All Chapters of COLLATERAL DESIRE : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

131 Chapters

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE

Marcus’ grin widened when he saw the disbelief still sitting on Ragnar’s face.That grin had always meant trouble.“Shall I show you?” he repeated, voice light, almost playful.Before Ragnar could answer, Marcus snapped his fingers.Two men dragged someone from one of the cars and threw him to the ground in the middle of the courtyard.An old man.Thin. Frail. Clothes torn and dirty. His hands were tied behind his back, knees scraping hard against the concrete as he struggled to breathe. Blood already stained one side of his face, and fear poured off him so heavily the entire courtyard seemed to feel it.Ylva stiffened.Porto looked away for a second.Ragnar’s jaw clenched.“What is this?” Ragnar asked coldly.Marcus chuckled. “A merchant. Tried to sell information twice. Useless now. I planned to get rid of him later, but since we’re having a family reunion…” He spread his arms theatrically. “He can be an example.”The old man lifted his head shakily.“Please… please… I can pay… I ca

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO

After the courtyard cleared, the air still felt poisoned.Men dragged the body away in silence. Blood was washed from the concrete like it was routine. Marcus went inside laughing with a few of his guards, already talking business as if nothing important had happened.But Ragnar hadn’t moved.His eyes remained fixed on the place where Lance had stood.Where Lance had killed without hesitation.Where the last five years had announced themselves in the ugliest possible way.Ylva stood a few feet away, pale and shaken. Porto looked like he wanted to say something but knew better. No one approached Ragnar when he wore that expression.Cold.Still.Dangerous.Because underneath it was something far worse.Grief.Then Ragnar turned sharply and walked toward the east wing.He already knew where Marcus would put Lance.Not among the men.Not in guest rooms.Close. Guarded. Displayed like a trophy.The hallway was quiet when he reached the private quarters. Two guards stood outside a door. The

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE

Got you. Let’s smooth it out and make it feel more natural, like one continuous scene instead of broken beats.Ragnar noticed it wasn’t just him anymore.It was everyone.The estate had changed in ways nobody could quite name at first. Same walls, same corridors, same routines—but Lance moved through it like something had cracked underneath everything. Quiet. Controlled. Unreachable.He barely spoke now. And when he did, it didn’t feel like conversation anymore.It felt like dismissal.A guard tried to greet him one morning.“Morning, sir—”“Don’t care.”No emotion. No glance. Just gone.Another time, someone tried to update him on a schedule change and Lance walked straight past like they weren’t even there.Ragnar saw it all.And he didn’t step in. Not yet.Because something about Lance like this wasn’t something you corrected with words.It had to be understood first.Then it happened.A simple mistake.A young guard misjudged distance in a narrow corridor and bumped into Lance’s s

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR

One evening, after weeks of watching Lance drift further into Marcus’s orbit, Ragnar finally reached a point where restraint felt useless.He had spent too long observing.Too long pretending distance was strategy.Too long standing by while Lance became someone colder each day.So he went to Lance’s room.No warning. No message. No knock worth waiting for.He pushed the door open and stepped inside.Lance was near the window, half turned away, shirt sleeves rolled back, one hand resting against the frame as he looked out over the dark grounds below. He didn’t look surprised by the interruption.He just glanced over his shoulder.“Well,” Lance said lazily. “If it isn’t the man who stares too much.”Ragnar shut the door behind him.The click of it echoed in the room.Lance straightened slightly then, sensing something different in the air.Ragnar crossed the room without answering.“Here to threaten me?” Lance asked, amusement already forming. “Or finally say something usefu—”Ragnar g

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE

Days passed after that night, but whatever had happened between them did not bring back what Ragnar had secretly hoped it might.If anything, it made the loss clearer.Lance still came near him.Still found reasons to linger in rooms Ragnar occupied. Still brushed past him in hallways too closely. Still leaned in when no one was looking, close enough for Ragnar to feel the heat of him, close enough to remember things he was trying not to.But the way he looked at him had changed.Before, even in Lance’s worst moments, there had always been something softer underneath it all. Admiration. Attachment. That open, reckless kind of affection Lance never knew how to hide.Now that softness was gone.In its place was something sharper.Something hungrier.Ragnar noticed it first during a meeting in the lower hall.Marcus was speaking to three men over shipments and territory lines while Lance stood at his side, silent as usual. Ragnar entered halfway through, giving his attention to the discu

