Page 9 of Reign
He’s not walking in as the broken boy who left my bed with hatred in his eyes. He’s walking in as a king in his own right.
And still, some ugly part of me wants to know whether his mouth still twists the same before a threat, or his hands still flex once when he’s angry. Whether he still looks at a room like he’s already calculated how to kill everyone in it.
Whether, beneath all that ruin, power, and missing memory, there’s any part of him that will look at me and feel something nameless claw against the cage.
I hate myself a little for even thinking the last part.
“Don’t worry, Lucien. I am under no illusion that he’s coming here to finish what we started,” I say.
Lucien’s gaze holds mine, but he shakes his head. “I’m not worried about him finishing it.”
I frown at that. “No?”
“I’m worried about you wanting him to.”
That’s almost enough to make me laugh. Instead, I toss back the rest of the whiskey and set the glass down on the windowsill with more care than I feel.
“That’s the nice thing about being King,” I say. “Wanting things rarely matters.”
“That’s one way to live.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” I say.
He can’t argue with that, so he picks up the summit folder, scanning through whatever he sees in there. Lucien has always done that when conversations cut too short—given both of us the dignity of a sideways glance.
I move back to my desk and place the velvet ring box back in my safe again. Some of the sharpness is settling into the familiar architecture of work. This part I know how to do: security routes, seating arrangements, secondary exits. Then vetting the staff because I trust hospitality only slightly less than I trust politicians.
It’s easier to make up your mind when there are moving pieces to align. Easier to be Capo dei Capi than Vincenzo once the paperwork starts.
Still, when Lucien leaves twenty minutes later with revised instructions, the house falls silent again; the city goes on glittering beneath the windows as though nothing has shifted.
Everything has fucking shifted.
In two weeks, I’ll walk into a hotel boardroom in Bucharest and sit at the head of a table with four people who rule various underworld factions. People who want my power, influence, or my head.
For the first time in decades, the Russians will sit at our table again, with my old lover as King.
The bullet will still wait in my safe, the past will still wait in my chest, and the rest of the world will call it politics.
The Blade and the King.
What the world won’t know is that I love a ghost, and in two weeks, I have to face the man he became without me.
three
Nikolaj
Bucharestlookswaytooclean for the rot that hides beneath.
That’s my first thought as the car cuts through the city under a gray afternoon. The Ardelean Hotel rises ahead of us in polished steel and mirrored elegance. It’s one of those places built to impress men with too much money and not enough taste. A place where quiet staff members are trained to look invisible while memorizing every face that matters.
I sit in the back of the armored car, with my suit jacket unbuttoned. The convoy behind us is bigger than the invitation requested and smaller than Maksim wanted, which means it’s exactly the right size.
Maksim is driving, one hand resting near the inside holster beneath his jacket, his gaze moving between the windshield and the side mirror without looking nervous.
Kai sits to my left, elbow braced against the door. He’s staring out at the streets with a faintly disappointed expression.
“You’d think with all this money, they’d choose a hotel somewhere less fucking obvious,” Maksim mutters, watching pedestrians scatter back from the curb when our lead vehicle takes a turn too fast. “Pretty place to stage a massacre.”
