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Chapter fifty five

last update publish date: 2026-10-20 18:24:32

Lumiere's POV

"Are you finished with those ledgers yet?"

The sharp, clipped question cut straight through the humming quiet of the archive sub-level, making me flinch. I pulled my fingers back from the cold glass of the desktop monitor, my heart taking a hard, sudden drop against my ribs.

Jalo stood near the open doorway of the file vault. The dim fluorescent light overhead caught the sharp, angular line of his face, drawing deep, unnatural shadows under his eyes. He wasn't looking at me. His h
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  • Bound to the Syndicate Boss    Chapter sixty three

    Lumiere"You won't pull that trigger," I said, my voice barely carrying over the hum of the fluorescent tube overhead.Otso’s finger didn't flinch on the heavy steel curve of the gun. He sat in that cold metal chair, his white hair neatly combed, his eyes completely dead. The fatherly warmth he had worn like a mask for thirty years was gone, stripped away until nothing was left but a hollow, calculating shell."Do not mistake my patience for hesitation, Lumiere," Otso murmured softly, the sound scraping against the rough concrete walls of the underground vault. "I have waited ten years for this room to quiet down. A few extra seconds mean nothing to me.""You want me to beg," I whispered, holding his gaze even as my chest burned with a suffocating, icy panic. My hands were balled into tight fists at my sides, the skin of my palms raw from the ropes that had bound me earlier. "You want me to ask you why."Otso let out a dry, breathy sound—a dark shadow of a laugh that never reached his

  • Bound to the Syndicate Boss    Chapter sixty two

    LumiereMy boots dragged hard against the rough concrete floor, my heels scraping a rough line through the damp salt dust as the masked men hauled me forward by my upper arms."Move," one of them hissed, shoving me hard between the shoulder blades as we crossed the threshold into the deepest section of the subterranean complex.The heavy iron door swung shut behind us with a dull, echoing thud that cut off the sound of the storm and the distant gunfire. The air down here was stagnant, freezing, and heavy with the sharp metallic scent of old iron and wet stone. This wasn't the marine boat dock at the end of the tunnel. This was the original, forgotten treasury vault built fifty years before my family ever laid claim to the estate—a windowless stone room carved directly into the cold granite of the island foundation.The overhead fluorescent bulb flickered twice before holding on a harsh, sickly yellow glare.I stumbled, catching myself against the corner of a heavy steel table, my brea

  • Bound to the Syndicate Boss    Chapter sixty one

    Mikael's POVThe blade went through the mercenary’s throat before the iron hatch could fully settle in its frame.I didn't hear him choke. I didn't care. I shoved his heavy body into the wall, wrenched my combat knife out of his flesh, and threw myself against the iron latch of the service door. It had been bolted from the inside. A heavy, dead mechanical thud echoed through the iron plate as I threw my shoulder against it once, twice, three times, until the steel frame groaned under the impact."Lumiere!" I roared into the dark gap, my voice tearing raw in my throat.Nothing answered except the howling wind trapped inside the chimney flues and the distant, dull crackle of burning tapestries in the master bedroom behind me.She was gone.The grey smoke inside the suite was thick, smelling of sulfur, burnt wool, and fresh copper. Three men lay broken on the floorboards behind me, their blood pooling in the cracks of the polished oak, soaking into the pages of the tape deck that had jus

  • Bound to the Syndicate Boss    Chapter sixty

    Lumiere's POVMy father’s voice was still rasped out through the tinny speaker of the tape deck—a horrifying, impossible truth—when the bedroom door exploded inward.Splintered oak and metal fragments showered the Persian rug. The heavy mahogany chair we had wedged against the frame split in two, thrown across the room like matchsticks."Lumiere, down!" Mikael roared, his hand reaching out, his large fingers snagging the collar of my cardigan to haul me violently behind his broad frame.He didn't hesitate. His rifle came up, the barrel flashing in short, lethal pops that drove the first two men backward into the dark hallway. Blood splattered across the white doorframe, but more figures surged through the gap, their heavy tactical boots stomping over the fallen.Before I could raise my father’s pistol, a dull, metallic cylinder bounced across the floorboards, rolling to a stop right between my boots.A sharp pop echoed through the room, followed instantly by a thick, blinding cloud o

  • Bound to the Syndicate Boss    Chapter fifty nine

    Lumiere's POVThe cold barrel pressed so hard into the base of my skull that my teeth clicked together."Don't move, girl," the mercenary growled, his voice muffled by a thick black tactical mask.Mikael didn't drop his rifle. In the flashing crimson light of the emergency lamps, his face turned into something terrifying—a mask of absolute, lethal ice. Slowly, agonizingly, he shifted his weight, his eyes locking onto the man standing behind me. The heavy silence between us stretched razor-thin, vibrating with a raw, unspoken terror. He wasn't thinking about the fortress, or the syndicate, or the ledger lying open on the floor. He was looking at the steel touching my skin."If you pull that trigger," Mikael said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet rasp that cut straight through the roaring wind, "you will not live long enough to hear her body hit the floor.""Try me, Koskivirta," the man sneered.I didn't wait for Mikael to make a move. The hair-trigger weight of my father's pistol w

  • Bound to the Syndicate Boss    Chapter fifty eight

    Lumiere's POVThe harsh white glare of Hannu's flashlight pinned us to the bottom step, blinding me so completely that the dark shapes of the gallery blurred into jagged black smears."Lower the weapon, Hannu," Mikael said. His voice didn't shake. It dropped into a quiet, deadly register that vibrated straight through the palm he had pressed flat against my back. He didn't step away from me. If anything, he shifted half an inch to his left, using his broad shoulders to cover my head and chest from the top of the stairs."I didn't survive ten years in hiding to take orders from a Koskivirta," Hannu rasped. The snow melting off his heavy wool cloak dripped steadily onto the dark mahogany floor, tap, tap, tap, like a leaking pipe in an empty house. "Your father stole her family's name, Mikael. He locked her in this fortress to keep her silent, just like you're doing now.""He didn't lock me away!" I yelled into the glare, my voice raw and cracking. My fingers tightened around the custom

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