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Stories
168
Chapters
1,512
Words
3.2 M
Comments
0
Reading
11 d, 4 h
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Levon The heavy scent of burning myrrh in St. Jude’s Cathedral fails to mask the phantom stench of copper. It has been fifteen years since the winter massacre that tore my family apart, yet the memory of fresh blood pooling on white snow coats the back of my tongue the moment the heavy oak doors groan open. The icy Chicago wind howls through the vestibule, dragging the hem of a white lace gown across the polished stone floor. Katerina Rostova is walking toward the altar. She moves like a ghost…-
15.0 K • Completed
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Katerina I do not weep. Tears are a waste of hydration and a symptom of a mind that has surrendered. Instead, I count. It takes exactly forty-two steps to walk from the edge of the sprawling, silk-sheeted bed to the reinforced oak door. The floorboards do not creak. The glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows is three inches thick, bulletproof, and sealed shut from the outside. Above the door frame, a small, dome-shaped camera sweeps the room in a continuous, agonizingly slow arc. The red light blinks…
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15.0 K • Completed
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Levon The bass of the underground club vibrates through the soles of my boots, a heavy, relentless rhythm that mirrors the dark thrum of my blood. The Obsidian is a subterranean fortress of velvet, neon, and sin, a neutral ground where the city’s apex predators gather to drink, gamble, and lie to each other’s faces. The air is thick with the suffocating scent of Cuban cigars, spilled vodka, and cheap desperation masquerading as luxury. I keep my right hand planted squarely at the base of…
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15.0 K • Completed
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Katerina The bruised, swollen taste of Levon’s kiss lingers on my mouth long after the winter sun rises over the frozen lake. It was a punishment meant to break my defiance, a violent assertion of ownership in the back of an armored car. But as I stand in the cavernous estate library, running my fingers over the gold-leaf spines of Russian literature, my mind is spinning with a completely different variable. He lost control. The immovable, freezing monolith of the Chicago Bratva shattered a crystal…
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15.0 K • Completed
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Levon The subterranean boardroom beneath the estate is a monument to brutality dressed in mahogany and leather. Thirty of the most ruthless men in the Chicago Bratva sit around the massive conference table. The air is thick with the acrid scent of imported cigars, expensive cologne, and the distinct, coiled tension of predators forced into a confined space. They are my brigadiers, my captains, the violent architects of my empire. And every single pair of eyes in the room is locked on the woman sitting at…
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15.0 K • Completed
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Katerina The heavy metal of the Sig Sauer pulls my trembling hands downward. The crimson emergency lights of the panic room cast a demonic, bloody glow over the steel walls. The air is already growing thick, choked with the metallic stench of copper and adrenaline. Outside the four-inch titanium door, the muffled, rhythmic thud of automatic gunfire continues to vibrate through the floor grates. I am staring down the barrel of my own salvation. Shoot me, Katerina. Levon's command echoes in the…
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15.0 K • Completed
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Camera Thirty-Three Clara stands in the center of my surveillance room with my crescent moon pendant crushed inside her fist. Thirty-two monitors cast cold light across her face. Every screen shows a different angle of the life I built around her: the kitchen where she drinks coffee with too much sugar, the narrow studio where she paints after midnight, the elevator she takes when she is anxious because the glass stairwell makes her feel exposed. On screen twelve, her old apartment is empty. On screen…-
12.1 K • Completed
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Seventeen breaths per minute. I sit in the center of the dark room, the only illumination bleeding from the thirty-two high-definition monitors curving around my leather chair. Rain lashes against the floor-to-ceiling glass of the penthouse behind me, a chaotic, drumming noise that belongs to the unpredictable world outside. But in here, there is only order. In here, there is only Clara. On screen four, bathed in the infrared glow of a hidden night-vision lens, her chest rises and falls beneath a thin,…
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12.1 K • Completed
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He doesn't even make it across the street. My hand hasn't left the console. On screen sixteen, Marcus Vance pulls his collar up against the rain, taking a step toward the curb, his eyes fixed on Clara’s third-floor window. He is a jagged, filthy variable in my perfectly balanced equation. My pulse throbs at the base of my throat, a slow, violent drumbeat. I press a single, unmarked key on my encrypted phone. It rings once. "Aegis Team Two," a low voice answers. "Sector four,…
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12.1 K • Completed
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The private elevator ascends smoothly, the digital display ticking upward toward the sixtieth floor. I stand in the immaculate, marble-floored foyer of Aegis Tower, my hands clasped behind my back. My posture is relaxed, calculated to project authority and calm. Inside my chest, a different mechanism is violently turning. For two years, four months, and thirteen days, Clara has existed as a collection of pixels. A two-dimensional ghost trapped behind glass, filtered through the sterile lenses of hidden…
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12.1 K • Completed
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