Chapter 17
DROGO
The guards dragged me back before I could get another punch in.
Four of them. Professional. No wasted movement, no anger—just efficient violence applied with the precision of men who'd done this a thousand times before.
Fists to the ribs—sharp, controlled strikes that stole my breath. Boots to the thighs that buckled my legs. Elbows to the kidneys that sent lightning bolts of pain up my spine. A knee to the gut that folded me in half, bile rising in my throat.
I fought back. Always fought. It was instinct, survival coded into muscle memory from years in the pit.
But these men knew how to end fights quickly.
One caught my jaw with a precise hook that cracked my cheekbone and made stars explode behind my eyes.
Another split my lip with a backhand that sent blood spraying across the polished wood floor.
My mouth filled with copper—warm, thick, familiar.
The guards dragged away from Klaus—two on each arm, hauling me like dead weight toward the elevator. I didn't fight. Not yet. Saving my strength, waiting for an opening that might never come.
Down. Not up.
The elevator descended into the building's guts—basement level, far below the gleaming penthouse, where things happened that couldn't be seen from the street.
Cold concrete corridors stretched ahead, fluorescent lights buzzing like angry wasps overhead. The sound drilled into my skull, high-pitched and relentless. The air smelled wrong—stale, chemical, like bleach trying to cover something older and worse underneath.
A door at the end. Steel. Reinforced. No window.
They shoved me in hard enough that I stumbled, catching myself against the far wall.
The door slammed shut behind me.
Lock clicked. Heavy. Final.
I spun around, but it was already done.
No phone—they'd taken it at the airstrip "for security." No windows. Just a cot bolted to the wall, a steel toilet, a sink that dripped in irregular intervals. Safehouse cell. The kind designed to break people without leaving marks that couldn't be explained.
The lights stayed on. Constant. Fluorescent white burning into my retinas no matter if I closed my eyes or turned away.
Almost two days.
No food. Water from the tap that tasted like rust and chemicals. The lights never dimmed—sleep became impossible. Every time I started to drift, my body would jolt awake, confused by the brightness, by the buzzing, by the drip-drip-drip of the sink counting seconds into eternity.
Hunger gnawed at my stomach. Dehydration crept in despite the water I forced down—headache pulsing behind my eyes, mouth dry and sticky, thoughts starting to blur at the edges.
But none of that mattered.
The panic hit on the first night.
Not fear for myself. I'd survive this. I'd survived worse.
The panic was for her.
Alena.
Alone in her London flat. Waking up to my note—Wait for me please—and then… nothing. No text when I landed. No call to say I was safe. No stupid joke, no check-in, no voice saying you alive? the way I always did.
Just silence.
We'd never gone this long without talking. Not in seventeen years. Not once.
And now? After finally having her? After claiming her, fucking her, coming inside her like she was forever, telling her she was mine?
Radio silence.
She'd think I used her. Think it meant nothing. Think I woke up, realized what we'd done, and decided distance was easier than dealing with the consequences.
Fuck.
I paced the cell, fists clenched so tight my nails cut crescents into my palms. The concrete walls closed in. The fluorescent buzz got louder. The drip-drip-drip matched my heartbeat—fast, panicked, useless.
I imagined her in that flat. Sitting at her desk, laptop open, cursor blinking. Writing because the ghosts demanded it. Bleeding because they always made her bleed when she was distracted.
And she would be distracted. Waiting for me to call. Checking her phone every five minutes. Doubting. Spiraling.
What if she thought I regretted it?
What if she decided we'd crossed a line we couldn't uncross, that I'd realized she was too much—too haunted, too broken, too hard to love—and decided he was done being the shield for my monsters.
What if the ghosts came for her while I was locked here like a rat, unable to protect her, unable to even tell her I was thinking about her every fucking second?
The scratches. Jesus Christ, the scratches.
They'd be worse now. I knew they would. Without me there to anchor her, to pull her back from the edge when the whispers got too loud, the entities would feast. They'd carve her up, punish her for being alone, for not finishing fast enough, for daring to want something other than their stories.
And she'd take it. She always did. Bled and wrote and bled some more until the deadline passed and they left her in peace for a few precious days.
But this time it was my fault.
