Page 216

“Hold,” Kenji commands, raising one hand without looking at them, which surprises me because men have had their families slaughtered for making eye contact with him in an elevator, and my prince just backhanded him in a hospital.

Ilya doesn’t back up an inch. He steps right into Kenji’s space, his finger coming up to jab directly into Kenji’s expensive lapel.

“You touch him again,” Ilya snarls, “you send your fucking gorillas to drug him and drag him off for another ‘training cycle,’ and I will personally hollow out your ribcage, pull your spine out through your throat, and use your skull as an ashtray. Do you understand me, old man? I don’t give a fuck who you are. He is mine.”

Kenji lifts a thumb, wipes the blood from his lip, and looks at Ilya with something that resembles amusement.

“You have your grandfather’s temper,” Kenji murmurs softly.

A dry voice echoes from the doorway behind Kenji. “Indeed he does.”

Ilya stiffens. An older man steps past the guards into the room, and I can instantly tell he is Ilya’s grandfather just by the color of his eyes. They look very alike.

Kenji turns his entire body toward him, and I see his face split with pain.

The old Solovyov patriarch looks at Kenji. His body tenses, but his expression remains carved from granite.

“Mikhail.” I have never heard Kenji use that tone before. It’s so full of emotion.

“Kenji.”

They stare at each other. Decades of unsaid things.

Kenji breaks the stare first. He looks back at me, his voice returning to that impenetrable baritone. “I’ll be awaiting you at home, Kento.”

He pauses, his dark eyes cutting back to Ilya’s grandfather. He gives the old man a restrained nod, a gesture loaded with a lifetime of ghosts, before turning on his heel and walking down the hallway, his bodyguards melting into his wake.

Ilya’s grandfather stands in the center of the room, looking down at Ilya.

“The funeral is at two,” Mikhail says, his Russian thick.

Ilya’s face goes completely dead. The fire that had him slapping the head of the Kazuma syndicate vanishes, replaced by a wall of frigid ice.

“Go bury them yourself,” Ilya says flatly.

“They are your blood, Ilya,” Mikhail says. “The Solovyov name requires an heir at the graveside.”

“They tried to put me in the ground first,” Ilya says, taking a step back toward me, his shoulders rigid.

Mikhail’s eyes narrow, assessing the boy in front of him. “A Solovyov does not run from duty.”

“I’m not running,” Ilya snaps, his chin lifting proudly. “I’m exercising excellent judgment. They can decompose without my supervision.”

The old man stares at him for a long minute. I expect rage, but instead, Mikhail lets out a weathered exhale.

“You have your mother’s stubbornness,” Mikhail says quietly. “And you have made your alliance.” His gray eyes cut to me on the bed, calculating. “Take care of him, Kazuma.”

Mikhail turns and walks out.

Ilya stands in the middle of the room for a long time, staring at the empty doorway. Then he marches back to me, drops onto his knees between my legs, and grabs the front of my shirt again to finish the remaining buttons.

“Why were they looking at each other like that? It was weird.”

I look down at the top of his head. “You don’t know,” I say softly.

Ilya pauses, his fingers still hooked into my shirt. He looks up at me, his brow furrowed. “Know what?”

“I found out months ago,” I tell him quietly. “I broke into Kenji’s private archives looking for something else, and I found a file that was twenty years old.”