Chapter 8 - Harper
Confinement tastes like metal.
It settles on my tongue every morning when I wake in the Ignatov compound, the walls too smooth, too silent, too knowing. The guards rotate in quiet shifts outside my door, their boots whispering against the marble floors like a metronome set to someone else’s rhythm.
I can move anywhere inside the estate but only with an escort. As though I’m a high-value prisoner. As though I’m something Anton might steal.
Don’t let it get to you, Harper, I tell myself miserably. You can do this.
I lie to myself that I’m immune to the eyes following me, to the coded taps on comms, to the sense that every hallway is an artery in a beast built for control.
But confinement has a way of stripping lies clean.
By the third day, I can feel the walls learning my patterns.
Mornings in the west office, combing firewalls.
Afternoons in the cybersecurity suite, tracing Anton’s threads through encrypted channels.
Evenings in the kitchen, where the scent of coffee—Damian’s preference, dark and bitter, always brewed at roughly the same hour he returns from council meetings—follows me like memory.
But nights…
Nights are the worst.
It’s quiet so thick it presses against my rib cage. The kind of quiet that makes the ticking of a heating pipe sound like a countdown. The kind of quiet that reminds me vividly that Damian sleeps in the next room.
He’s no longer down the hall or two floors away.
Next door, separated from me by a wall thin enough that I sometimes hear the shift of his weight, the soft scrape of a book being closed, the restless exhale of someone who trusts sleep as little as I do.
God, how I wish I could hate this man for locking me up in this gilded cage dressed as protection, for the guards outside my door, escorts shadowing my footsteps, a curfew enforced not by locks but by consequences.
But the tightness in his jaw when Kiro reports threats, the way he listens for sounds in the corridor, always poised for danger tells me exactly what lives beneath his control.
Fear.
By the fifth night, my eyes burn from the glow of screens. If Anton is anywhere in here, he’s buried deep beneath layers of misdirection.
My two escorts stand at the door, far bulkier than my previous ones. I wonder if that’s Damian’s doing or Kiro’s paranoia.
I roll my shoulders, easing the stiffness, and dive back into the Malta relay.
This relay has been a ghost for days, never in the same place long enough to corner. Anton designed it the way predators design traps: almost visible, nearly harmless until it isn’t.
A strand of code flicks out of visibility. My eyes narrow, shoulders tensing.
There, thin as a thread, there’s a line of code that doesn’t add up.
It darts through encrypted layers with a speed meant to fluster, but I’ve danced with Anton’s systems before. I know the rhythm, the arrogance, the fingerprints he thinks he hides by burying them under complexity.
My pulse races with the old thrill. This is the one part of my life I never lost, even when everything else burned.
Then the trap opens into a directory left intentionally unguarded.
My hands hover over the keyboard, teeth sinking into my lower lip. I break the seal with one command, bracing for static.
But the folder opens cleanly to reveal a ledger.
Rows and rows of transactions, bribes, stand before my eyes, each one stamped with official signatures. Transfers that were routed through shell corporations, foreign banks, politicians with reputations polished to a mirror sheen.
I scroll further, breath tightening.
Each transaction references a code: VB-01, VB-02, VB-03…
Velvet Blade.
My stomach clenches.
Velvet Blade was Damian’s old intelligence division, one he dismantled years ago after it became too powerful, too autonomous, too close to slipping from Ignatov control.
It was a network for deep surveillance, cyber infiltration, quiet coercions. Anton is rebuilding it as a tool for blackmail and sabotage.
I keep scrolling, pulse thudding in my head.
Countless images, scans of emails, compromising footage of politicians caught in scandals, industrial magnates pulled by invisible strings.
Anton is resurrecting the machine Damian buried to prove that the past still belongs to him. And that the current Ignatov leadership is corrupt enough to be toppled with the right pressure.
He wants everything Damian built by using me to crack the door open.
A tremor runs through my body, my blood cooling. Pushing back from the desk and inhaling deeply, I count the seconds until my heartbeat stops fluttering against my ribs.
This isn’t something I can take to the council. They’d weaponize it instantly.
Mikhail might act rationally or he might break the foundation to save the throne. Damian…
Damian would explode first and calculate later.
So I reach for the one person capable of hearing this without panic or politics.
