Saying the words out loud, giving them power, collapsed something in her mind. The restraints bit deeper as her body shook with silent sobs. Blood seeped from where the cords had rubbed her skin raw, but she barely felt it. The physical pain was nothing compared to the agony tearing through her heart, her soul, her very being.
She’d spent her entire life fighting against the Heart, against the system that had taken everything from her. And in doing so, she’d become the very thing she hated—cruel, merciless, blind to the humanity of those she deemed enemies.
“Please,” she gasped, not even sure what she was begging for. Forgiveness? Understanding? Death?
She’d never felt so weak before, never allowed herself to question, to doubt, to break. But here, bound and bleeding, with everything stripped away, there was nowhere left to hide. No mask to wear. No role to play.
“I think I was falling in—” He cut himself off and for one breath, he was silent before he finished. “I think I was starting to care about you.”
Greyson’s words cut through her, precise and devastating.
Past tense. Not anymore. Not after this.
Shadera’s breath caught in her throat, a small, wounded sound escaping before she could stop it. It was an admission delivered as a death sentence.
“I don’t know if I will ever look at you again and not see my brother’s blood on your hands.”
Each word drove deeper than any torture Maximus could devise. She would have preferred more beatings, more broken bones, more physical agony to this—this decimation of something that hadn’t even begun between them.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think about it. To acknowledge or name the emotion that swelled in her chest when she thought of him,when she looked at him. When she imagined him caring for anybody else.
She didn’t know what love felt like. Didn’t know how to separate it from lust. But this feeling, this bone deep fear of losing him, made her question it.
Something inside Shadera broke. It wasn’t forceful, it wasn’t explosive, but a quiet, delicate, irreversible snap.
GreysonheardShadera’scrylike a knife between his ribs. Sharp. Persistent. The sound was so alien coming from her—the assassin who never flinched, who had stood before his father’s threats with steel in her spine.
Her cries were quiet, restrained even in her breaking. Not the loud, dramatic weeping he’d heard from Heart nobles when they were denied some luxury, but the muffled sounds of someone who had learned early that vulnerability was dangerous, that pain was best endured in silence.
He wanted to reach for her, to comfort her. To pull her against his chest and tell her that somehow it would be all right. The impulse disgusted him almost as much as it consumed him.
She murdered your fucking brother.
Another sob reached him, this one weaker, more ragged. He imagined her bound to that chair as he was, body broken by his father’s men, face streaked with tears and blood. The image made something primal and protective rise in his chest, straining against the cold logic of his anger.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her vulnerable—truly vulnerable, not the calculated moments designed to earn his trust. The night of his father’s dinner, when she saw what he truly was. What Maximus had done to him.
Greyson remembered how her fingers had trembled when they’d cupped his face. When she looked in his eyes and told him that he deserved better. That he was a better man than his father.
He’d wanted to wrap himself around her then, to shield her from whatever demons pursued her, from whatever pain she’d endured to understand the violence that was in him. The feeling had been so strong, so unexpected that it’d frightened him.
Now that same instinct surged through him, demanding action, demanding he break his silence, reach out to her across the void that separated them. His jaw clenched as he fought against it, refusing to speak.
She wasn’t what he’d thought. Wasn’t who he’d thought. The woman he’d begun to care for, to trust, to—She didn’t exist. She was a fabrication, a tactical approach, a mission objective. And he was a fool for forgetting, even for a moment, the fundamental truth of the Heart:love outside your ring is a death sentence.
Chapter thirty-two
3 AM
Callum’sfingersdrummedagainsthis desk as the blue glow of surveillance screens painted his face in a ghostly light. The Vow would be happening today.
Three in the morning, and the silence of the Heart beyond the walls of his club felt like the held breath before an execution. Each moment that passed brought them closer to dawn. Closer to chaos. Closer to either salvation or slaughter.
His tablet sat in front of him, screen dark and silent. Waiting for Jameson’s call. Waiting for the confirmation that would set everything in motion.
Callum glanced at the bar cart, contemplating then sighing and dragging his gaze away. Today was not one for dulled senses. Today required every neuron firing, every instinct sharp. His body vibrated with the strain of waiting, muscles coiled tight beneath his suit.
He rose from his chair, unable to remain still any longer, and moved to the window. The Heart slept below him, its pristine towers and streets bathed in the artificial glow of security lights.
