Page 53 of Empire
“Yes,” I say quietly. “That was more or less my assessment as well.”
He looks down for a second, clearly trying to rearrange the architecture of his own history and finding the pieces don’t sit where he left them.When he lifts his head again, there’s still shock in him, but it’s less disbelief now.
“So that was it,” he says. “The exile wasn’t because of my uncle—”
“Yes.”
He gives a short, disbelieving shake of his head and turns away from me, pacing once toward the fireplace before stopping there with one hand braced on the mantel. His shoulders are tight under his coat, every line in his body pulled taut with the effort of fitting this new truth into old wounds.
“My father never said,” he murmurs.
I take a sip of whiskey that tastes like smoke. “He wouldn’t.”
Nikolaj’s laugh comes out hollow and mean. “No. He fucking wouldn’t.”
He stares into the fire for another second, then looks back over his shoulder at me. The expression on his face now is not soft.
“That’s why he’s like that. That’s why he’s always…” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening. “Guarded doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
He turns fully then, and the force of his attention pins me more effectively than any weapon would. “And that’s why I was sent to kill Vincenzo.”
I incline my head once. The answer settles between us with the weight it deserves.
Because yes, that is the other poison. Ruslan didn’t send his son toward my bloodline simply because of politics, balance, or old family hatred. He sent him because men like us, once burned by love, become convinced the only way to keep our children safe is to make sure they never get the chance to make the same mistake.
He sent Nikolaj to kill Vincenzo because somewhere under all that discipline and legacy and rage, he is still the young man in the rain with a mark over his eye and my name lodged in the center of his chest like a bullet.
I don’t say that part aloud; Nikolaj doesn’t need it spoken. I can see from his face that he has reached the same conclusion already, and that it disgusts and wounds him in equal measure.
He lets out a slow breath through his nose. “Jesus Christ.”
There’s nothing I can add to that.
Nikolaj takes a step back from the mantel and studies me in a way that makes me suddenly, acutely aware of my age. Not fear, exactly. I have lived too long and done too much to start fearing a son for carrying his father’s rage into my parlor.
But there is a reckoning in his gaze that makes me feel the years sitting heavy on my bones. I am sixty. I have handed my throne to Vincenzo. I am alone in this room with a Dragovich heir who could kill me, and I have just given him the confession that poisons his entire understanding of where he comes from.
I set the glass down. “Well,” I say, because if I don’t put some kind of shape around this moment, the silence will start feeling too much like a grave, “are you going to kill me now?”
The question lands exactly as I intended. Blunt, dry, and honest enough to sound almost careless.
Nikolaj blinks twice, and some of the tension goes strange in his face, as if he genuinely didn’t expect that from me. Then he shakes his head. “No. That’s not why I came here, Salvatore.”
There is something almost boyish in that admission, if one ignores the scar at his throat and the violence in the set of his shoulders. He didn’t come here for blood; he came here for understanding. That is, in some ways, far more dangerous.
I lean back slightly in my chair. “Then why did you walk into enemy territory, if not to kill an old king?”
He looks at me for a long moment before he answers. “I was at my father’s villa in Kolomna last weekend. He thought he was alone on the terrace,” he says, and my heart starts beating faster.He still kept the villa.“It was late, and so cold that even I wasn’t stupid enough to be out there for no reason. There was a bottle on the table, and he had a revolver in his hand.”
I suck in a stuttered breath. “Nikolaj—”
“He opened the cylinder, dropped a single round, spun it, and just… sat there.” Nikolaj’s jaw works. “I started toward him when he whispered, ‘You were supposed to be beside me, lyubimiy,’and pulled the trigger.”
Ice flushes through my veins; every breath tastes like metal.Lyubimiy.My heart nearly gives out at the sound of that endearment.
“The hammer clicked on an empty chamber,” Nikolaj continues, “and my father laughed—laughedlike it was the funniest joke in the fucking world, finished his glass, and went inside. He never called my mother that endearment; never called any of us that.” A heartbeat’s pause. “So I waited. When he passed out, I checked the gun.”
There is absolutely nowhere left to hide as he watches the truth land in me. Watches me understand exactly what he is about to say before he says it.
