Semua Bab Owned By The Don : Bab 31 - Bab 40

The first light of morning was a dull smear against the harbor mist, casting the old penthouse in hues of grey and fatigue. Raven stirred beneath the covers, her muscles aching with a sweetness that hadn’t existed in months, not just sex, but connection, trust rebuilt cell by cell. Jaxon had fallen asleep beside her for the first time in days, one hand loosely curled around her waist like he feared she might vanish if he let go. The moment shattered with a sharp knock against the outer door. Not the coded tap of Jaxon’s men, but a new pattern. Urgent. Jaxon woke instantly, pulling on his jeans and holstering a gun beneath his shirt. He motioned for Raven to stay hidden and padded barefoot into the main room. Raven slipped from bed anyway, pulling on one of his shirts as she crept toward the doorframe. She saw him answer the door to Nicco, his second-in-command, whose face was tight with unease. Nicco stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "Zane made a public move," he said

Raven wasn’t sure when the first message came. Maybe it was the card slipped into her coat pocket in the Vienna café. Or the photo tucked beneath her laptop at the penthouse. The handwriting was unfamiliar, precise, almost surgical in its confidence, but the signature? She knew it even before she read the name. Z. She didn’t tell Jaxon, instead, she burned the photo, an image of her younger self on the steps of her childhood school. A school in a town Zane should never have known. Her stomach curled with nausea as the picture curled in flame. The next message came in the form of music. She walked into the war room, expecting silence, but the speakers hummed with a piano melody. A familiar one. The first song she’d learned to play with Gabriel. Her hands went cold. The screen flickered. A single line of text appeared: We remember what you try to forget. She slammed the laptop shut and still, she said nothing. Two days later, Jaxon left for a meeting with Nicco’s contacts in Polan

The first thing Raven noticed about Zane’s world was the absence of masks. Not the literal kind, they still wore them at the gala-styled gatherings, still paraded around in decadence and tailored cruelty, but the performative polish of Club Eden was gone. Zane’s empire didn’t pretend to be a haven for pleasure. It didn’t offer silk and consent. It bled control, and the deeper Raven went, the harder it became to breathe. The warehouse was nestled in an abandoned textile district on the edge of the river. Raven had arrived under the guise of a freelance logistics contractor, escorted by one of Zane’s lieutenants, Viktor, a man with eyes like broken glass and hands that never left the hem of his coat. Inside, it was colder. Not just in temperature, though the air bit through her coat. It was something else. Something spiritual. Like joy had been vacuumed out and replaced with calculation. Rows of crates lined the floors, flanked by steel walls. In the corner, a setup of surveillance mo

Later that night, Jaxon found Raven. The camera feed flickered in the dim glow of the war room. Raven’s knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the metal table. Onscreen, the girl who’d whispered Gabriel’s name just hours ago, Mina, was held in a concrete room, her mouth gagged, bruises blooming across her cheek. Zane’s voice filtered through the speakers, low and venomous. "She remembers your brother. Sweet, isn’t it? What’s her life worth to you, Raven?" Jaxon stood behind her, silent, coiled. His hand hovered near the laptop, but he didn’t touch it. He let the silence stretch, let her sit in the gravity of the threat. "He’s bluffing," Jaxon said finally. "He doesn’t bluff," Raven snapped, stepping away. "He just waits until you stop calling it a game." Her body trembled as she paced the room. The walls were closing in, the steel table felt like a sacrificial altar. Her throat was dry, and the weight pressing on her chest had a name, loyalty. But to whom? Zane had

The warehouse stank of gasoline and blood. Jaxon stood in the center of the carnage, black-gloved hands dusted with ash and something darker. The air was thick with smoke from the torched crates behind him, evidence of Zane’s latest operation reduced to embers. A girl had been found in the back. Drugged. Chained. But alive.The floor was slick underfoot. Jaxon didn’t flinch as he stepped through it, boots echoing across the silence.Raven watched from the shadows, pressed against the cold brick wall, her heartbeat stuttering in her throat. He hadn’t spoken to her since they arrived. Not with words. Only looks, sharp, quiet, lethal and then he turned to Dante.“Get me Zane.”Dante hesitated. “Now?”“Now.”Jaxon’s voice was low, but it vibrated through the room like a loaded gun. Dante pulled out his burner and made the call, his hand trembling slightly.Raven stepped forward. “Jaxon...”He silenced her with a glance. “Do you know how many lives that little rat has sold?”Raven’s mouth