Chapter 10

The Burden of Secrets

Days bled into nights, and nights into days. For Alexei, time no longer marched in clean hours—it dragged like a chain in the stone. His body was sharper now and his instincts keener. On missions, he struck with precision, his knife and pistol leaving trails of silence behind him. To Lucien’s men, Alexei was a ghost in flesh. To the city, he was nothing but whispers in alleys, rumors of a boy too ruthless, to be real.

But in the quiet corners of the mansion, when the missions were done, the whispers faded, and his uncle’s name lit up his hidden phone, Alexei felt like two men.

One was Lucien’s blade, honed and lethal. The other was the boy from Russia, hungry and broken, who wanted to be held by family.

And that boy did not know how to answer the questions Uncle Arjun Singh kept asking.

“Alexei, how do you live now? Do you work? Do you study?”

Alexei would press the phone to his ear, with a heart pounding, and reply in half-truths. “I… work. It’s not like what you imagine. But I survive.”

Arjun’s voice always softened. “As long as you are safe, my boy. As long as you eat. That’s all that matters.”

Those words should have brought comfort. Instead, they hollowed Alexei further. Because they weren’t true. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t eating because of honest labor. He was eating off blood and secrets, surviving on the bones of men Lucien ordered buried.

Sometimes, Alexei pressed his forehead to the cold wall of his bedroom and whispered to himself:

Should I tell him? Should I tell him what I do?

The question gnawed like a wolf at his insides. If he confessed—if he said, Uncle, I spy, I kill, I bury lives for the man who owns me—what would Arjun say? Would he call him damned? Would he turn away in disgust? Or worse… would Lucien learn of it and make sure his uncle’s voice was silenced forever?

The secrecy pressed so hard that Alexei found himself writing words in the dark, scratching sentences on scraps of paper he later burned:

God help your orphan. I am not myself. I eat what I see, not what I want. I live what I am given, not what I choose. Forgive me, mother.

One evening, after another mission—tracking a banker who funneled black money through Antwerp, leaving him trembling on his knees with threats inked in his ledger—Alexei returned to the mansion drained. Lucien was already in the parlor, glass of cognac in hand, his suit gleaming.

“You’re late,” Lucien observed.

Alexei lowered his face. “The man was careful. I had to follow a bit longer.”

Lucien’s smiled. “And yet you succeeded?” He asked lifted his glass in mock salute. Alexei nodded.

“Good. My weapon sharpens itself with every hunt.”

Alexei’s stomach turned at the word—weapon. He nodded and excused himself, retreating upstairs to his room.

In there, the phone buzzed again.

His uncle’s voice spilled out, weary. “Alexei, my boy. How are you today?”

Alexei sat on the edge of his bed, head bowed. “Alive.”

“Alive is enough,” Arjun praised God. “But your voice sounds… heavy. What troubles you?”

Alexei’s lips trembled. He wanted to scream it all, to pour the filth of his life into his uncle’s ears: the killings, the blood, the weight of being owned by a man like Lucien. Instead, he whispered, “It is… complicated.”

Arjun’s tone grew firmer. “You are my blood. There is nothing you cannot tell me. I would rather know your pain than be blind to it.”

Alexei’s chest tightened. His uncle’s faith in him was unbearable. He pressed the phone to his forehead, eyes slammed shut.

Should I tell him?

The silence stretched until Alexei broke it, the whole of his heart broken. “I work for a man… powerful. He saved me when I was nothing. I… do things for him. Hard things. Ugly things.”

Arjun inhaled on the line. “Ugly things?”

Alexei’s throat locked. “I… cannot say more. Not yet. Please, Uncle. Just… pray for me.”

The line went quiet. Then what? Arjun asked, “Always. No matter what you have done, Alexei, you are not lost. Blood remembers. God remembers.”

Tears stung Alexei’s eyes. He bit them back. “Thank you, Uncle.”

When the call ended, Alexei buried his face in his hands. His uncle’s words healed and burned at once. Because he knew one day, Arjun would not accept half-truths. One day, the questions would be too hot to answer. And then Alexei would have no choice but to bare it all—the blood, the sins, the chain around his throat.

And what then?

Would his uncle still claim him as blood? Or would he see only the monster Lucien was carving him into?

Meanwhile, Lucien was not blind. He noticed everything.

At first, it was nothing—the way Alexei lingered in his room after missions, his distracted eyes, his sudden excuses to retreat early. Lucien, a man who thrived on control, tasted something foreign: suspicion.

Late one night, Lucien stood in the hall outside Alexei’s chamber. Smoke curled from the cigarette in his hand, the ember glowing red in the dark. He heard a voice behind the door—Alexei speaking low, too low for words to carry. But it was enough.

Lucien’s heart skipped. He exhaled smoke through his teeth.

Who is he talking to?

The boy was his creation. His blade. His belonging. And Lucien despised the idea that anyone else might claim even a fragment of him.

Still, Lucien did not barge in. Not yet. He was patient. Like a spider, he preferred to wait, to watch, until the web quivered in just the right way.

For now, he whispered to the dark, “Whatever binds you, Alexei… I’ll cut it. I always cut.”

The days kept passing, each one a seesaw between duty and secrecy.

By day, Alexei trailed politicians, infiltrated gatherings, slipped papers from desks without a trace. His heart of stone grew heavier, but his hands never shook. Blood was routine now, spilled as easily as water.

By night, he clutched his phone, listening to his uncle’s voice. They spoke of things: of weather in Delhi, of food, of the names of cousins Alexei barely remembered. His uncle always asked, “And you, my boy? What do you dream for yourself?”

Alexei never answered. Dreams were dangerous. Dreams made chains hurt more.

But after each call, Alexei lay in bed whispering into the dark: “God help your orphan. I am not myself. I am Lucien’s. I eat what I am given, not what I want.”

He wanted to believe God still listened.

One evening, after a brutal mission that left his hands shaken with burn and his mind ringing from the echo of screams, Alexei stumbled into the study where Lucien waited.

Lucien poured him a glass of whiskey, his eyes smile strange.

“You’re restless these days,” Lucien remarked, passing him the glass.

Alexei forced a shrug. “Perhaps I’m tired.”

Lucien leaned forward, eyes burning. “No. Not tired. Distracted. Your eyes betray you, Alexei. Tell me—what has your attention, if not me?”

Alexei’s chest went cold. He lowered his face, gripping the glass too tightly.

Lucien chuckled. “Secrets, hm? Be careful, boy. Secrets kill faster than bullets.”

Alexei said nothing. The silence between them felt like a thick blade, balanced and ready.

That night, when his phone buzzed again with Uncle Arjun’s call, Alexei hesitated. His hand hovered above the device, trembling.

Part of him longed to answer, to cling to that fragile tether of family. But another part—the part Lucien had forged in fire and blood—warned him that every word was a risk.

He let it ring out.

For the first time since the call had come, Alexei did not answer.

And in the silence that followed, he felt emptier than he ever had before.

But fate is never kind to secrets.

For Lucien’s suspicion had deepened into resolve. Already, one of his men was tracing Alexei’s movements, watching his door, listening for whispers. It would not be long before the truth surfaced—before Lucien learned the name Arjun Singh.

And when that day came, Alexei would face the hardest choice of his life:

Loyalty to blood… or loyalty to the man who owned his soul.