Sera.
There’s a five-second window where the guards glance at each other instead of me right when they change rotation. I use it to slip my personal device beneath the desk. The secure channel I’ve built helps her line connect with mine.
“Harper?” Her voice is low, tight. Like she already knows the call isn’t social.
“I found something.” I keep my tone level, but the words carry weight. “The Malta relay wasn’t just a breach. Anton’s rebuilding Velvet Blade.”
The silence on the other end feels like the air between lightning and thunder.
“Send me what you have,” she says finally.
I compress the files, encrypt them with two layers, and transmit. Each second stretches thinly. Sera exhales slowly when she receives them.
“This is… not small.”
“No,” I whisper. “It isn’t.”
“And Damian doesn’t know.”
“He will. But if I tell him alone, he’ll scorch everything within reach.”
A quiet laugh escapes her.
“That’s accurate.”
“I thought maybe Mikhail should see it first.”
“Maybe,” she echoes. “Or maybe he’ll see it exactly as Anton intends: an opportunity to tighten control.”
I swallow.
“I need you to gauge him. Before anyone reacts.”
She pauses for longer this time. Sera’s voice softens in a way that feels like warning wrapped in affection.
“Harper,” she says, “you cannot underestimate the Ignatovs’ capacity for redemption or destruction. We are built from both,” she adds. “Be careful.”
The line clicks dead. Her words settle deep, threading into the spaces where fear and clarity overlap.
The room feels colder without her voice.
I lean back, staring at the evidence glowing on the screen, dangerous enough to shift the balance of power in a dynasty that doesn’t tolerate imbalance.
I’m sitting at a desk in a fortress where I’m both protected and imprisoned, staring at the proof that the past Damian destroyed is crawling its way back to life.
He has to know.
Sera’s words disappear from my mind the longer I stare at the data on the screen. He has to know.
My knuckles rap against the wooden door of his office, the guards dispersing behind me once the door opens.
Damian stands by the long table in his office, the screens dimmed, the city’s winter glow ghosting along the clean edges of the glass. His shoulders are rigid, every line of him carved from tension. The ledger lies unopened in my hands, heavier than any physical object has a right to be.
“Damian.”
He turns.
As his green eyes land on me, then to the drive in my hand, his expression is unreadable.
I cross the space between us. My pulse beats too loudly, a frantic drum under my ribs, but my steps are steady. I place the ledger on the table and slide it toward him.
“I found this behind the outer shell of the Malta relay. Same encryption style as Anton’s early work. But there’s more. A project name—Velvet Blade.”
Damian’s jaw tenses at the words.
He opens the ledger with a small, controlled movement, but the air changes all the same. Without blinking, his eyes skim the entries of the bribes, payouts, mentions of resurrected operations tied directly to Ignatov infrastructure.
His legacy, twisted and weaponized, and his father’s sins, bleeding into his own lie unveiled before his very eyes.
His throat works once, a hard swallow he probably doesn’t realize he makes. The tightness in his jaw deepens until I think he might crack his own teeth.
“Anton is using your division’s old codename,” I say quietly. “He’s resurrecting what you dismantled. Rebuilding it from the shadows. Using your name, your symbols, your people.”
Damian’s fingers grip the edge of the table. Just a slight curl of his hand, but enough to whiten the knuckles.
He looks… undone. It’s nothing anyone would be able to see, but the twitch in his eyelid gives him away—I’ve seen him long enough to know that’s more than a chink in the armor. The temperature in the room drops even further.
He’s breathing far too artificially.
Unconsciously, I reach for him. The consequences of my actions or the fact that this man has upended my life in ways that still hurts me aren’t things I’m thinking about anymore.
My hand lifts, unsteady but determined, and rests on his forearm. The contact is like a breeze brushing a leaf, skin brushing fabric, warmth brushing tension.
He goes still like he’s afraid even breathing will break the moment.
“Damian,” I say, softer now. “You’re not fighting this alone.”
His breath leaves him in one slow exhale, quiet and rough. Not a sound I’ve ever heard from him before.
His other hand lifts hesitatingly and then covers mine. His palm is burning like he’s been holding on to anger for so long it’s turned molten inside him.