My absence making it worse.
I slammed my fist into the wall.
Concrete didn't give. Knuckles split open. Blood smeared across grey stone, bright red against dull nothing.
Didn't care.
I hit it again. And again. Until my hand was a mess of torn skin and swelling knuckles, until the pain was sharp enough to cut through the helplessness clawing at my chest.
Get back to her.
That was all that mattered.
Handle Klaus. End this threat. Get on a plane. Get back to London. Hold her. Tell her I was sorry. Tell her the silence wasn't choice, wasn't rejection, wasn't proof that what we'd done meant nothing.
Tell her she was mine and I was hers and nothing—not my psychotic dying father, not the Bratva, not death itself—was changing that.
The door finally opened.
I didn't know what day it was. Didn't know how many hours had passed. Time had lost meaning somewhere between the third headache and the tenth circuit of pacing.
Guards. Same blank faces. No words.
They dragged me back upstairs—back to the penthouse, back to Klaus waiting in his leather chair like a king on a throne made of blood and old sins.
· · ·
They threw me into the heavy leather chair opposite him.
Hard enough that my vision blurred, the room tilting sideways for a second before snapping back into focus.
One guard yanked my arms behind the chair back, pinning them there with a grip like steel. Another pressed the cold barrel of a pistol to my temple—not threatening, just matter-of-fact. A reminder of how this could end.
I tasted copper and salt and rage.
And I laughed.
Low at first—just a rumble in my chest that hurt my broken ribs.
Then louder. Blood bubbling up with it, spilling over my split lip and down my chin.
"Pull the trigger, fucker," I rasped, the words thick and wet. "End it. Do it. I can feel freedom already."
Because if I was dead, what was the point?
No leverage left for Klaus to use. No son to inherit his empire. No reason to touch Alena or Lucy or Marcus or anyone I'd ever cared about.
They'd be safe.
My death would buy their freedom. And after everything—after a lifetime of believing I carried death inside me, that my first act in this world was killing my mother—maybe this was how it was supposed to end. Trading my life for theirs. Redemption through sacrifice.
Klaus stood slowly.
Blood thick and dry on his broken nose. His face was already swelling—cheekbone purple, eye half-closed. But he stood tall. Unbroken despite the beating I'd given him days ago. The oxygen tank rolled beside him obediently, tubes hissing softly.
He looked down at me—gun pressed to my head, guards holding me immobile, my face swelling with fresh bruises and two days of sleepless hell—and he laughed too.
Deep. Wet. Coughing up blood between bursts of genuine, delighted laughter.
"Truly mine," he said, his voice thick with blood and satisfaction. "I should have come for you earlier. Look at you—beaten, bleeding, laughing in the face of death. That's not your mother's weakness. That's me. Pure."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing red across his yellowed knuckles.
Then he gestured to one of the guards.
A thin manila file dropped onto the glass table in front of me with a soft thud.
Photos spilled out. A man in his mid-forties with a smug smile and expensive suit—the kind of face you'd see at charity galas and political fundraisers.
Behind the photos were police reports, clipped together with neat efficiency: child pornography charges filed, then mysteriously dropped for "lack of evidence.
" Known associate of the Bratva, recently caught skimming millions from their gun pipeline into Eastern Europe.
"A job," Klaus said simply, like he was offering me a business opportunity instead of a murder contract.
"This pedophile piece of shit has been stealing from us.
Millions. He thinks we won't notice because he has friends in the NYPD.
He's wrong. Kill him. Clean. Quiet. Professional. Prove you're ready to take your place."
I looked at the file.
At the face of a man who absolutely deserved to die. A predator who'd hurt children and gotten away with it. A thief who'd stolen from monsters and thought himself untouchable.
Every instinct I had screamed that the world would be better without him.
But that wasn't the point.
The point was Klaus wanted me to prove I was his. That I'd kill on command. That I'd cross the line from survivor to executioner, from architect to assassin.
"No," I said.
Klaus nodded once—not surprised, just acknowledging my choice.
The guards hit me again.
Harder this time. More deliberate. Fists driving into my ribs with surgical precision, targeting the spots they'd already softened.
Boots to my thighs that would leave bruises the size of dinner plates.
