All Chapters of BOUND BY THIS BLOOD CONTRACT : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

Malia's POVFor a moment the screen gave us nothing but white, and I thought, it's broken. We've broken it. All of this, and it's broken.Then the white thinned into a pale grey, and a shape rose out of it. A circle of dark blue, then a crest in gold thread, then a scatter of small raised stars around a shield. It sharpened line by line, the way a photograph comes up in a tray. Beneath it, in plain block capitals, came the words I'd spent months aching to read.**VICTORIA POLICE. COLD CASE UNIT. FILE NO. 0417-C.SUBJECT: CALLAN. HOMICIDE.STATUS: UNREDACTED. RESTRICTED ACCESS.I heard Jarrah make a small sound, like a man who'd been struck gently in the chest."It's real," he said. His voice was nothing but air. "It's actually real."I couldn't speak. My hand was still pressed to the glass, and I took it away slowly, as if the screen might bite. Jarrah's fingers stayed wrapped around the other. The seal glowed in the dimness, and I thought of every closed door I'd stood outside in my

​POV: Jarrah​The tactical floor at Calaby headquarters smelled of gun oil and fresh thermal prints. The sun hadn't risen yet, but the room was bathed in the harsh red glow of the war map projected across the main wall.​Malia stood at the head of the steel conference table. She hadn't slept a second. The tear stains on her cheeks had dried into pale ribbons, and her eyes were rimmed with bloodshot exhaustion, but the wild grief from three hours ago had hardened into a sharp, terrifying focus.​"We strike tonight," she declared, slamming a satellite photograph down onto the stainless steel surface. Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion, and totally uncompromising. "Alastair is at Kilsyth Estate. He has been there since Tuesday. We take two tactical units, breach the southern gate, cut the power grid, and put a bullet in his head before his private security even knows the perimeter has been compromised."​I sat in the swivel chair at the head of the table, leaning back with my arms cro

​POV: Malia​The air off Port Phillip Bay was sharp, biting, and thick with the stench of salt and damp decay. It was twenty minutes past four in the morning. Fog rolled over the dilapidated wooden planks of the old St. Kilda pier, muting the distant, yellow glow of the coastal road lamps into ghostly halos.​I stood near the end of the pier, where the rotten pylons jutted out into the churning black water below. The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle, soaking my hair and plastering it to my forehead. My hand rested inside my leather jacket, fingers tightly wrapped around the rubberized grip of the 9mm pistol.​Every noise made my skin prickle: the creak of the wooden boards under the tide, the distant moan of a foghorn, the slapping of waves against concrete.​A pair of headlights cut through the gloom at the base of the pier.​A sleek, black European sedan came to a smooth halt near the barricades. The engine purred, then cut out. The driver’s side door opened, and a man stepped

​POV: Malia​The air in the subterranean dungeon beneath the Kilsyth estate didn't just smell like cold stone; it smelled like copper, old dampness, and decaying lineage.​When consciousness clawed its way back into my skull, it brought a blinding wave of nausea and the relentless, rhythmic clinking of heavy iron. I tried to pull my wrists forward to wipe the sticky residue of dried sweat from my eyes, but my arms didn't move. Iron cuffs, thick and pitted with rust, bit savagely into the skin of my forearms, pinning me to the frame of a brutal, cold iron chair anchored directly into the concrete floor.​My head throbbed in time with my racing heart. Focus, I told myself, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to force the lingering residue of sedative from my brain. Look around. Count the shadows.​The room was low-ceilinged, lit only by a single bare bulb encrusted with grime hanging from a fraying wire overhead. Moisture seeped through the cracks in the limestone walls,

​POV: Jarrah​The rain over the Calaby docks didn't fall; it drove sideways, lashed by a cold, bitter gale blowing in off Port Phillip Bay.​I stood on the raised wooden gantry above Shipping Container Yard 4, leaning against the rusty iron railing, staring down at the gathering storm below me.​Down on the oil-stained concrete, beneath the towering orange floodlights, the underworld of Victoria was assembling.​There were over three hundred men packed into the yard. Every crew captain from the western suburbs, every heavy-enforcer unit from the northern corridors, every lieutenant who had ever bled for the Calaby name was there. Parked in tight, aggressive rows were fifty vehicles: armored SUVs, modified heavy pickup trucks, blacked-out troop carriers, and two massive steel-plated construction Breachers outfitted with heavy iron plows on their front grills.​The noise was deafening: engines idling in a deep, guttural roar, the sharp clink of high-caliber magazines being slapped into