All Chapters of BOUND BY THIS BLOOD CONTRACT : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

​POV: Malia ​My hands wouldn't stop shaking.​We had managed to vanish into the labyrinth of subterranean drainage tunnels beneath Pier 4 less than three minutes before the tactical response team breached the south gates. We had left the cargo behind with ten million dollars in cold assets and dragged three heavy iron cases of recovered hardware through two miles of knee-deep, freezing water to reach the safehouse on Blackwood Street.​Now, the safehouse smelled of damp concrete, rust, and the metallic iron tang of wet blood.​Jarrah sat on the edge of a steel worktable, his black coat slung over a chair, his white shirt stained dark with seawater and grease at the cuffs. His eyes hadn't left me since we locked the heavy deadbolts twenty minutes ago.​"Open the third case," Jarrah commanded quietly. His tone wasn't sharp, but it carried that heavy, suffocating authority that made the air in the room feel dense.​Grayson slammed a heavy crowbar into the latch of the smallest metal con

​POV: Jarrah​The velvet collar of my bespoke tuxedo sat heavy against the base of my neck, rigid as iron armour. Beside me, Malia pulled her dark silk wrap tighter across her shoulders, her breathing steady, controlled, and utterly deceptive. To the hundred eyes scanning our private box from the gilded stalls of the Melbourne Arts Centre below, we were Melbourne’s most untouchable power couple: flawless, poised, and dripping in sickening wealth.​To me, we were live bait in a gilded cage.​"You're holding your breath, Jarrah," Malia whispered, her head tilting toward mine as if sharing an intimate joke. The delicate scent of amber and crushed jasmine drifted off her throat, sharp enough to pierce through the heavy perfume of the auditorium.​"I’m calculating," I murmured back, taking her hand and brushing my thumb over her knuckles with deliberate, practiced devotion. Her skin was cool, but under the surface, I felt the rapid pulse hammering against her inner wrist. "Three members of

​POV: Jarrah​The opera was a sea of false pearls and cheaper souls, but the heavy velvet behind the main stage smelled of old dust, dried sweat, and copper.​Out front, the soprano was hitting a high C, a shrill, soaring note that vibrated through the floorboards beneath my boots. In here, behind the towering black folds of the backstage drapes, the world was suffocatingly dark.​I stood completely still, breathing through my nose, letting my pulse drop to forty beats a minute. You don’t hunt in the light. You hunt in the gaps between the music.​A shadow shifted near the rigging ropes ten feet to my left.​It was subtle. Just a whisper of leather against heavy wool, but to a man who had spent his entire life listening for the click of a hammer, it was as loud as a gunshot.​I didn't draw my gun. A gunshot in the middle of Lucia di Lammermoor was sloppy. It brought questions. It brought police. Steel was quieter. Steel kept secrets.​I slid the silver-handled blade from my inner jack

Jarrah's POV I told her the truth in the lift because it was the only place in that building I trusted. "It's a lie," I said. "Whatever he wants you to think, it's a lie." "Is it?" She didn't say it cruelly. That was worse. Malia stood with her back against the mirrored wall, the phone held against her chest like something she'd been handed at a funeral, and watched me the way she'd watched Thorne. Looking for the seam. "There's something I haven't told you," I said. "It's not what Alastair's making it sound like. But it's there." The floor numbers dropped. Thirty-two. Thirty. Twenty-nine. "Tell me tonight," she said. "Not here. I can't hear it with the doors about to open." I wanted to argue. I'd spent three weeks arranging the words, and not one of them would have survived a lift. So I nodded, and she gave me a look I couldn't read, and we walked out into the lobby side by side, not touching. I hated that more than the phone. My operations room used to be a storage level. N

Jarrah's POV "Ten minutes," said Marcus's voice from the dark above us, "and I'm a man of my word." I let my head drop back against the stone. Every rib on my left side felt like it had been put in with a hammer. Beside me, Malia let out a breath that was half a sob and half a curse, and I would have laughed if I could have afforded the air. "You took your time," I called. "You told me twenty. She told me ten." The torch beam shifted, and I made out his face, grim and sweating, with a coil of rope over his shoulder. "I split the difference with myself and came early." "Thank you," Malia said, with feeling. "Don't thank me yet, miss. Water's coming up fast. I can hear it from the stairwell." He was right. In the short while we'd been lying there, the dark line on the pillar had crept another hand's breadth. Cold lapped at the lowest edge of our shelf. I tried to sit up, and the world tipped sideways. A small, practical thought arrived: you are not climbing a rope tonight. "Jarra