.”
The room is quiet enough that even Piotr looks emotionally invested now, which is not ideal.
My jaw tightens. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?” Vincenzo asks. “After someone took a shot? After you traced enough names to satisfy whatever impossible standard you set for involving me? After you decided the danger was respectable enough to stop treating it like a private nuisance?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Vincenzo says. “Do not speak to me aboutfair.”
That shuts me up, and it should. He has earned that line. Eight years of being the only one who remembered. Five months of silence because I asked for space.
All the patience he has handed me in pieces I did not deserve, and now I am standing in a cellar with blood drying on my hands, acting as if withholding a threat from him was practical instead of arrogant.
But I am still angry. At Helena. At whoever is using her name. At the bastard tied to the chair. At Arseniy for being right. At myself for not calling Vincenzo the second the bounty stopped being a rumor. At the sound of worry in his voice, because it makes me feel like there is something soft in my body exposed to a room full of knives.
So, naturally, I make it worse.
“I didn’t call because I didn’t want you doing something reckless,” I say.
Vincenzo inhales on the other end—slow, measured, and lethal, and his voice turns silk-thin. “You bought an island because we needed privacy, Nikolaj.”
I grit my teeth. “That was different.”
“You rerouted my private jet without telling me.”
“That was romantic.”
“That was kidnapping with paperwork,” Vincenzo says. “And you are warning me about recklessness?”
Piotr makes a small, strangled noise that might be the worst-timed laugh in the history of men tied to chairs.