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX

The club was built to look expensive.Dark marble floors, low gold lighting, music heavy enough to shake the walls, people dressed like they had never known fear. On the surface it was luxury.Underneath it, everyone important knew what it really was.A distribution point.Money upstairs.Drugs downstairs.Bodies somewhere in between.Ragnar arrived first with two men behind him, expression unreadable as always. He hated places like this—too loud, too crowded, too many angles to watch at once. But Marcus had given direct orders.Go with Lance. Collect the shipment. No mistakes.That alone had irritated him.Because Marcus knew exactly what he was doing by forcing them together.Ragnar stepped through the VIP corridor and immediately saw him.Lance stood near the bar like he owned the room.Black shirt half-open at the throat, sleeves rolled to reveal tattooed forearms, a chain catching the dim light. He looked older than his years now. Harder. Sharper. The softness that used to live i

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN

Lance’s room was dark except for the narrow strip of moonlight slipping through the curtains.He hadn’t bothered turning the lights on.Darkness made more sense lately.It matched the inside of his head better than anything bright ever could.He sat on the floor beside the bed, knees drawn close, one arm wrapped across his stomach while the other hand dug into the side of his skull hard enough to leave crescent marks. His breathing came unevenly, not frantic, not weak—just strained, like every breath had to fight its way through something lodged in his chest.The voices were back.Not voices in the ordinary sense.Not ghosts.Not madness the way stories described it.They were memories sharpened into sound.Marcus barking orders in that cold amused tone.Men screaming from pain, from fear, from the realization no one was coming to help them.The crack of bone.The wet noise steel made when it entered flesh.His own laughter, louder than the rest.That one always sickened him most.Bec

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHT

The door clicked shut behind Jungwoo. For a few seconds, he didn’t move. One hand remained on the handle, fingers curled there loosely, as if he could still feel the heat of the room through the wood. The corridor was quiet, long and dimly lit, the kind of silence that usually calmed people. It did nothing for him. His breathing was slower than it should have been. Too measured. Too controlled for what was happening underneath. Then something in his face shifted. The polished amusement he wore so easily cracked at the edges, revealing something sharper beneath it. His eyes darkened, pupils blown wide as the last few minutes replayed themselves with cruel clarity. Lance’s hand around his throat. The sudden force of being driven into the floor. The look in his eyes when he did it. Not hesitation. Not confusion. Something feral. Something that had learned violence so deeply it now lived in his bones. Jungwoo bit down hard on his lower lip. Hard enough to

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE

Ragnar’s room was quiet, but unlike the rest of the estate, this silence wasn’t tense.It was suffocating.The kind that pressed against his ribs the longer he sat in it.Rain tapped softly against the windows overlooking the grounds, the dim light from outside spilling faintly across the dark wood of the room. Papers sat abandoned across his desk, untouched for over an hour now. His drink had gone cold beside them.None of it mattered.Because his mind kept circling back to the same person.Lance.Or whatever was left of him.Ragnar leaned back slowly in his chair, fingers pressing against his temple as exhaustion settled deeper into his bones. He rarely allowed himself moments like this. Sitting still meant thinking too much, and thinking too much lately always ended badly.Especially when it came to Lance.He could still see him clearly from earlier.The blood on the corridor floor.The guard choking on his own throat.That grin on Lance’s face after doing it.Oops.Like it was fun

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY

Marcus didn’t believe in rest.Not really.To him, a “day off” just meant finding a different kind of violence.The club was loud enough to make thoughts feel distant, bass shaking through the walls and up the floor while lights flashed red and gold across bodies moving too close together. Expensive liquor, expensive perfume, fake laughter. The kind of place filled with people pretending they weren’t dangerous while surrounded by men who actually were.Lance walked beside Marcus through the crowd, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable.Women noticed him immediately.Of course they did.He had changed in five years into something impossible not to stare at. Tall, sharp-faced, scar crossing his eye, tattoos peeking from beneath dark clothes, his presence heavy in a way that made people instinctively look twice even when they shouldn’t.Some looked interested.Some looked nervous.Most looked both.Marcus grinned as they entered the VIP section, one arm thrown lazily over the back

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