Page 24 of Reign
Wrong fucking answer.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” I ask, my voice dangerously calm now. “Can’t, because Arseniy told you not to? Can’t, because Ruslan would put a bullet in your head? Or can’t, because if you say it out loud, then I’ll know exactly how badly all of you have lied to me?”
Kai’s jaw clenches. “All three.”
Maksim curses quietly again, and that answer rots in the air between us.
All three.
Vindication unfurls inside of me, because if it were small, if it were just another academy rivalry blown out of proportion by trauma, they would have laughed it off years ago. They would have handed me the files and told me I fought, bled, and nearly died. End of story. Instead, I have one of my closest men telling me—to my face—that my brother, father, and the people all around me have hidden something so explosive that even years later, saying it could get them killed.
I look at Kai, and all I can think about is how many times he stood right beside me while I asked the wrong questions and let me keep asking them because he decided silence was kindness. Maybe it was.
I don’t care.
I keep going because stopping now would feel like mercy, and I’m fresh out. “When we land, you’re going to bring me every file, report, snapshot, transcript, disciplinary note, medical record, camera pull, and erased scrap of data connected to my time at Vintermoor.”
“Nikolaj, wait—”
I turn my head slowly and look at him, shutting him up. He knows I don’t need to raise my voice. Men pay closer attention when I get quiet.
“When we enter Saint Helena and one page is missing or redacted,” I warn, “if one timestamp has been scrubbed, if oneline is blacked out or conveniently corrupted, blood won’t mean a fucking thing to me.”
Maksim’s eyes flash up to the mirror, and Kai goes completely still. Good. Let them understand exactly what I am saying. I’m not threatening strangers or some outer circle idiot who skimmed a percentage off my routes. I’m talking about blood and brotherhood, men who built my empire beside me. Men who think family buys them forgiveness. Men who think history, loyalty, and old wounds mean I spare them if they keep choosing for me.
They’re wrong.
“Do you understand me?” I ask.
Kai’s throat works once. “Yes.”
“Then say it.”
He nods. “Yes, I understand, Pakhan.”
The title lands with the weight it should, and I know he’s choosing it deliberately now. Putting rank between us because he knows this conversation has gone past old trust, family, and friendship.
I nod once, and silence fills the SUV once more. Kai doesn’t try to talk again, and we drive in silence.
Last night keeps flashing in my mind, and I press the heel of my hand briefly against my eye.
Why does every instinct in me say there is something sacred and terrible buried under that silence? Why does hearing him say my name sound less like a provocation and more like coming home to a place I can’t remember building?
Yesterday, I walked into Bucharest as the man I’ve been for eight years. Blade. Pakhan. Weapon turned wildfire. Today, I leave it with a question carved straight through the center of me, a face I can’t stop seeing, and the certainty that everyone who ever claimed to protect me has been standing on the truth with both feet and calling it love.
Fine.
Let’s see how much love survives the excavation.
eight
Salvatore
TheguardoutsideVincenzo’soffice door straightens when he sees me and steps aside without a word. I open the door myself and find Vincenzo leaning back in his chair, half-turned toward the window, shirtsleeves rolled up, and rolling something over his fingers.
He looks up as I come in, and the surprise on his face is evident even as he tries to school his expression. His composure is nothing new to me. Whatdoescatch my attention is the movement of his hand when he shoves whatever he was rolling over his fingers into the drawer next to him. An ordinary man wouldn’t have caught it—but I am not an ordinary man.
I know what I saw—it was a bullet. More than that, I know enough about my own blood to read the guilty smoothness of the motion that followed it. Vincenzo does not fidget. He does not spin objects through his fingers absentmindedly. If he’s sitting alone in his office and turning a bullet over in his hands, then that bullet matters more than he wants anyone else to know.
