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Chapter Twenty-Three – Karmia The chandelier’s light fractures across crystal, scattering cold rainbows down the length of the table. Cutlery glints. Conversation weaves between bursts of brittle laughter, each joke sharpened to a point, the kind meant to draw blood just beneath the surface. I keep my eyes on the pattern in the tablecloth, tracing

Chapter Twenty-Two – Rostya The estate is quieter now, but the silence sits wrong. Tension clings to the woodwork, heavier than the perfume of cigars or the velvet drapes still trembling with echoes of the men who left. I send the guards away with a word, sharp enough to clear the air, and pour wine

Chapter Twenty-One – Karmia The hall is a world unto itself—red velvet drapes, gold filigree, chandeliers burning like little suns over oceans of polished marble. Every surface gleams, every corner is watched. The guests are wolves in silk and tailored suits, Bratva allies and rivals circling in careful pairs. Their laughter is sharp, their eyes

Chapter Twenty – Rostya After the failed escape, I watch her change. Not all at once, though. There’s no grand battle, no epic shattering of spirit. Instead, she goes quiet. Her anger stops boiling over, sharp and hot, and settles into something harder to read. She no longer screams at me in the halls, no

Chapter Nineteen – Karmia The world narrows. Every morning, I wake to the same painted ceiling, the same velvet curtains, the same silence thick as fog. Guards prowl the corridors, always close enough to see, never quite far enough to forget. The compound sprawls—gardens, halls, hidden rooms—but each door is a warning, each window a

Chapter Eighteen – Rostya The news spreads like rot, slipping through locked doors and guarded halls—my wife, my bloodline, exposed for every jackal in the city to sniff at. No matter how I tighten the perimeter, it finds a way out. At first it’s just a glance, a lingering look in the council chamber, the

Chapter Seventeen – Karmia Crystal chandeliers blaze above us, scattering fractured rainbows over tables heavy with silver and glass. The room hums with a music I can’t quite catch: violins, laughter, the click of heels on marble. Everywhere, men and women circle each other with predatory grace, their smiles bright and hungry, their hands soft

Chapter Sixteen – Rostya I find it by accident, tucked behind a loose panel in the guest bathroom—too careless to be truly hidden, too desperate to be ignored. For a moment, I don’t process what it is. Just a slip of white plastic, the sort of thing anyone might overlook in a house this size.

Chapter Fifteen – Karmia The world is quiet in the aftermath, washed in pale, watery light that slips around the old curtains and pools on the marble floor. Rain still ticks from the gutters, the garden outside heavy with mist. The storm’s violence has left everything fragile, as though the estate itself is holding its

Chapter Fourteen – Rostya A storm has found the hills tonight, angry and relentless, battering the Sharov estate as if it means to tear the stones from their mortar. Rain hammers against the old leaded windows, wind shrieks down the chimneys, and the lightning that splits the sky turns every gilded frame and velvet curtain