Semua Bab Chains of Velvet, Heart of Fire: Bab 31 - Bab 40

The ambush hadn’t left a scratch on Lucien’s body.But it had opened a wound in his mind.He sat alone in the eastern gallery, light from the window striping across his cheekbones like pale scars. The gallery was quiet, hung with ancestral portraits that stared down with frozen judgment.Lucien ignored them.In front of him: a projected image from the attack site — frozen, blurred, then slowly enhanced by Matteo’s surveillance team.A single man. Slender build. Wavy dark hair.A hundred yards from the ridge, angled just enough away from the main cameras to obscure his face.But not enough.Lucien’s fingers clenched.The silhouette was older now, broader in the shoulders, but the stance… the tilt of the head… the arrogance in posture…It was unmistakable.Cristiano.The bastard wasn’t just alive.He’d been watching.From the shadows. From the side of the mountain. Not leading the ambush—but calculating its outcome.The implication was worse than Lucien had expected.Cristiano had plann

The air above the Cosenza compound smelled of rust, old oil, and something bitter—like burned coffee and cordite.Lucien stood in the open troop vehicle as it rolled through the last of the gravel path. A drone buzzed overhead, one of four, tracking the angles of entry, monitoring thermal signals.Matteo crouched over the mobile monitor inside, scanning live feeds.“No movement inside the primary corridor,” Matteo muttered. “But someone was here last night. The main gate sensor tripped for seventeen seconds. Then silence.”Lucien said nothing.His eyes stayed fixed on the compound.An old petroleum storage facility, it stretched out like a concrete corpse — long storage domes, collapsed piping, sun-eaten signage. The place should’ve been demolished a decade ago.Instead, it had become bait.Or so Cristiano wanted him to believe.But Lucien wasn’t here to play his brother’s game.He was here to finish it.“Three minutes out,” Matteo said into his comm. “Teams Alpha and Bravo in positio

The sun dipped low behind the stone walls of the Marchesi estate, casting golden shards of light through the vine-laced windows of the war room. A breeze filtered in, soft with lavender and salt, but the air inside was heavy—pressed down with something unspoken.Seraphina sat alone at the table, her back straight, her expression unreadable. Before her lay a packet of documents, bound by a red thread. They had arrived by drone drop—anonymously, from a neutral handler known only to Lucien’s extended intelligence web.She’d opened the packet slowly, as if the pages might bite.And maybe they had.Her fingers hovered over the last page. The letter. Written in Gabe’s handwriting. Or at least someone who had forged it with meticulous cruelty.She thinks she’s the queen. Let her play the part. When we’re done, Lucien won’t know whether she was his salvation or the sharpest knife in the drawer.It was dated three months ago.Three months. Which meant Julian and Gabe hadn’t just gone to ground

Later, in the dim quiet of Lucien’s private lounge, Seraphina sat cross-legged on the leather couch, a glass of brandy in her hand. She hadn’t changed. Her sleeve was still torn where Gabe’s shoulder had clipped her mid-scuffle.Lucien entered carrying a fresh ice pack. Without a word, he knelt beside her and reached for her wrist.She flinched—just slightly.Lucien paused. “It’s just cold.”“I’m not afraid of cold,” she murmured.He wrapped the pack gently around her wrist anyway. “Then what are you afraid of?”She didn’t answer.Not right away.He didn’t push.Eventually, she whispered, “That I’ll forget why I came here.”Lucien looked up at her. “Why did you come here?”She hesitated. “To burn everything down.”He nodded. “And now?”“I don’t know anymore.”Lucien leaned back against the couch, his shoulder brushing hers.“I know what they did to you,” he said. “Julian. Gabe. What they stole. What they turned you into.”Seraphina stared into her glass. “They didn’t turn me into anyt

The ripple didn’t come all at once.It began quietly.A single move.A subtle shift.A whisper in a Geneva banking room about a Marchesi shipment rerouted through Montenegro. A nervous courier in Istanbul mentioning the word “defection.” A forged wire transfer tied to Seraphina’s name traced to Zurich.All false.All planted.All designed by Lucien.By the time the whispers reached Gabe and Julian, the false narrative was a fully breathing myth—a story of internal collapse, betrayal among Lucien’s men, and Seraphina preparing to vanish with a cache of stolen intel.Exactly as planned.Julian Cristoff threw a glass across the room.It shattered against the wall of the rented flat in Barcelona, narrowly missing Gabe’s head.“Goddammit, we should have moved on him sooner,” Julian snarled.Gabe ducked reflexively, still nursing the healing graze Seraphina had gifted him days ago. “You’re sure the intel’s real?”“I’m sure it’s real enough for him to want us to believe it’s real,” Julian sn