Chapter 3
The
heavy wrought-iron gates of the Valecrest estate slid open with a low,
mechanical hum. Cassian stepped out of his sleek black sedan, his face an
unreadable mask of cold stone. His mother had asked
him to come over for breakfast, stating
it had been too long he stayed
away from his family.
Inside the grand
dining hall, Alaric
Valecrest sat at the head of the dark oak table, his silver hair slicked back, his suit immaculate.
Cassian’s younger brothers, Adrian and Kanin, stilled their conversation the
moment the eldest son entered.
“Finally decided
to grace us with your presence,” Alaric
murmured, his voice
clipped and heavy with the authority of the Valecrest
patriarch.
Cassian didn't sit. He merely inclined his head. “I came to see
Mother. Not grace you with my presence, father.” Cassian has never had a good
relationship with his father, not since after he decided to walk away from the
family business. His father had trained him to be a grim business mogul, to
take over the Valecrest Towers of Ravenshire and for that he needed to be very
gray. After a night when he had been pushed to commit murder,
his father had exiled him. To the rest of the family it was punishment. To Alaric
Valecrest, it was the last straw to push his son either to become a puppet or
master the ways of the underworld. Cassian had become their Alpha and pivoted
himself from whatever plans hos father had for him.
Alaric’s eyes narrowed into icy slits.
“You think your construction empire
makes you independent, Cassian? You are a
Valecrest. The bloodline always claims its due.”
“I build
empires with concrete
now, Father. Not bodies,” Cassian
replied, his voice
a freezing whisper.
Before Alaric
could answer, Cassian turned on his heel and walked out. He had spent years
drawing a line between his legitimate corporate standing and the dark mafia
legacy his father had beaten into him. But in a city like Ravenshire, dark shadows always
had a way of bleeding
into the light.
Across the city,
in a high-rise office overlooking the financial district, Dylan Norman leaned
back in his executive chair,
his throat heavily bruised and his hand shaking with humiliating rage.
He tapped his tablet, pulling
up a surveillance photo of Laika entering
Elite Club the previous
evening.
“You said you were looking
for leverage against the Valecrest beast,” Dylan hissed into his secure phone line. “I found it. I watched him completely lose his mind over a waitress at the Elite Club last night. He almost crushed my neck
because I reached for her.”
On the other end of the line, a low, gravelly
laugh vibrated through
the speaker. It was Lobo—the brutal leader of a rival cartel
faction. “Valecrest doesn't get attached.”
“He did for her,” Dylan snarled. “She’s
under his thumb now. Take her. Make him bleed.”
Lobo stared
at the image on his monitor, a predatory grin cutting across
his scarred face.
Cassian Valecrest had executed Lobo's brother two years ago on the docks
without a shred of mercy. “Bring her to the warehouse,” Lobo ordered his men.
“Let's see if the ice prince burns.”
That evening,
rain fell in heavy sheets over the neon-lit streets.
Laika pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders as she stepped
out of the secondary exit of Dominion Tower. She had spent
the last four hours trapped
in Cassian's executive suite, forced to
review financial data while under the
watchful eyes of his security team.
Her real goal had failed—she hadn't
been able to slip into his private
safe to steal
back the encrypted hardware
token. Now, her only option
was to reach her apartment, power up her secondary laptop, and ping the hacker
to explain that the key was in Valecrest’s hands.
She rushed
down the dark alley toward
her street. Headlights
flashed.
A
black van cut off the alley exit, its tires screeching on the wet cobblestones.
Panic surged hot and fast through
her veins. She spun around
to run, but two massive
men in tactical gear stepped out of the shadows, blocking her
retreat.
“What do you
want? Get away from me!” Laika yelled, dropping her bag.
She didn't hesitate—she slammed her heel down on the first
man's foot and swung her fist,
cracking her knuckles against his jaw.
“Fierce bitch,”
the man growled, wiping blood from his lip.
Before
she could strike again, a heavy, chemical-soaked cloth was clamped violently
over her nose and mouth.
Laika fought wildly,
tearing at his arms, her heart hammering against her ribs like
a trapped animal. But the toxic fumes quickly dissolved her strength. Her
vision fractured into darkness, her body going limp as they threw her into the
back of the van.
In his high-rise penthouse, Cassian stood
before the floor-to-ceiling glass, a glass
of neat whiskey untouched in his hand. His phone
buzzed aggressively against the marble counter.
An unknown number. He swiped to unlock it.
The screen
flashed with a high-resolution image
that made the air instantly leave his lungs. It was Laika.
She was bound
tightly to a rusted metal
chair in a dimly lit warehouse, her lips pressed
tight, her dark eyes wide
with defiant terror. A faint bruise was already forming along her cheekbone.
A second
later, the phone
rang. Cassian answered
it, his baritone
dropping into a register of pure,
lethal malice. “You are already dead.”
Lobo’s mocking chuckle
echoed through the line. “Careful, Boss. You don’t
run the underworld anymore, remember? You’re just
a legitimate businessman now.”
“Name your price,” Cassian
whispered, his knuckles
turning a stark,
bloodless white as he gripped the phone.
“Blood for blood,” Lobo snarled. “You buried my brother. Now, I’m going
to make your little bitch pay the interest.”
Through the speaker, the sharp, heavy
crack of leather
hitting skin echoed,
followed instantly by Laika’s sharp, suffocating gasp of
pain.
“Cassian, don't—” her voice cut through, fierce
even through her agony, before
she was brutally silenced.
The call went dead.
A violent, catastrophic surge of fury tore through
Cassian's absolute control.
The penthouse layout dissolved into a blinding, vivid
red. The mafia prince he had tried so hard to bury tore through his skin,
demanding slaughter. Lobo had kidnapped his little fierce thief.
The private
elevator clicked open,
and Jaye stepped
out, his sharp
eyes instantly assessing the lethal tension radiating from Cassian’s frame.
“They sent me the image
too, Boss,” Jaye said smoothly. “The Lobos. They’re
baiting you. They want you to launch a reckless attack
into their territory.”
Cassian turned slowly, his dark eyes
entirely hollow, devoid of any humanity.
“They have her, Jaye,” Cassian
rasped, his voice
carrying the chilling
weight of an absolute death sentence. “They put their hands on
what I'm interested in.”
He tossed
his empty glass
against the wall,
watching it shatter
into a thousand pieces.
“Ready the men. Tonight, we erase them.”
