روايات بقلم Savvy Writes

Kira’s POVThe sub-basement at the estate had been built to survive a missile strike, according to the original architects. Tonight its only real job was making sure nothing that happened down there made it up to the lawn.I stood against a cold steel pillar in the shadows, tablet wired straight into the room's recording system. I wasn't just watching. I was making a record.Under the single hanging light sat the mercenary — the lieutenant, or whatever rank he actually held. Zip-tied to a bolted steel chair, jaw shattered and swollen where Aziel had already gone to work on him, but his eyes still had that fanatic shine, the kind that comes from believing nothing can actually touch you.Aziel stood outside the light, stripped down to a black t-shirt, and he wasn't pacing, wasn't performing. He just stood there, still, and the room felt smaller for it, thinner somehow, like there wasn't enough air to go around."You're a dead man," the mercenary spat, blood running down his chin, his ac

Aziel’s POVI'd spent my whole life building something that couldn't be breached. Tore Elon Peterson apart from the inside because he was rot sitting on top of my city, feeding off it slow.But the men who'd just burned my warehouse down weren't rot. They were an army, and they'd walked straight through my front door like it wasn't even locked.I stood in the middle of the command center on ninety-nine, watching the thermal feed on the big glass monitors, flames still eating through Hub Seven. The fire reflected in my eyes but I didn't feel any heat off it. What I felt was colder than that — something opening up in my chest and just sitting there, empty and expanding.They'd crossed an ocean. Gotten past my perimeter without anyone seeing them coming. And they'd threatened my wife by name, more or less, in blood on a wall.I looked over at Kira.She was in the chair, blue light washing over her face, and there wasn't a trace of panic on her. She looked like exactly what she was — a we

Kira’s POVThe red light on my tablet didn't make a sound, but in that quiet boardroom it might as well have been screaming.Aziel's laugh cut off instantly. He felt my spine go rigid before I even said anything and leaned in over my shoulder, eyes locking onto the notification pulsing against the dark screen."The Russians?" he asked, voice already sliding back into Warlord territory. "Signed the contract and hit a port anyway?""No." My fingers were already moving, expanding the alert. "This isn't a police scanner ping or a basic tripwire. This is one of my deep Nyx protocols. Someone just cut the fiber-optic mainline at Logistics Hub Seven, down on the southern docks."Aziel straightened and hit his earpiece."Silas. Leave the bosses downstairs. Get to the command center. Now."We left the ring sitting on the obsidian table and took the stairwell down one floor into the glass fortress that was now mine.I dropped into the chair and my hands hit the keyboard fast, no hesitation. I d

Kira’s POVThe boardroom on the hundredth floor wasn't built to be comfortable. It was built to make people feel small, all black obsidian and glass and a view of the city that made you feel like you were standing somewhere gods usually stood.By eight that night the room was already thick with fifty years of bad blood nobody in it had bothered to leave outside.Four men sat around that table — what was left of the Power of the West's leadership. The Russians, the Irish, a few Triad holdouts, and a new Italian underboss who'd been promoted in a hurry after Marcelo's little trip to Zonal ended the way it did. They'd all shown up with small armies, every one of which Silas and Alpha team had stripped of weapons and parked in the lobby before anyone got near the elevator.I stood in the dark little room off to the side, watching them through the one-way glass, listening to the audio feed pick up their voices."Lockwood's a suit," the Russian was saying, loud, hitting the table with his f

Kira’s POVThe federal medical facility upstate looked like the opposite of everything we'd just left behind in Zonal — white tile, fluorescent light, steel doors, marshals with rifles standing at every junction like the building itself was under siege.I walked the corridor with my boots clicking on the linoleum, Aziel a half-step behind me the whole way. They wouldn't let him past the checkpoint — the Warlord walking into a federal facility was the kind of thing that made agencies nervous in ways paperwork couldn't fix — but I could feel him back there anyway, steady, like gravity.We stopped at Room 412. Two agents in tactical gear stood in front of the door."Ten minutes, Mrs. Lockwood," the older one said, swiping his card. "Camera and audio the whole time. Director Harris is watching live.""Understood," I said, flat.I glanced back at Aziel. He gave me one nod, and I went in alone.The room was bare — hospital bed, heart monitor, one reinforced window looking out over a concret

Kira’s POVThe flight back to the States felt like a different trip entirely from the one that had carried us to Italy. No champagne this time, no stolen quiet moments, none of that. The second we were airborne the Gulfstream cabin turned back into exactly what it always became under pressure — a command center wearing the skin of a private jet.I spent all nine hours buried in the decrypted Ragnor ledgers, chasing the three billion dollars in debt Elon had left hanging over us like a blade nobody had cut down yet, while Aziel worked the phones with Alpha and Bravo, setting up defenses on a continent he hadn't even landed in yet. Neither of us slept. Neither of us tried to.By the time the jet touched down on Lockwood's private tarmac, the sun was long gone and the city was just a wash of glittering light against the dark, familiar in a way that felt suddenly untrustworthy. It looked exactly like the skyline we'd left behind. It just didn't feel like it belonged to the same people any