Timur tosses me a blade. We don’t wear padding. We don’t fake anything here.
Steel kisses steel as we circle each other. He feints right; I duck, we clash. Elbows, knees, pressure points. A knee to my thigh. A blade grazing my rib. I twist and slam him into the wall, forearm to his neck.
“You holding back?” I ask.
He grins, teeth bloodstained. “You think this is me beinggentle?”
I knock him to the mat and offer a hand.
As he takes it, Arseny finally speaks up. “What do you want done first? Strip clubs or laundromats?”
“Strip clubs,” I say. “Send someone through the books. If there’s a whiff of trafficking, burn it down.”
“And the guy from the warehouse?”
“Interrogate him tonight. I want names, drop sites, payments. If he blinks wrong, make it hurt.”
Timur cracks his knuckles like he’s already picturing the scream.
We spar until the air smells like salt and blood and something ancient. Until every blow lands cleaner. Meaner. Like we’re sharpening the edge of a war we haven’t declared yet.
An hour later, the heat’s bled from my muscles, and the white noise in my head is finally quiet.
I towel off and head back upstairs, muscles burning, ribs singing, but head finally clearing.
The house is calm—but not in the usual, hollow way.
It feels… paused. Like it knows something is about to change.
Sunlight’s bleeding through the glass, casting long shadows over the marble. Outside, the infinity pool glows like liquid obsidian, the edge blurring into trees and mist that always roll in early this time of year.
She’ll be here soon.
The first night I’ll have a wife under this roof again.
The thought tastes unfamiliar.
Not because I miss the last one—I don’t. She left ashes in her place and called it freedom.
This? This is something else. A move I made. A move that matters.
I glance at the terrace doors.
Some part of me expects to see her standing there already—dressed like she doesn’t care she’s being watched, hands on herhips, ready to argue about dinner, real estate, or the existence of my soul.
Instead, there’s only the pool. Still. Waiting.
Blayd. She hasn’t stepped foot in this house.
And I swear I hear her laughing from the balcony.
I shake it off. I’m not the type to daydream.
I’m the type who waits. Watches. Plans.
I step into the biometric elevator, thumb against the scanner. The doors open without a sound, taking me up to the only part of the house that ever truly feels like mine.
The Private Wing.
