Chapter 20

The first morning in Brussels was still damp from an overnight rain. The streets wet coffee drifting from cafés. Alexei sat muddy at the window of the Capo’s mansion, staring at the busy streets. The ring, still shining bright, cool in his skin, heavy with secrets he barely understood.

Lucien had been awake long before him. The man never seemed to need rest, only strategy. He stood in the room, buttoning his charcoal vest with the same commanding presence he used to signing contracts, his profile outlined by wealth. Yet something about him had shifted.

Lucien Devereux was not a man who allowed softness. He had built his empire by stripping tenderness out of himself and crushing it in others. To survive in his orbit, Alexei had learned the language of silence and of obedience. But today, there was something strange in Lucien’s whenever it flicked towards him. Something unspoken. Something dangerous.

“Eat,” Lucien ordered without looking directly at him. His voice was commanding as always. “We have work ahead.”

Alexei lowered his eyes to the plate of bread and fruit. He pushed a slice around with his fork, appetite gone. Since returning from Vienna, the weight of everything—the journey, the secrets Arjun had hinted, the strange magnetism of the Cham—pressed on him like iron.

“What work?” Alexei asked.

Lucien fastened his watch, his movements smooth, but his eyes lingered on Alexei a fraction too long before he answered. “The beginning of something larger than you can imagine. The ring, my boy. Do you feel its power yet?”

Alexei hesitated. “It feels… strange. Heavy in my skin.”

Lucien smiled, a dangerous curve of lips. “Strange is good. Power is always strange at first.”

He came closer, leaning one hand in the table between them, his presence overwhelming. Alexei felt the pull—not just of the ring, but of Lucien himself, as if something invisible had wrapped them together tighter than before.

Lucien looked at him. “Tell me, Alexei… do you trust me?”

Alexei’s breath caught. He wanted to say yes, because fear demanded it. But something deeper—something aching and confused—whispered otherwise. Before he could answer, Lucien touched the ring lightly with one finger, as though claiming it by proxy.

“This little thing will open doors. Politicians, businessmen, judges—they will crumble before you. And when they do, they will be mine.” His eyes glinted, dark pools of hunger. “Our empire will stretch beyond Brussels. No one will stand against us.”

But as he spoke, his voice carried a tremor that Alexei had never heard before. A thing of honesty in it. It was not only empire Lucien craved. It was Alexei.

For the first time, Lucien felt something alien churning in his chest—an emotion he had despised in others, mocked as weakness: love. It clawed at him, hot and relentless, each time Alexei’s eyes lifted to meet his. He tried to silence it, telling himself it was the Cham, that cursed ring bending his will. But no, some part of him knew it had started before Vienna, before Arjun. The ring only stripped away his walls.

That realization unsettled him more than any rival, any bullet, any threat he had faced in his underworld. Love was not in his code. Love was betrayal of self. Yet now, each day, he found himself lingering near Alexei longer than necessary, searching for excuses to touch his shoulder, to catch his eyes.

And Alexei noticed.

He noticed the way Lucien’s tone softened when others weren’t present. The way he paused in doorways to watch him. The way his usual cruelty bent into something almost protective. It should have comforted him, but instead it filled him with dread. Because Alexei knew men like Lucien: they didn’t change. If they loved, it was not tenderness—it was possession.

At night, Alexei lay awake, clutching the Cham in his palm, whispering silent prayers to whatever gods still cared for him. He thought of his uncle’s warnings: Love mixed with power turns dangerous. Was this what Arjun had meant? That the Cham’s first victim would not be a mayor or a governor, but Lucien himself?

Lucien began drafting lists. He sat in his office for hours, cigarette smoke around him like a storm cloud, scribbling names on his paper. Powerful men, each with something to lose.

François Lambert, the Mayor. A man desperate to maintain his political image while hiding his corruption. Perfect prey.

Inspector Pieter Dijk. Cruel, ambitious, a man whose uniform concealed rot. He would fall quickly under temptation.

Governor Charles Vermeulen. The most dangerous of them all. A man whose power extended like veins into every part of Belgium’s political body. He would resist, perhaps, but once ensnared, his obsession would be a crown jewel.

Lucien leaned back in his chair, tapping ash into a tray. He could see it clearly: Alexei, like a blade dressed in silk, sent into these men’s orbits. They would be ensnared, and through their desire, Lucien would tighten his grip on the nation itself.

But as he stared at Alexei through the open door—curled up on the couch with a book he wasn’t really reading—Lucien felt the first crack in his perfect plan. What if the boy didn’t return from these encounters untouched? What if one of these men stole more than their secrets—what if they stole Alexei’s loyalty, his body, his heart?

The thought burned like acid.

He rose, crossing the room. Alexei looked up, startled, as Lucien took the book from his hands and set it aside.

“Remember something, Alexei. “No matter where I send you, no matter whose hands reach for you—you belong to me. Do you understand?”

Alexei sighed hard, his chest tightening. He nodded, because to resist would be dangerous. Yet inside, rebellion stirred. He was no one’s property. Not his uncle’s, not the mafia’s, not even Lucien’s.

Still, the way Lucien’s eyes burned into him, the tremor in the man’s voice, left him shaken. Because despite the fear, some part of Alexei longed for that intensity. For years he had been starving—for food, for warmth, for recognition. Lucien’s twisted devotion filled that void in ways Alexei wished it didn’t.

That night, Lucien dreamt of Alexei—not as a pawn, not as a spy, but as a lover. The dream unsettled him so much that when he woke up, he poured three glasses of whiskey and paced the office until his pulse calmed. He tried to bury the images, to remind himself of his purpose: power, wealth, control. But the Cham was merciless. It dragged his heart to places he had locked away.

The next day, he called for Alexei. “We begin soon. The Mayor first. Then the Inspector. Then the Governor.”

Alexei’s hands trembled, but he kept his voice steady. “And me?”

“You will be the key,” Lucien said. “The beautiful thief I saved, polished into a jewel no one can resist.” His tone hardened, masking the affection. “And when they fall, you will remind them whose hand truly holds the leash.”

Alexei touched the ring, feeling its silent in his skin. He nodded, hiding the storm inside him.

Because he already knew: the ring’s first conquest was not the Mayor, not the Inspector, not the Governor. It was Lucien Devereux himself. And if the Capo was already falling, then the empire he dreamed of might crumble before it even began.