Chapter 5

Without glancing back, I slammed the iron door of my private quarters, loaded my essential clearance keys into my briefcase, and walked out of Nikolai’s territory without looking back once.

I systematically wiped his existence from my personal life, burned our shared channels, and purged five years of tactical logs.

Every custom piece of armor, rare blade, and signet ring he had given me was sealed inside an iron contraband box and dropped directly onto the steps of his family’s inner sanctum.

From that night on, I wiped my hands clean of his bloodline.

I thought our paths would remain permanently severed.

Yet as fate would have it, Steffy, my club manager, was his new and first-ever announced Donna now.

She would always bring him up during executive briefings—gushing about his ruthless brilliance, his tactical mind, and how fiercely protective he was over those under his wing.

Nikolai certainly knew how to please a woman. When a woman held value in his eyes, he would wrap her in absolute luxury and untouchable authority.

It was just that his protection, for me, had expired.

One day the syndicate convened for the Annual Oath Ceremony—a solemn night where family heads gathered at the grand cathedral to swear fealty and divide territory.

It was an ironclad tradition that senior capos brought their official partners to stand beside them at the altar during the blood oath to represent loyalty.

In five whole years, Nikolai had never once allowed me to stand beside him at the altar, always claiming my safety was too precious to risk in a room filled with rival hitmen.

I tried to excuse myself from attending, using a major supply-chain audit as my cover.

But Steffy walked into my glass office, leaning casually against my desk with a smug smile. "You can't miss the Oath Ceremony, Maria. Besides, Nikolai said his personal security detail can escort you home once the treaty is signed."

I was forced to sit in the high-tier gallery above the cathedral floor.

Throughout the entire ritual, Nikolai didn't look up at my balcony once.

When it came time for the blood oath, he led Steffy down the marble aisle himself. In front of all thirty syndicate leaders, he dipped his blade, cut his hand alongside hers, and sealed her status as his newly anointed Donna.

When a drop of stray blood brushed against her cheek, he reached out and wiped it away with his tongue—a gesture so tender it made the surrounding elders murmur in surprise.

I sat in the shadows of the gallery, quietly signing off on transaction logs on my tablet—one line after another, my expression totally blank.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nikolai’s jaw clench tight. His dark eyes darted up toward my quiet balcony, his complexion turning thunderous.

He was clearly unsettled because my total, icy composure robbed him of the reaction he wanted.

When the ceremony concluded, the family heads dispersed to their guarded motorcades.

Standing out on the cathedral steps under the heavy rain, I was the only high-ranking member without an armed escort.

Nikolai stepped out under a black umbrella, pausing briefly with a stiff, unnatural edge in his voice:

"...My armored transport is heading north. Do you need a ride?"

He assumed I was still bound to him by old habits—that after five years of devotion, a single crumb-of-comfort gesture would make me run back to his side.

Before I could answer, Steffy reached out and draped her coat over his shoulder, leaning close.

"Nikolai, the syndicate elders want me to toast them. I’m already drunk... Can you help me out?”

I pulled up the corners of my mouth into a cold, indifferent smile:

"Save your seat. My transport is already handled."

Nikolai’s gaze turned deadly cold.

"Suit yourself."

He turned on his heel, guided Steffy into his heavily guarded convoy, and vanished into the stormy night.

I stood on the wet stone steps as the freezing rain soaked my coat, my head throbbing with a dull, heavy ache.

I walked down the narrow side street toward my family’s private garage.

Just as I turned into a darkened alleyway, two men in tactical gear lunged out from the shadows.

I managed to draw my blade and strike one, but the second slammed me viciously against the damp brick wall, disarming me and leaving a gashing wound along my ribs before my counter-strike forced them to retreat into the fog.

Bleeding onto the cobblestones, my fingers acted instinctively—I pressed the hard-coded emergency beacon on my comm device.

It pinged four times.

On the fifth ping, the signal was abruptly terminated.

That priority frequency belonged to Nikolai.

The man who used to trigger a total lockdown of the city whenever my heart rate monitor spiked was never going to answer again.

I didn't shed a tear. I didn't ping him twice.

Forcing myself upright, I bandaged my side with a strip of silk from my dress and keyed the private code for the underground medical vault.

At the hidden clinic beneath the city, the medic stitched my wound and hooked me up to an IV drip.

I lay back on the steel gurney, staring up at the flickering overhead light.

Suddenly, the heavy vault door hissed open.

A towering figure stepped into the stark white room, his massive frame blocking the harsh light from the corridor.

Recognizing the dark tailored suit and the silver signet ring on his hand, my heart skipped a beat.

"Maria Richard," he murmured, his deep voice cutting through the silence like a drawn blade. "Is this really how the most brilliant strategist in the underworld allows herself to be treated?”