He nods once, already expecting that answer. “I’ll have security start the arrangements.”
I sink into the chair behind the desk and steeple my fingers.
“I want every attendee profiled again before we leave. Updated routes, private scandals, hidden debts, mistresses, sons they don’t acknowledge, daughters they’d kill to protect, judges on payroll, and police commanders in their pockets. All of it. I want enough leverage on that table to choke them with it.”
“It’ll be done, Pakhan,” Kai says with an incline of his head and turns to leave.
“And Kai.”
He pauses at the door and turns his head back to look at me.
“If any of them think an invitation means parity, correct that understanding before we arrive.”
A faint smile touches his mouth. “I’ll make it clear they’re inviting the man who has them terrified,” he says. “Not the boy they remember.”
“There is no boy,” I agree. “He died a long time ago.”
Kai’s gaze searches mine for a heartbeat, as if he’s tempted to disagree. I know that somewhere in that meticulous mind, he keeps a ledger of who I used to be and who I am now.
ThatNikolaj died on the stone floor of Vintermoor.
“Of course,” he says, then he leaves me alone with the hum of the monitors and the old stone silence of Saint Helena.
For a minute, I just sit there and listen to the building breathe. The empire moves because I move it. Money, fear, allegiance, death. Every current answers to my hand now.
Russian sectors speak my name with caution, reverence, hatred, or all three. They feared Arseniy once; they feared my father longer. But fear changes when it meets something that doesn’t blink back.
Whatever waits for me in Bucharest will be handled the same way I handle everything else—with a steady hand and no remorse.
Let the Five Families come polished and look at me, wondering if the rumors have teeth. Let them test the shape of my silence and search my face for the boy they once heard stories about.
That boy is dead. What’s left is worse.
And when Bucharest opens its gates to me, it won’t be receiving a guest. It’ll be receiving the fucking fire.
two
Vincenzo
Theproblemwithbeingking is that no one tells you when the crown starts to rot.
They bow, they obey, and they bleed at your word. But no one warns you what it means to sit at the head of a table carved from corpses, with loyalty bought in bodies and silence.
Power comes slowly—then all at once—and when it settles, it stains everything. Even the parts you swore you’d keep clean.
I pour another drink and don’t bother looking at the clock. The house is quiet; it usually is when Arabella is out at one of her functions.
Marriage—I suppose it serves its purpose. She gets freedom, respect, protection, and the full public dignity of my name. I get the same.
We’re polite to each other, useful but not cruel, because we both came into this knowing that we would never love each other. In our world, that counts as a mercy.
Once, I thought indifference would make it easier. Now I know it just makes the silence louder.
The whiskey in my hand is older than some of the men who die for me. I’ve been working for six hours and drinking for three, which is a better ratio than usual. If I’m not at the desk, I’m in some meeting with men who would happily kneel if it kept me from stepping on their throats. If I’m not in a meeting, I’m in a car on my way to something bloody or expensive. And if I’m not doing either, I’m alone.
My ghosts love to come out and play when I’m alone.
I cross the room toward the wall safe behind a painting near the shelves, keying in the code from muscle memory. Inside are passports, sealed files, blackmail material, old photographs I should have burned and never will, and a velvet box I haven’t had the discipline to destroy.
