I turn toward Kai and hold up one hand. His eyes sharpen immediately.
“Kieran King sided with you?” I ask.
“He did,” Vincenzo says. “Publicly enough to matter, privately enough not to look sentimental. Byrne’s people are already fractured. Reyes lost three loyalties before he left the room.”
My mouth curls despite the cold still sitting in me. “You sound pleased.”
“I’m furious,” Vincenzo says. “Pleased comes later.”
“There’s My King,” I murmur.
Vincenzo goes quiet for one beat, and even over the phone, even with the line carrying all the distance between us, I hear how it hits him.
Then he says, softer, “Nikolaj…”
“I’m on my way,” I say, already reaching for the coat I threw over a chair two hours ago.
“No,” Vincenzo says immediately. “Stay where you are.”
I laugh once, sharp and humorless. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“Nikolaj, the summit just ended, and the building is still locked down. I need you to stay—”
The first shot is distant but unmistakable. The second is closer. A third follows fast, then shouting, then the heavy, concussive sound of return fire that shifts the entire shape of the call.
Vincenzo swears in Italian, the sound sharp and breathless, and something crashes hard enough to distort the line.
“Nikolaj,” Kai says, already moving.
I’m at the door before I remember crossing the room. “Where are you?” I demand into the phone.
“East exit corridor,” Vincenzo says, and now his voice is different. Lower. Combat-focused. Too steady. “They moved through the service access.”
More gunfire cracks through the line, louder this time.
I hear Vincenzo fire back. I know the sound of his weapon now. How fucked is that? How intimate and terrible, that I can recognize the gun in his hand through a phone line across the city.
“Stay on the line,” I say as I rip the door open. “Do not hang up.”
“Nikolaj,” Vincenzo says, breathing harder now. “You’re not close enough.”
“I said stay on the fucking line.”
Maksim shoves past me toward the elevator, already calling for the car. Kai is on his phone in Russian, voice clipped and lethal, ordering the convoy, the secondary route, the medical team, the local cleanup crew—every moving part snapping awake around us.
I hear my own men in the hall, boots striking carpet, doors opening, weapons being checked. The hotel’s quiet luxury tears open around us in seconds. Vincenzo fires again. Someone screams in the background.
“Vincenzo,” I bark as we hit the elevator. “Talk to me.”
“I’m busy,” Vincenzo says, and the audacity of him nearly makes me laugh and choke at the same time.
“You can shoot and talk.”
“I forgot how romantic you are under pressure,” Vincenzo says, then there is another crack of gunfire and the sound of him grunting softly. “Merda.”
The elevator doors close too slowly. I nearly put my fist into them.
Kai says something to me, but I don’t hear it properly. My entire world has narrowed to the phone against my ear and the sounds behind Vincenzo’s voice. Running feet. Metal. Breaking glass. More gunshots. His breathing, steady and then not, controlled and then catching on something he refuses to show me.
