Page 30 of Reign
There are pages upon pages in clipped language of strategic damage control. Concern over ideological drift, mission compromise, and emotional entanglement with the Vieri heir. Recommendations for corrective isolation, psychological pressure, pain conditioning, and family intervention.
Arseniy signed off on all of it.
Below that are the typed-out observation records from the North Wing dungeons, with my name being reduced to a subject.
Subject resistant.
Subject displays hostility when prompted with Vieri trigger.
Subject refuses to reassert mission priority.
Subject exhibits destabilized emotional response under deprivation.
Subject appears to be taking to reprogramming protocol and will be released.
But underneath that in red pen, in Arseniy’s handwriting, is the notation:SUBJECT REMAINS COMPROMISED.
My grip tightens hard enough on the page that it nearly tears. Compromised—that’s what they called it.
A memory hits quick and fucking incomplete. Cold stone under my knees. Arseniy’s voice somewhere above me, furious and fraying at the edges in a way I’ve never heard from him before. Hands on my face, forcing my attention up. The taste of blood. It vanishes before I can hold it, leaving behind a tremor in my hand and pressure building behind my eye again.
I turn the page and nearly laugh at what it says in Arseniy’s script—PROTOCOL INEFFECTIVE. FAILED. SUBJECT IS TOO DEEPLY ATTACHED.
Attached—not suspected but confirmed. They knew enough to try to carve it out of me. Knew enough to drag me into whatever version of torture my brother could justify as duty, and still failed because by that point, I was already too far gone.
I sit back in the chair and laugh once under my breath because if I don’t, I might put my fist through the desk.
“You arrogant bastard,” I murmur, and I don’t even know if I’m talking to Arseniy, to myself, to the boy in the files, or to the man in Bucharest who looked at me like he’d rather bleed than lie.
There are no details in this folder about what “too deep” means. They didn’t need to define it for the men reading. They already knew.
I set the report aside carefully, because if I don’t handle it with deliberate control, I’m going to tear the thing in half. The pain behind my eye pulses twice, but it isn’t enough to stop me.
I connect the encrypted drive to my laptop, and a folder appears. Inside are video files, dates, and archive markers.
I click the one labeled “LIBRARY—INTERNAL CAM.”
The timestamp says it’s just after four in the morning. The angle is high and slightly tilted, the view partially obscured by rows of shelves, but it catches enough.
It catches Vincenzo walking into the frame, me turning into the aisle like I came there to hunt him, then I slam him into the shelves.
Younger me does not hesitate. One hand goes to his throat, the other grips his shirt hard enough that, even on the footage, I see fabric pull and tear. Books spill above us in a scattered black-and-white blur, hitting the floor around our shoes like debris after an explosion.
The file’s sound is compressed, voices muffled by distance, yet every broken syllable hits like a hammer—Vincenzo gasping“merda”while I slam him hard enough to rattle an entire fucking aisle. My own voice is low and surgical, promising to put a Beretta down his throat, threats spat in a Russian-lilted growl I barely believe belongs to me.
The man I am now keeps his violence clean, efficient, and never mixes it with sex or sentiment. But on-screen I’m vicious and intimate and all over him, hand locked around his windpipe the way a lover might wear a ring, mouth hovering like I can’t decide whether to bite or bless. Watching it feels obscene, like I’m spying on a version of myself no one warned me existed.
My younger self crashes his mouth into Vincenzo’s with enough violence to be punishment, and Vincenzo does not shove me away. He bites back, grips harder, and pulls me closer.
I press two fingers to my temple and keep watching anyway because stopping now feels like cowardice, and I am done being protected from myself.
The camera catches my face full-on, eyes bright with something hotter than hate, and fuck, I look feral—hair longer, mouth bloody, pupils blown wide like a junkie hookedon vengeance. I watch my past self grind a thigh between Vincenzo’s legs until his breath shatters, watch him retaliate with teeth and claws, see the way our hips find an ugly, desperate rhythm.
A pulse of heat sparks low in my balls, and it makes me want to punch the nearest wall because arousal is the last reaction I should have to a memory I don’t fucking own.
For several seconds, I stare.
This is what I keep remembering—this library scene. What the fuck. It feels invasive watching my own body know something my mind is still locked away from.
