Lahat ng Kabanata ng BOUND BY THIS BLOOD CONTRACT : Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

POV: Jarrah​"One minute, forty seconds!" Malia shouted, the haze of violence shattering instantly. She dropped to her knees in front of the pillar, her bloody hands tearing at the waterproof casing of the explosive.​I ignored the throbbing gash in my arm. I grabbed the dead man's rifle, checked the chamber, and pivoted to cover the tunnel. "Can you stop it?"​"It's a daisy-chain setup," she said, her voice tight with panic. "Four blocks of C4 wired to a central receiver. If I cut the wrong wire, it completes the circuit. If I pull the blasting cap, the anti-tamper switch detonates it."​"Can you stop it, Malia?" I barked, my eyes sweeping the dark water for any sign of backup.​"I have to bypass the receiver digitally. Give me light!"​I clicked my tactical flashlight on, aiming the beam at the explosive. Malia had her tablet out, furiously splicing a jumper cable from her rig into the bomb's receiver port. Her hands, covered in another man's blood, were shaking violently.​00:55.​

POV: Malia​The safehouse beneath the cliffside estate smelled of ozone, copper, and cold stone.​It was two in the morning. The server room was buried twenty feet underground, illuminated only by the rhythmic, cold blue pulses of the rack-mounted hard drives and the harsh white glare of the terminal monitors.​I sat in the swivel chair before the main console, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard. Beside me, Jarrah stood leaning over my shoulder, one hand braced on the edge of the steel desk, his heavy frame casting a broad shadow over the screens. He had changed into a dark tactical sweater, but he hadn't cleaned the smudge of grease and faint dried blood from his jawline. He was too consumed by what was loading on the screen.​"Bypassing the third layer of encryption now," I muttered, my eyes scanning lines of yellow code scrolling down the black monitor. "Vance’s keycard got us past the perimeter, but the files in Vault 4 were locked under a dual-key protocol. It’s old

​POV: Jarrah​The rain over Kilsyth Manor fell in heavy, gray sheets, turning the formal courtyard into a slick sea of black cobblestone.​Alastair had called it a "Peace Summit." The press releases had already hit the syndicate wire an hour ago: The Sector Four Accord. A public truce to end two months of bloodshed. It was a lie, of course. A grand, theatrical feint designed to get me out from behind my reinforced bulkheads and into the open where a long-range round could solve his problems cleanly.​I knew it. He knew I knew it. But in this business, refusing an invitation to negotiate in front of the regional bosses was the same as signing your own abdication.​The armored SUV came to a halt in the center of the courtyard.​"Three optical glints on the east balustrade," Malia said quietly from the seat beside me. She didn't look at the windows. She was adjusting the lace cuff of her dark dress, her fingers steady, her eyes calm. "High elevation. Bolt-action, suppressed. They aren't

POV: Malia The air down here tasted like rust and old secrets. We were eighty feet beneath the streets of Melbourne, moving through a subterranean tunnel that hadn’t seen a human footprint in over a decade. The concrete walls wept moisture, and the silence was so heavy it felt like a physical weight pressing against my eardrums. My flashlight beam cut through the dark, catching the dust motes dancing in the dead air.​"Keep tight to the wall," Jarrah whispered. His voice rumbled low behind my shoulder. I didn't need to be told twice. I could feel the heat radiating off him, a steady, solid presence in the freezing corridor. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs, beating a rapid rhythm of pure adrenaline. We were completely off the grid. No backup, no comms to the outside world, just a tip from a dead man that Alastair’s physical evidence the crates that could bring down his entire empire were buried in this forgotten bunker.​"Do you see the inner door?" Jarrah asked, his tac

POV:Malia​My lungs were burning with a thin, metallic fire. Every breath took more than it gave; the air in the sealed vault was thick with the tang of ozone, spent gun propellant, and our own damp terror. The oxygen was gone. Not metaphorically; my vision was already fraying at the edges, bleeding into dark, static fringes every time my heart gave a sluggish, desperate thump against my ribs.​"Malia. Look at me."​Jarrah’s voice wasn't a command; it was a lifeline stretched so thin I could hear the raw friction in his throat. He was crouched against the far retaining wall, his broad shoulders coated in chalky grey plaster dust, his knuckles torn and weeping dark blood down his hands. Between his knees sat the stripped frame of our last emergency pack and the crude, localized breaching charge he’d spent the last four minutes wiring together with trembling, precise fingers.​"I'm looking," I rasped. My voice sounded small, like paper tearing in an empty room.​He didn't look up from t