Chapter 24 - Harper
The Bosphorus glitters beneath the moon like a blade dipped in mercury, slicing Istanbul’s skyline into shimmering fragments.
From the rooftop garden feeding into the masquerade gala’s entrance, I can smell oranges crushed under guests’ shoes, hear distant music curling through velvet-draped corridors, and feel Damian’s presence at my back.
My phoenix mask feathered in crimson and black gleams in the lantern light, reflecting strangers’ masked faces back at them.
He wears obsidian carved into the sharp, regal lines of an old empire.
My black dress shimmers the same shade of obsidian as his mask under the lights, looking like painted silk over the curve of my hips.
It parts over my ample cleavage, and the way his eyes darken as they linger over the neckline, I know exactly what he wants to do to me.
Together we look like the kind of danger people toast with champagne instead of running from.
Inside, the gala simmers with heat: perfume, bodies, debt, secrets. The kind of room where everyone pretends they’re not prey.
Kiro moves ahead of us, adjusting his firefly-size comm at his collar. Iosif stays just behind, an unmoving shadow in a suit tailored like a threat. And all the while, there’s only one thought circling in my head: End this tonight. No half measures.
Inessa Markova slipped through Moscow’s collapse, gathered Anton’s leftovers, and decided if she couldn’t claim the throne, she’d auction off its bones. She has risen again, like a ghost too beautiful to be left in the ground.
This cunt has got a whole other thing coming if she thinks she’ll be left scot-free after everything she burned.
Damian’s fingers brush mine as we descend the marble steps into the main hall, a quiet tether. The only steady axis in a world spinning too fast.
“Eyes up,” he murmurs, low enough that only I hear. “She’s here.”
I catch a flash of frost-blonde hair through the crowd. Inessa’s mask is silver lace, delicate enough to look like breath on glass. Her gown gleams like poured moonlight as she glides through men who think they run empires, leaving them looking like infants who’ve glimpsed fire for the first time.
She hasn’t seen me yet. Good.
Kiro murmurs through comms, “Private auction staging room—west wing. Two guards inside, two patrols.”
“I can ghost the feed,” I answer. “Thirty seconds to breach, ninety to pull the file tree.”
“Copy,” Kiro replies. “Iosif, watch her back.”
Iosif’s hand briefly presses my shoulder steadily and warmly, a punctuation mark of loyalty.
“Go.”
Damian places his palm at the small of my back, guiding me through the shift in tempo, through dancers and gossipers and jewel-draped criminals pretending we’re one of them. His breath grazes my ear.
“We do this fast. The moment she realizes the broadcast is live, she’ll go feral.”
“She already is,” I whisper.
He doesn’t disagree.
We slip through the carved wooden door at the end of the west wing, and silence swallows us. The air grows cooler, industrial instead of decadent. The walls are steel behind marble panels.
Two guards flank the staging room. They barely register Iosif before he drops them quietly and efficiently, each fall softer than a sigh. Damian catches one before the body hits the ground.
The room is a museum of stolen power: crates sealed with Ignatov insignia, encrypted drives caged in bulletproof cases, art looted from rivals, weapons calibrated for private wars. A single desk glows with the pulsing heart of the auction database.
“Give me ten seconds,” I murmur.
I kneel, fingers flying over the touchscreen.
I peel back encryption like silk, listening to the computer breathe as it obeys.
With one command, I begin diverting the entire auction queue to an international broadcast feed.
Interpol, Europol, half a dozen unnamed agencies—they’ll all receive tonight’s sins wrapped in a bow.
My mask reflects the rippling light on the screen. Momentarily, I see myself as she once tried to frame me: a girl with too-bright eyes and too much skill. A weapon she underestimated. Damian stands at the door, watching the hall for shadows.
He can feel when danger shifts; his body is a barometer for violence.
Kiro whispers through the line, “Harper, you’re almost hot. Thirty seconds until the monitoring script hits the spike.”
“Perfect,” I say, breath steady. “I only need twenty.”
And then—
“Harper.”
Damian’s voice is a razor wrapped in velvet.
I turn.
Inessa stands in the doorway.
She’s alone, of course, because she prefers to enter battles like a queen extending mercy to lesser creatures. Her eyes gleam with too much light, and her smile glitters like a blade dipped in sugar.
“What an intimate little reunion,” she purrs, voice soft as silk slipping off shoulders. “The bride, the Blade, and their two loyal dogs.” She glides into the room, silver lace shimmering. “I should have known you’d come. You always were sentimental creatures.”
My heartbeat stays the same, because she is nothing to fear.
“Show’s over, Inessa.”
“Is it?” She tilts her head. “Because I’m the one holding the winning hand. And you… you’re the thing that ruined him.”
Damian shifts toward her, his expression full of malice, but I lift a hand.
No. Now she’ll know the price of the bullshit she’s put everyone through.
“Inessa,” I say, voice eerily calm. “The entire auction has been streaming live to global agencies for the last—” I check the screen, “—six minutes.”
Her composure fractures, smile corroding off her face like rust washed away by acid.
Her fingers twitch by her side and—
She lunges for the console.
Damian catches her wrist mid-strike, his grip bruising. She twists, too graceful to be human, nails catching his mask. He pins her easily, but she slips free like smoke, bolting for the side exit.
“Damian, go!” I shout.
Iosif blocks the main door as Damian charges after her, forcing her into the hall that leads straight back to the ballroom.
Kiro’s voice explodes over comms. “She’s running toward the crowd—she’s trying to use civilians as cover. Agents incoming from east corridor!”
I grab the drives from the desk, secure them at my belt, and sprint.
