God, how IwishI could hate this man for locking me up in this gilded cage dressed as protection, for the guards outside my door, escorts shadowing my footsteps, a curfew enforced not by locks but by consequences.
But the tightness in his jaw when Kiro reports threats, the way he listens for sounds in the corridor, always poised for danger tells me exactly what lives beneath his control.
Fear.
By the fifth night, my eyes burn from the glow of screens. If Anton is anywhere in here, he’s buried deep beneath layers of misdirection.
My two escorts stand at the door, far bulkier than my previous ones. I wonder if that’s Damian’s doing or Kiro’s paranoia.
I roll my shoulders, easing the stiffness, and dive back into the Malta relay.
This relay has been a ghost for days, never in the same place long enough to corner. Anton designed it the way predators design traps: almost visible, nearly harmless until it isn’t.
A strand of code flicks out of visibility. My eyes narrow, shoulders tensing.
There, thin as a thread, there’s a line of code that doesn’t add up.
It darts through encrypted layers with a speed meant to fluster, but I’ve danced with Anton’s systems before. I know therhythm, the arrogance, the fingerprints he thinks he hides by burying them under complexity.
My pulse races with the old thrill. This is the one part of my life I never lost, even when everything else burned.
Then the trap opens into a directory left intentionally unguarded.
My hands hover over the keyboard, teeth sinking into my lower lip. I break the seal with one command, bracing for static.
But the folder opens cleanly to reveal a ledger.
Rows and rows of transactions, bribes, stand before my eyes, each one stamped with official signatures. Transfers that were routed through shell corporations, foreign banks, politicians with reputations polished to a mirror sheen.
I scroll further, breath tightening.
Each transaction references a code: VB-01, VB-02, VB-03…
Velvet Blade.
My stomach clenches.
Velvet Blade was Damian’s old intelligence division, one he dismantled years ago after it became too powerful, too autonomous, too close to slipping from Ignatov control.
It was a network for deep surveillance, cyber infiltration, quiet coercions. Anton is rebuilding it as a tool for blackmail and sabotage.
I keep scrolling, pulse thudding in my head.
Countless images, scans of emails, compromising footage of politicians caught in scandals, industrial magnates pulled by invisible strings.
Anton is resurrecting the machine Damian buried to prove that the past still belongs to him. And that the currentIgnatov leadership is corrupt enough to be toppled with the right pressure.
He wants everything Damian built by using me to crack the door open.
A tremor runs through my body, my blood cooling. Pushing back from the desk and inhaling deeply, I count the seconds until my heartbeat stops fluttering against my ribs.
This isn’t something I can take to the council. They’d weaponize it instantly.
Mikhail might act rationally or he might break the foundation to save the throne. Damian…
Damian would explode first and calculate later.
So I reach for the one person capable of hearing this without panic or politics.
