All Chapters of BOUND TO THE BLOOD KING: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

“Matteo,” Giovanni De Luca said grimly, “you’re not going to like this.”The words dropped like lead in the dim war room beneath the Romano estate. The walls flickered with screens, maps, coded signals, shifting trade routes all alive with whispers of a war that hadn’t yet shown its face.Matteo looked up from the console, his right arm still wrapped in a brace from the explosion. “Then stop softening it.”Giovanni laid down a folder stamped with crimson wax. “New alliances forming in the East. Old money Russian, Syrian, even fragments of Raffaele’s offshore networks. Someone’s pulling strings again. And they’re moving like him.”Bianca, seated at the head of the table, stilled. “Like Raffaele?”Giovanni nodded. “Same smuggling patterns. Same encrypted systems. And there’s more word is, they’re calling themselves The Covenant of Ash.”Lucia cursed under her breath. “Another cult of vengeance.”“Not vengeance,” Matteo muttered, scanning the files. “Reconstruction. Raffaele trained men

“Bianca,” Lucia said quietly, her voice barely a whisper, “we found something.”The words came just before dawn.The Sicilian sky was bruised violet, rain still weeping over the shattered estate grounds. Floodlights cut through the mist, throwing long, spectral shadows across the courtyard where men stood guard with rifles cradled tight.Bianca turned from the balcony. She hadn’t slept. Her hands were still streaked with the faint traces of blood from last night’s oath, the crimson mark that bound her to the fight she had just reignited. “Speak,” she said.Lucia hesitated, clutching a tablet close to her chest. “One of our encrypted channels in Geneva was compromised. The breach came from within. A local contact. Someone high enough to have command codes.”Bianca’s eyes sharpened. “Name.”Lucia’s throat worked once before she said it. “Elena Moresi.”For a heartbeat, silence. Then Matteo, standing at the far end of the hall, looked up sharply.“Elena?” His voice was a low growl. “That

The night after The Culling broke the empire’s spine, the estate fell into an uneasy silence. The storm had rolled out to sea, leaving the air thick with salt and smoke. What lingered wasn’t peace, it was the aftermath, the hollow stillness that follows too much death.Matteo found Bianca in the chapel again.The torches burned low, smoke curling around the serpent crest where she stood barefoot, still in the black silk she’d worn through the purge. Her hair was loose, her skin ghosted with candlelight. She looked like something between a queen and a sacrifice.“You should rest,” he said.“I can’t,” she murmured. “The city’s watching. The council’s restless. They think I’ve lost control.”“Have you?”Her gaze lifted to him, tired but unflinching. “I’m trying to give them order in a world that’s stopped obeying rules.”Matteo stepped closer, his voice low. “Then give them something older than order. Give them faith.”She turned, studying him. “Faith in what? We’ve burned saints and bet

“Report,” Bianca demanded, her tone sharp enough to slice through the static.Lucia’s voice came through the comm, brittle. “Marseille outpost gone. Istanbul’s harbor went dark two hours ago. Our Berlin network’s been infiltrated. Someone’s bleeding us from inside the circle.”The command room reeked of ozone and burnt circuitry. Screens blinked erratically, data streams collapsing faster than they could be rebuilt. Every pulse of red on the digital map marked another loss.Bianca stood at the center of it all barefoot again, her expression carved from something colder than grief. She hadn’t slept in three days. The black tactical coat hung off her shoulders like a shroud.Matteo entered, his boots silent across the marble. He carried the look of a man halfway between fury and exhaustion. “Half the trade routes are frozen,” he said. “Supplies won’t last a month. Whoever’s behind this knows our arteries.”“Rowena knew,” Bianca murmured.He froze. “You think she’s alive?”“I think she’s

“Rome is burning again,” Lucia said.Bianca didn’t turn. She was already standing at the window of the mobile command post overlooking the city. The horizon bled red columns of smoke twisting upward like the ghosts of old empires. Somewhere in the chaos below, the Vatican’s bell tower had fallen, the sound echoing through the city like a death toll for civilization itself.“Then let it,” Bianca murmured. “The old world should burn before the new one takes root.”The roar of engines filled the air. The Romano convoy cut through the ruins of Rome’s outskirts armored vehicles lined with the black serpent sigil. Drones soared above, carrying the last of their aerial defenses. The world’s eyes watched from what little was left of satellites and media feeds, witnessing the Blood Queen’s war in real time.Matteo’s voice crackled through her comm. “Bianca, we’re breaching the eastern wall. They’re waiting for Rowena's revenants and the ones she’s turned.”Bianca drew her weapon, its blade etc