The hallway explodes into motion. The pounding of feet, the shriek of alarms that are triggered by my broadcast as the orchestra collapses into discordant noise. Guests scatter like startled birds as Inessa shoves through them, mask slipping sideways, hair wild.
The queen has abandoned her throne and now claws at the floorboards to keep from falling.
I hit the ballroom just as she does.
She tries to flee through the balcony but agents flood the entrance, weapons drawn, badges flashing, Interpol and Europol alike.
She freezes, the shaky smile on her face as fake as her grip over Anton’s empire. I step into the center of the ballroom, mask half torn, breathing hard, Damian appearing at my side.
“Inessa Markova,” I say, my voice cutting through the room. “This is over. The world is watching. And this—” I gesture to the screens flickering to life above us, showing her auction logs, her encrypted messages, her forged signatures, “—is your empire.”
The click of the cuffs echoes in the room. Inessa tilts her chin up as the agents guide her forward, her gown trailing behind her like a dying comet’s tail.
The feathers on her mask tremble with pure fury. She twists her head just enough to find me, her pupils contracting as though I’m the light she wishes she could snuff out.
“Love makes fools of killers,” she hisses, her voice slicing through the thick hush, a blade coated in perfume and venom.
Her words hit with the precision of a sniper shot, but they don’t do anything to me. Where they would have gotten under my nerves some months ago, they feel like a breeze brushing my face.
I step close enough that only she and Damian can hear me, close enough that the agents rounding her up pause to make space.
“Then I’ll live with being a fool,” I whisper righteously.
Her nostrils flare. For a fraction of a second, her mask slips—not the physical one, but the one she’s worn for years.
I see fatigue lurking in the corners of her eyes, the ghost of loss, the brittle ache of someone who built her entire spine out of ambition because she feared she didn’t have one otherwise.
And then it’s gone.
She turns away sharply as the agents lead her down the steps, her heels clicking like the last nails in her own coffin. The doors slam behind her.
Damian exhales and I turn to him, adrenaline still coursing, my pulse a drumbeat of victory and cost.
Kiro appears beside me, sweeping off the last of his mask so his face can breathe again. Sweat gathers at his temples; he wipes it with the back of his glove and mutters something in Russian that I’m ninety percent sure translates to “need a fucking vacation so bad.”
Iosif, stoic as ever, stands by the marble banister like a shadow with a heartbeat. A few stray bullet holes dot his jacket from the mercenaries that had gotten three shots off before Damian folded them into the floor like broken furniture.
His expression is unreadable marble, save for the slight tilt of his head toward me.
Damian’s mask hangs from one hand, the other hovering near my waist like he wants to pull me into him but won’t do it in front of ninety terrified strangers and two dozen agency officers.
“We need to move,” he murmurs. “Before the rest of her network realizes who sold her out.”
I nod. “We already sent the transmission.”
“Yes,” he says. “But this won’t end up cleanly, not with Markova.”
He touches my back lightly, guiding me toward the service corridor where we slipped in earlier. The guests part for us like we’re walking through fog.
It’s only once we’re in the quiet, dim hallway behind the ballroom that anyone speaks again.
“That went… well,” Kiro says, which means the opposite.
“You’re bleeding,” I tell him.
He glances down at the cut on his forearm.
“Tiny cosmetic imperfection. Women love a man with scars.”
Damian snorts. Even Iosif smiles, barely.
We move quickly, descending narrow stone stairs, exchanging masks for earpieces and slipping through an employees-only door that spits us out onto the edge of the Bosphorus night.
The salty breeze sweeps through my hair, carrying scents of grilled fish from the waterfront, diesel from the ferries, crushed petals from the market stalls that are closing for the night.
The city glitters across the water. Mosques glow like constellations brought down to earth, bridges strung with lights like jeweled threads pulling Europe and Asia together.
We move as a unit toward the waterfront path, near our extraction point. There’s a strange reflective quiet settling over us all.
Is it all really over? After all the battles, the scars we bear.
Damian walks beside me, our shoulders brushing. When we reach the Bosphorus Bridge, its massive suspension lines slicing the night sky, Damian stops walking along with me.
Kiro and Iosif exchange a look, then continue ahead to keep watch, giving us space without making it obvious.
I lean against the railing. Cold metal is like a balm against my warm skin. The water beneath us churns like a restless thought.
“I thought she’d try something else,” I say softly. “I didn’t think she’d fall.”
Damian stands beside me, resting his hands on the rail, staring at the black water as if it might offer absolution.
“Inessa built herself on Anton’s bones,” he says. “Empires like that crumble the second someone stops shaking.”
“She said love makes fools of killers.”
His dark hair flutters with the wind. He looks like a prince I dreamed of as a child.
“And what do you think?” he asks.
I watch a ferry drift across the strait, its lights smearing across the surface like melting gold.
“I think…” My voice catches, surprising me. “I think love makes people like us dangerous. Because now they have something they’re scared to lose.”
Damian turns his head slowly, like he’s making sure he heard me right.
“And are you scared to lose me, Harper?” he asks.
My stomach flips apprehensively.
“I’m terrified,” I whisper. “But I’m still here.”
He closes the distance between us, his lips parting to say something when he seems to think better of it, shaking himself out of his reverie.
Not now, his eyes tell me. That’s something new I found out I can do—read his face and the smallest twitch in his expression.
“Is it done?” I ask instead, letting it go.
“For her?” he says. “Yes. For us… that depends on what we do next.”
“We deserve a break, even if it doesn’t last.”
“For tonight,” he murmurs.
The Bosphorus hums beneath us, ancient and alive, carrying away the wreckage of everything we just dismantled. Above us, the bridge lights flicker gently in the wind, reflecting on the water like promises instead of threats.
And for the first time since Moscow, I allow myself to breathe without checking for exits.