LOGINChapter 71We didn’t go straight to the private wing.First there was Elena in the main hall, pale and furious and alive, confirming every attacker was accounted for and every system locked down harder than before. Then Luca with a short, grim report and the quiet understanding that the bodies at the cathedral would never become stories. I gave the necessary orders. I looked every remaining loyal face in the eye and told them the contingency was finished. No more heirs in the dark. No more letters. The old ghosts were ash.Only after all of that did I let myself look at Kai properly.He had cleaned the cut on his cheek but hadn’t changed out of the clothes still marked by the night. He stood a few feet away, watching me work, patient in the way only he could be after violence. When the last person left the room he didn’t move. He simply waited until I crossed the space and stopped in front of him.“Upstairs,” I said.His eyes darkened. “Lead the way.”The door to our rooms shut with a
Chapter 70Six minutes and twenty seconds.I stared at the live feed of dark figures moving through my home and felt the old, familiar cold settle into my bones. The same cold that had lived in me the night I put a bullet in Isabella’s forehead. The same cold my mother had tried to forge into a weapon.Alessio watched me like he already knew which way I would break.He was wrong.I lifted my gun and shot him in the thigh.The round punched through muscle and dropped him to one knee with a sharp, surprised sound. The phone clattered across the stone. Kai moved instantly—boot on Alessio’s wrist, gun aimed at his face—while I crossed the distance and picked up the device.The feed was still live. Two attackers in the private wing hallway. A third near the secondary generator.I pressed the earpiece. “Elena. Status.”Her voice came back tight and fierce. “We see them. Secondary team engaged. One down. Two still moving. Power’s holding. I’m not losing anyone else tonight.”Relief hit so ha
Chapter 69The first shot came from my right.Stone exploded near my shoulder. I was already moving, dropping low and firing twice as Kai shoved me behind a toppled pew. The cathedral turned into noise and muzzle flash. Alessio’s men spread along the side aisles, using pillars and confessional booths for cover. They were good—better than the usual hired guns—but they weren’t us.Kai and I had been fighting in the same rhythm for years.I took the left angle. He took the right. We moved like we shared one set of lungs. A man in a dark coat broke from cover near the baptismal font; Kai dropped him with a clean shot through the throat before I even fully tracked the movement. Another tried to flank from the choir loft stairs. I put two rounds into his chest and watched him tumble.My earpiece crackled. Luca’s voice, tight and controlled. “We’re in. North and west entrances. Elena has eyes on the roof. No runners yet.”“Copy,” I answered, and kept shooting.Alessio hadn’t moved from the c
Chapter 68We got the two hostages back to the compound alive.Elena’s cousin was shaking so hard she couldn’t speak. Franco’s son just stared at the floor like he’d already decided the world was finished with him. Elena took one look at her cousin, pulled her into a side room, and shut the door. I didn’t follow. Some things weren’t mine to witness.Luca handled the rest. Medical checks. Quiet rooms. Guards on every entrance. I stood in the war room with the folded page still in my pocket and watched the sky through the high windows turn from black to the first thin gray of false dawn.Sunrise was less than ninety minutes away.Kai came up behind me. I felt him before I heard him—heat, the faint smell of gun oil and the cologne he only wore when he knew we might not come back. His chest pressed lightly against my back. One arm slid around my waist, hand splaying low over my stomach like he needed the contact as much as I did.“We don’t have to walk in the front,” he said against my ea
Chapter 67I didn’t speak until the shipyard lights disappeared behind us.Kai drove. I sat in the passenger seat with the folded page still in my pocket, the paper edges cutting into my palm every time my fist tightened. The city slid past in dark streaks. My mind kept looping the same three images: the typed order with my mother’s signature, Alessio’s calm little smile, and the two black-bagged heads on that laptop screen.Become the one he leans on.She had written it like a grocery list. Get close. Stay close. Be the attachment. Open the door when the time comes.I had married the man she assigned to me.Kai’s hand left the wheel for a second and settled on my thigh, heavy and warm. He didn’t say anything. He just kept it there, thumb moving in a slow, steady line the same way he had in the side room days ago when the first message arrived. The contact grounded me and scraped at the same time. I hated how much I needed it.“Talk to me,” he said finally, voice low.“Not yet.”He ac
Chapter 66Leo picked up the page.The paper was thin, the typeface clean, the signature at the bottom unmistakable—Maria’s sharp, slanted hand.Kai stood still beside him. Alessio watched them both with the mild interest of someone who already knew the ending.Leo read.Kai,The boy is becoming difficult. He is soft in ways that will ruin everything I built. Tonight you will make contact. Get close. Stay close. Become the one he leans on. If he starts forming real attachments, make certain you are the attachment. Report every private conversation, every name he trusts, every plan he makes for this “reform” nonsense. When the time comes, you will be the one who opens the door. Do not fail me.— M.Leo set the page down carefully.The warehouse was quiet except for the distant slap of water against the docks.Kai spoke first, voice low and steady. “I took the order. I made contact that night. I stayed. I reported the early things—names, movements, nothing that ever got anyone killed. T
The dock smelled like salt water and rotting fish. Leo stood behind a stack of shipping containers with Kai right beside him. Night air was cold. Leo had changed into black tactical gear. Tight shirt, cargo pants, boots that actually fit. He carried a gun in his hand and another on his hip. For th
Chapter 4 The morning light came through the heavy curtains. Leo woke up first. His body felt sore in all the right places. Ass still tender, bite marks on his neck and shoulders, dried cum flaking on his stomach. He turned his head and looked at Kai. Kai was still asleep. One arm thrown over Leo
Chapter 3 The main compound was a fortress. High walls, armed guards at every gate, cameras everywhere. Leo had grown up here but tonight it felt different. He was not coming back as the spoiled prince who partied all night. He was coming back with bullet holes in the walls behind him and a bodygu
Chapter 2 Leo lay on the bed for a few minutes after Kai left the room. His body still buzzed from the rough fuck. Cum leaked slowly from his ass onto the sheets. He smiled at the ceiling. The big tough bodyguard had lost control faster than expected. Good. That meant Kai wanted him bad. He got u







