We sit side by side in the morning light, pages spread between us, crossing out names with steady hands. The era of secrecy ends here.
No guns, just the real and naked truth.
Chapter 24 - Harper
The Bosphorus glitters beneath the moon like a blade dipped in mercury, slicing Istanbul’s skyline into shimmering fragments.
From the rooftop garden feeding into the masquerade gala’s entrance, I can smell oranges crushed under guests’ shoes, hear distant music curling through velvet-draped corridors, and feel Damian’s presence at my back.
My phoenix mask feathered in crimson and black gleams in the lantern light, reflecting strangers’ masked faces back at them. He wears obsidian carved into the sharp, regal lines of an old empire. My black dress shimmers the same shade of obsidian as his mask under the lights, looking like painted silk over the curve of my hips. It parts over my ample cleavage, and the way his eyes darken as they linger over the neckline, I know exactly what he wants to do to me.
Together we look like the kind of danger people toast with champagne instead of running from.
Inside, the gala simmers with heat: perfume, bodies, debt, secrets. The kind of room where everyone pretends they’re not prey.
Kiro moves ahead of us, adjusting his firefly-size comm at his collar. Iosif stays just behind, an unmoving shadow in a suit tailored like a threat. And all the while, there’s only one thought circling in my head:End this tonight. No half measures.
Inessa Markova slipped through Moscow’s collapse, gathered Anton’s leftovers, and decided if she couldn’t claim the throne, she’d auction off its bones. She has risen again, like a ghost too beautiful to be left in the ground.
This cunt has got a whole other thing coming if she thinks she’ll be left scot-free after everything she burned.
Damian’s fingers brush mine as we descend the marble steps into the main hall, a quiet tether. The only steady axis in a world spinning too fast.
“Eyes up,” he murmurs, low enough that only I hear. “She’s here.”
I catch a flash of frost-blonde hair through the crowd. Inessa’s mask is silver lace, delicate enough to look like breath on glass. Her gown gleams like poured moonlight as she glides through men who think they run empires, leaving them looking like infants who’ve glimpsed fire for the first time.
She hasn’t seen me yet. Good.
Kiro murmurs through comms, “Private auction staging room—west wing. Two guards inside, two patrols.”
“I can ghost the feed,” I answer. “Thirty seconds to breach, ninety to pull the file tree.”
“Copy,” Kiro replies. “Iosif, watch her back.”
Iosif’s hand briefly presses my shoulder steadily and warmly, a punctuation mark of loyalty.
“Go.”
Damian places his palm at the small of my back, guiding me through the shift in tempo, through dancers and gossipers and jewel-draped criminals pretending we’re one of them. His breath grazes my ear.
“We do this fast. The moment she realizes the broadcast is live, she’ll go feral.”
“She already is,” I whisper.
He doesn’t disagree.
We slip through the carved wooden door at the end of the west wing, and silence swallows us. The air grows cooler, industrial instead of decadent. The walls are steel behind marble panels.
Two guards flank the staging room. They barely register Iosif before he drops them quietly and efficiently, each fall softer than a sigh. Damian catches one before the body hits the ground.
The room is a museum of stolen power: crates sealed with Ignatov insignia, encrypted drives caged in bulletproof cases, art looted from rivals, weapons calibrated for private wars. A single desk glows with the pulsing heart of the auction database.
“Give me ten seconds,” I murmur.
I kneel, fingers flying over the touchscreen. I peel back encryption like silk, listening to the computer breathe as it obeys. With one command, I begin diverting the entire auction queue to an international broadcast feed. Interpol, Europol, half a dozen unnamed agencies—they’ll all receive tonight’s sins wrapped in a bow.
My mask reflects the rippling light on the screen. Momentarily, I see myself as she once tried to frame me: a girl with too-bright eyes and too much skill. A weapon she underestimated. Damian stands at the door, watching the hall for shadows.
