All Chapters of Blood Ties And Silk Chains: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The press release went out just after dawn. It was written in the clipped, sterile cadence of corporate grief: We confirm the passing of Varian Kole following injuries sustained in an armed assault. Details are withheld out of respect for family. Funeral arrangements will be announced.The words shot through channels like a current. Reporters scrambled, syndicates whispered, enemies exhaled a dangerous kind of relief.And in the penthouse safehouse, Liora sat frozen at the table, the announcement glowing on her tablet screen.“You’re telling the world he’s dead.”Across from her, Ines stood as calm as if she’d simply ordered breakfast. “Correction. I’m telling the world what they need to believe. It will pull the rot to the surface.”“Rot?” Liora asked, though she already knew.“The ones waiting to carve up what he built,” Ines replied smoothly. “The doubters, the opportunists, the traitors. They’ll show themselves now that they think the king is gone.”Liora’s stomach turned. She gl

The envelope felt heavier than its weight, as though the paper itself carried the gravity of a blade. Liora didn’t open it until she was back in the penthouse, doors locked, Wren asleep under a blanket of stars projected onto her ceiling. She spread the pages across the dining table, scanning the columns of numbers, the foreign bank stamps, the signatures that bore familiar names.At the bottom of the first page was a handwritten line: Meet again. You choose the place. Come alone, or not at all.Two nights later, she chose the place.It wasn’t another warehouse or alley. Liora selected the winter garden of an abandoned library, glass roof shattered, ivy curling around stone. Moonlight spilled through the jagged panes in pale ribbons. It was open enough that Bram and Ines could shadow from a distance, but intimate enough to feel like confession.Ciro Dane was already waiting. He stood with his back to the ruined fountain, coat collar turned up against the cold, face shadowed but unmist

The city was a living machine when Bram went out. Its gears turned in the rumble of traffic, the hiss of buses, the distant wail of sirens; its pistons pumped in the steady flow of bodies down sidewalks. For Bram, surveillance wasn’t work so much as rhythm. He blended with the current, eyes always tracking, posture loose but watchful.The banker, Holt, followed his usual routine. Gray suit, blue tie, polished shoes. He walked with the kind of careful dignity that came from decades of being untouchable. His office downtown, his breakfast stop—a French café with perfect croissants and overpriced coffee—his noon meeting near the harbor club. Bram already had these notes from weeks past. Predictable men were easy to kill; the danger lay in the unpredictable shadows orbiting them.This morning, Holt wasn’t alone.Bram spotted the shadow at the café. A man in a gray coat, mid-forties, neatly trimmed beard, expression blank enough to read as either boredom or calculation. He didn’t sit near

The night broke open with sirens. Not the city’s, but theirs—the coded three-note alarm that pulsed through hidden speakers in Varian’s safehouses.Bram burst into the room where the banker Holt was bound, headset pressed tight to his ear. “Kill squad. Arbiters. Moving fast. They’ve burned through two of our outposts already.”Varian’s jaw flexed. He leaned over the table, voice like cut steel. “Where?”“Hospital perimeter. Reyes and her staff are already evacuating floors. They’ll try to smoke us out there first.”Liora froze. The hospital. That meant the one place Wren had spent enough time to be remembered. Enough for enemies to connect her to Varian’s orbit.She didn’t wait for permission. She pressed her own radio to her lips. “Teams Five and Six, divert. Lay choke points two blocks west. Don’t stop them—turn them.”“Turn them?” Bram demanded, but Varian caught her meaning instantly. His eyes cut to her, sharp and intent.“Into what?” he asked.“Into a trap,” Liora said, her voic

The church bells tolled faintly at dawn, their low rumble vibrating through the stone. In the quiet between each note, Liora sat hunched over the basin in the catacomb washroom, retching until her stomach was raw and empty.The sour taste burned her throat. She clutched the edge of the sink, fingers white, shoulders shaking. Her reflection in the cracked mirror was pale, her lips split where the blade had kissed her earlier. Blood and bile. She spat, rinsed, spit again.It didn’t help.Her mind replayed it—the pen driving upward, the sickening resistance, the gurgle that followed. She had thought she’d been steady then, brutal even, but now in the silence her body revolted.She pressed her forehead to the cool stone wall, drawing breath in shallow gulps. Get up. You don’t have the luxury of falling apart.The thought wasn’t Varian’s voice this time. It was her own.By the time she returned to the chamber, Miss Pei was awake, humming softly while tending a kettle. Wren still slept on t