Chapter: Chapter Sixteen : Race... Or Die 2The pistol never fired.Lucien lowered it, just enough that the barrel no longer sat level with her heart, though he made no move to put it away completely."There are two roads in front of you," he said, his voice as level as it had been through everything else tonight. "You come with me into the Circuit. Or you stay outside it, and you wait for the debt to collect itself.""Your Circuit." Her throat felt raw, scraped down from smoke and screaming. "Not mine…""It became yours the moment your father signed his name to that ledger.""He never asked me. Nobody has asked me anything, tonight or seven years ago...""No one asks anyone anything in my world." His grey eyes hadn't moved from her face once. "That is the first lesson…. The last one usually kills you.""You say that like it excuses any of this… Tonight, the gun, all of it.""I am not asking to be excused. I am asking you to survive.""What does it even mean, coming with you? What am I to these people?""You race…. Or you
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-24
Chapter: Chapter Fifteen- Race... or DieThe ground erupted before anyone could speak her name.For one frozen second, Valentina felt every eye still on her, the weight of thousands of strangers waiting to see what she'd become to them. ⁰Then the starting grid vanished in a wall of fire, hidden charges detonating beneath the tarmac in a chain that ripped through the front row of hypercars, sending burning carbon fiber raining across the crowd in glowing shards. Screams replaced silence in an instant, thousands of bodies scattering in every direction at once. Somewhere above, muzzle flashes lit the windows of the surrounding hangars, gunfire raking across the platforms as rival syndicates poured into the open, weapons already raised, coordinated in a way that made it clear none of this had been improvised. Whoever had planned this had known exactly where every camera stood, exactly which exits to seal first.Lucien moved before Valentina's mind caught up with what was happening.His hand closed around her arm and hauled h
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-20
Chapter: Chapter Fourteen The Airfield of KingsLucien parked without a word and got out. Valentina followed, her legs still unsteady from the drive and everything that had happened before it, and the moment her feet touched the cracked tarmac, the scale of it finally reached her all at once.Thousands of people filled the old runway, spread across scaffolded platforms rising three stories into the dark, some dressed in couture that belonged on a Milan runway, others in black tactical gear with sidearms holstered openly at their hips, unbothered by who might notice. Champagne moved through the crowd on silver trays, passed hand to hand between men who looked like they owned banks and men who looked like they owned bodies buried somewhere nobody would ever find, or care to look.Private security details stood at careful intervals along the platform edges, dozens of them, uniforms unmarked but clearly coordinated, radios clipped to collars, eyes never quite settling on any one point for long. It looked less like a race and more li
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-20
Chapter: Chapter Thirteen : Invitation to HellLucien straightened from the wreck without hurry, his head tilting slightly toward the sound gathering in the dark, as though he'd been expecting it all along and found nothing in it worth rushing over."Get in," he said, already walking toward his car.Two words. No explanation offered. No glance back to see if she'd follow him at all.Valentina's feet stayed planted on the gravel, her arms crossing tight over her chest, some stubborn, wounded part of her refusing to move even as the engines grew louder behind her. "No."He didn't stop walking."I have my own driver," she said, her voice sharper than she meant it to sound, the wound of the last ten minutes still raw enough to bleed through everything she tried so hard to keep controlled. "I don't need you to rescue me twice in one night and pretend the first time counts for anything at all."He reached his door…He didn't turn around, his hand already resting on the handle."Then stay."The door shut with a heavy, final sound. T
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-18
Chapter: Chapter Twelve The King of MidnightChapter TwelveThe King of MidnightIt didn't drive like anything else on the road.It hunted.The hypercar clipped the first SUV's rear quarter at a speed that should have torn it apart, and instead sent the vehicle spinning off the tarmac in one clean, deliberate motion, wheels catching the ditch and rolling twice before it came to rest against a tree, headlights dying with it in the dark. The move looked almost gentle from a distance, Like something rehearsed a thousand times until it stopped being violence and became something closer to geometry, a problem solved rather than a life taken."Dio mio," her driver breathed, one hand still pressed to his ruined shoulder, eyes fixed on the road ahead, unable to look away even as pain drained the color from his face.The second SUV tried to flee, It didn't get far. The hypercar closed the gap in mere seconds, feinted left, then cut hard right and drove the heavier vehicle straight into the barrier wall, metal screaming against stone un
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-18
Chapter: Chapter Eleven Dead EndThe car lurched backward the instant the rifle fired, her driver's foot finally finding traction on the loose gravel, and the round that should have taken her through the windscreen punched through the frame just above her head instead, showering her hair with glass.Then the world came apart.Gunfire opened up from both sides of the road at once, disciplined and methodical, sweeping across what remained of the convoy in short, controlled bursts rather than wild spray, the kind of fire that came from men who'd trained for exactly this and nothing else. Valentina heard someone shout a command in a language she didn't recognize, clipped and flat, and watched the rear vehicle's windows blow outward in a spray of glass as the men inside stopped answering their radios, one after another, until the channel carried nothing but static and smoke.Her driver jerked hard against the wheel, a grunt tearing out of him as a round caught his shoulder and spun him sideways into the door, blood alread
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-18