We stand like that, suspended between exhaustion and defiance, fear and something dangerously close to longing. The kind of longing that coils low and sharp, a need shaped by history and arguments and the nights we’ve spent pretending the walls between us were protection instead of cowardice.
And then the space between us shifts.
He steps close enough that I feel the heat radiating off him, enough that my breath falters. His gaze flicks to my mouth.
I lean in, fingers curling into his shirt, and his breath stutters just once before he closes the final inch between us.
The kiss hits like a collision. His hands are on my waist, my back, drawing me closer with a force that steals my breath. Heat coils through me. The world narrows to the sound of our breaths, the brush of his lips, the way he holds me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his grip.
“Harper,” he breathes against my mouth.
I kiss him again, harder, fingers sliding up his chest, tracing the pounding heartbeat beneath. Everything inside me feels stretched thin, vibrating between anger and want and the rare illusion of safety.
His mouth traces a trail of fire down my neck, my head tossed back as he has his fill of me. His hands are everywhere: at my cheek, my throat, my tits that can’t be contained by his large hands, and my waist that flows into my voluptuous ass. He grabs at me like I’m going to disappear any moment.
It fuels me, my gut molten with pleasure.
“D-Damian,” I murmur breathlessly as he tugs down the neckline of my shirt impatiently. His tongue is warm and alive against my decolletage, undoing me with each stripe. He separates from me, his intense green eyes burning with an animalistic flame.
His breath is wet against my lobe, his lips whispering, “Has anyone fucked you after me?”
His crass words only worsen the storm inside my mind and my body. My legs tremble, wetness pooling between them.
“You’ve ruined everyone else for me.”
His fingers tangle in my hair, pulling my head back sharply. His eyes are a wild creature unleashed, lust unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
“That’s right,” he growls, mashing his lips with mine.
His tongue battles against mine, hands tearing my shirt apart. I gasp, my back arching into his touch. My nails tear through his shirt, and he parts from me, tugging off his shirt.
I drag my nails down his lean musculature as he wraps his arms around my waist, grabbing my ass and holding me up against the wall. My head spins with the impact, and I pant against his mouth.
My legs tighten around his hips as he struggles with his fly, quickly shoving down his boxers with my help. His swollen member rubs against my wet core, and I gasp loudly, my mouth claimed by his again.
His cock presses against my clit, making my toes curl.
“Fuck, you’re so wet already,” he rumbles, his free hand tweaking my nipple out of the bra’s cup.
I feel desperate, like a cat in heat. All I can think about is the delicious stretch, his face as he sinks to the hilt inside me.
“Give it to me now,” I demand as harshly as I can, sounding more needy than I’d like.
His eyes glint with amusement behind the swirl of lust.
“Easy, baby,” he taunts in my ear, “you take what I give you.”
Then, he places his head at my wet opening, pushing inside in a single breath. My breath catches, as does his, as we take a second to bask in the moment.
Like this, everything feels right again, like we are exactly where we are meant to be.
His fingers dig into the plush around my hips, and move me at the pace he wants. It’s a punishing pace, a desperate one that makes me feel like I’m burning from the inside out.
Each deep thrust fans the open flame in my lower belly, every sound he makes driving me insane.
“Who’s fucking you this good? Tell me, darling, who’s got you so loud?”
If he wasn’t giving it to me so good, maybe I would have a shred of pride remaining.
“You, you!” I moan loudly, my pussy clenching around his member, the pleasure building towards a crescendo.
“Me, who?” His lips trace my neck as he swivels his hips in a slow and irresistible circle.
“Damian, Damian, Damian!” I yell, my core tightening with each thrust.
He curses under his breath. “That’s right. It’ll only be me, ever.”
His hips jackhammer into me, and my eyes roll back, one constant moan changing into a scream once my orgasm hits me out of nowhere.
As I twitch in his arms, it doesn’t take long for him to reach his peak either, his lips pressing against mine in a mindless kiss.
The waves of pleasure roll over me, not letting me open my eyes. My senses become woozy, but even then I know I’m safe.
Safe in his arms, his grasp.
When I come to, my body feels heavy with fragile contentment. My head is on his muscled chest that rises and falls with each breath, his arm draped over my waist possessively. His breathing is slow, even, unguarded.
I close my eyes again, letting the rise and fall of his chest anchor me.