Something cracked—bone or cartilage, I couldn't tell which—and pain exploded white-hot through my chest.
I spat blood onto the pristine floor and laughed again through red teeth.
"Just pull the trigger, old man. Stop wasting everyone's time."
"No," Klaus said calmly.
He gestured again.
The enormous TV mounted on the wall flickered to life.
Live feed. Crystal clear. Real-time.
Alena in her London flat—alone in the kitchen, wine glass in hand, dark hair falling loose around her shoulders. She was staring at her phone like she was willing it to ring. Like she was waiting for me to call and tell her everything was fine.
The image made my chest cavity collapse.
She looked exhausted. Pale. Eyes red-rimmed like she'd been crying. The kitchen behind her was a mess—broken glass on the floor, wine staining the wall, her laptop open on the counter surrounded by scattered pages.
The camera angle shifted.
Lucy laughing at something Marcus said in their London home, her engagement ring catching the light. Marcus smiling next to her, pouring wine, oblivious to the surveillance.
More files slid across the table. Photographs. Addresses typed in neat columns. Schedules showing their routines—when Lucy went running, when Marcus visited his office, when Alena wrote late into the night with only her kitchen light on.
Everything Klaus would need to make them disappear.
"Say no one more time," Klaus said quietly, almost gently, "and she goes down like a sack of potatoes. Simple. Clean. Before you can even get on a plane back to London."
I shook.
Couldn't stop it. My whole body trembling—rage and fear and helplessness mixing into something toxic that crawled under my skin like insects.
Two days locked in that cell, and she'd been alone the whole time. Waiting. Bleeding. Thinking I'd abandoned her after finally having her.
And now Klaus had cameras on her. Watching her cry. Watching her break.
Klaus leaned in close, blood still dripping from his chin onto the glass table between us.
"Oh, come on," he said, his tone almost reasonable. Fatherly, even. "I asked you to kill a despicable man. A shitty pedophile who hurts children and steals from people far more dangerous than him. Why say no? Would you prefer if he was noble? Innocent? Is that what it takes to make you refuse?"
He laughed again—coughed blood into his hand, wiped it casually on his ruined shirt.
"So what is it, son? Yes or no?"
He reached up with one bloodstained hand and touched one of the faded eight-pointed stars on his collarbone. The ink was old, blurred at the edges, but still clear enough to read if you knew the code.
"Because one way or another," he said softly, "I will pass these to you. You'll earn them in blood—his or theirs. Your choice."
The gun pressed harder against my temple. Cold metal biting into swollen skin.
I looked at the screen.
At Alena sitting alone in that kitchen, surrounded by broken things, waiting for me.
At Lucy inside her home, happy and engaged and unaware that a camera was watching her every move.
At Marcus pouring wine, smiling, alive.
Safe. For now.
I closed my eyes.
Saw my mother's face—pale and cold and dead, her hand still clutching that note. You killed me by being born.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I'd been carrying death inside me all along. Maybe this was always who I was meant to be—Klaus's son, marked from birth, destined to inherit his stars whether I wanted them or not.
One pedophile's life.
In exchange for everyone I loved staying safe.
It wasn't even a choice. Not really.
I wasn't saying yes because I was afraid to die. Death would be easier. Cleaner.
I was saying yes because I couldn't survive hurting her.
Couldn't survive her waking up every day thinking I'd used her and left. Couldn't survive the ghosts carving her up while I was dead and useless. Couldn't survive a world where she existed and I wasn't there to protect her from everything—including my own fucked-up bloodline.
"Yes," I said, the word tasting like ash and copper and damnation.
Klaus smiled.
Blood stained his teeth red, but the smile was genuine. Proud, even.
"Good boy," he said.
The gun pulled away from my temple.
The guards released my arms.
And I sat there in that expensive chair, bleeding onto expensive leather, knowing I'd just crossed a line I could never uncross.
Knowing I'd damned myself to save her.
And I'd do it again. A thousand times. Without hesitation.
Klaus picked up the file and handed it to me.
"You have forty-eight hours," he said. "Make it look like an accident. No traces. No witnesses. And Drogo?"
I looked up at him.
"Welcome to the family."