Chapter: Chapter 38: When the Walls Begin to BreakPOV: Kang SeraThe impacts didn't stop after that first silence. They returned within minutes, harder this time, the walls of the eastern wing groaning under something Sera couldn't picture no matter how many times her mind tried to shape it.She stood at the mouth of the corridor, close enough to feel each impact travel faintly through the floor beneath her bare feet.Two guards stood posted outside the sealed door, rigid, pale, staring straight ahead like men who'd trained themselves not to react no matter what reached their ears. Furniture splintered somewhere beyond the steel. Something heavier struck the wall hard enough that dust sifted down from the ceiling.Neither guard moved."Aren't you going to do something," Sera said, her voice low, urgent."No, my lady.""Someone could be dying in there."The younger guard's jaw tightened, though his eyes stayed fixed forward. He said nothing.Viktor arrived a few minutes later, his broad frame filling the corridor, his expression carve
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-22
Chapter: Chapter 37: The Locked RitualPOV: Arsen DragunovArsen dismissed his captains two hours earlier than usual. He gave them nothing more than exhaustion from the summit as a reason.Most accepted it without question. A few exchanged glances, quick, careful, the kind that told him they suspected something closer to the truth.None of them asked.He was grateful for that particular mercy, though gratitude sat strange and heavy in his chest tonight, tangled up with everything else he couldn't say out loud.He walked the eastern wing alone afterward. The way he always did before a night like this one.Steel doors first. He checked each hinge, each bolt, running his hand along seams he'd inspected a hundred times before. Still checking, even now, as though this time might reveal something new. His fingers lingered a beat too long on the last bolt. Heavy locks next, the mechanism reinforced twice since he'd first had this wing built.Upgraded again after the last incident left a hairline crack in the frame, one that had t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-31
Chapter: Chapter 36: The Night No One Speaks OfPOV: Kang SeraThe manor returned from the summit wrapped in silence.Not the ordinary kind. Something deliberate.The kind of quiet a house holds when everyone inside has agreed, without ever discussing it, not to speak of something at all.Nobody mentioned the ambush, Not the staff, the guards or Nikolai, who moved through his usual duties with a stiffness that suggested effort rather than calm, his jaw tight every time she passed him in the hall.Sera noticed the changes first in small things; She'd learned to notice everything in this house by now.Dinner arrived a full hour earlier than usual.The kitchen staff cleared plates and retreated before the sun had even fully set, their movements quick, clipped, eyes down. Guards she recognized from the main gate rotation began appearing near the eastern wing instead, familiar faces reassigned without a word of explanation.The third floor, usually busy with servants finishing evening tasks, emptied out entirely after dusk. Corridors th
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-29
Chapter: Chapter 35: The Cost of SurvivalPOV: Kang SeraThe count came in slow, delivered in pieces by exhausted security teams still combing through the wreckage.Hundreds dead by morning, delegates and guards alike, entire family lines that had survived decades of underworld war reduced to names on a growing list nobody wanted to finish reading.The survivors gathered on the mountainside in loose, shell-shocked clusters, and it didn't take long before grief curdled into something sharper."He knew this building better than anyone," a northern captain said, loud enough to carry, his eyes fixed on Arsen across the clearing."Knew every exit, Moved through that chaos like he'd rehearsed it.""He saved half the men standing here," another voice cut back, sharp with exhaustion."Including yours.""Convenient, isn't it... The one man untouched by any of this walks away a hero.""Say that again," a third voice muttered,"and see how untouched you walk away."Sera felt her jaw tighten, the accusation landing somewhere close to fur
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-27
Chapter: Chapter 34: The Impossible EscapePOV: Arsen DragunovThe masked men came through the eastern breach before the dust from the first explosion had even settled, moving with the coordinated precision of soldiers rather than mercenaries, weapons already raised.They weren't shooting indiscriminately.Arsen registered that within seconds, some old instinct sorting the chaos into pattern even as bodies scrambled past him in every direction, his pulse a hard steady drum beneath the calm he forced onto his face. The gunmen were herding, not hunting, forcing delegates away from the main exits and toward the narrow service corridor near the west wing.A kill zone.Someone had mapped this building before tonight, and the thought landed cold and sure in his chest, underneath the noise, underneath everything."This way," Arsen shouted, grabbing the nearest delegate, a stunned southern captain frozen mid step, and shoving him toward the service corridor Sera had confirmed with him hours earlier."Not west, Kitchens, Move.""Who pu
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-27
Chapter: Chapter 33: Smoke and MirrorsPOV: Kang SeraThe disappearance of the southern bodyguard cracked whatever composure remained in the summit hall. Voices rose over each other, accusations flying faster than anyone could track, five families now openly suspicious of every face in the room."This happened under your host family's watch," the northern boss snapped toward the estate's owners."Explain that.""Perhaps it happened because someone here wanted it to look that way," came the reply, sharp, defensive.Sera stood near the back of the hall, watching the chaos ripple outward, and found herself doing what she always did in rooms like this. Not listening to what people said. Watching what they didn't.That was how she noticed him.A man near the end of the western table, mid-fifties, unremarkable in a room full of men who wanted to be remarkable.He hadn't raised his voice once, not during the earlier accusations against Arsen, not during the panic over the missing bodyguard, not even now, while the room around him
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-27
Masuk
