Chapter Twenty-Three - Vivienne
The upper floors of the estate turn into a fortress of paper and screens. What used to be Alexei’s private retreat—rooms set apart from the chaos of the lower halls—is now ours. We lock ourselves away for hours at a time, poring over files, maps, surveillance feeds until our eyes burn.
The air is thick with smoke and the scent of coffee gone cold, and the table between us is buried in names and strategies.
The network sprawls wider than I imagined when I first uncovered the truth. Judges, ministers, businessmen with clean smiles and dirty money—each one a piece in a machine that’s been grinding for decades.
Alexei outlines targets in sharp ink strokes, while I flip through ledgers, tracing patterns of payments and shell companies. Together, we build a plan not of brute force alone but of precision.
Some of these men will die. We know it without saying. The hits will be quick, decisive, surgical. No spectacle, no message, just bodies removed like tumors. Others we’ll break in different ways—blackmail, scandal, the kind of carefully planted leaks that topple reputations from the inside.
There’s a select few we’ll twist into allies, bribing them with enough leverage to make silence their only option.
It should feel heavy, monstrous. Instead, I meet each decision with cold focus. I don’t blink at the dirt on my hands. If anything, I lean closer, dissecting every move with the precision of a surgeon.
One afternoon, while Alexei speaks with one of his men, I slip away into another room and pick up the phone.
The number is one I swore I’d never dial again—an old journalist my father once trusted, a man who wrote fire into print until the fire got too close.
When his tired voice answers, I almost hang up.
Instead, I let the steel in my voice carry me forward.
“You know who I am,” I say.
Silence on the other end. Then a slow exhale. “You shouldn’t be calling me.”
“You’re right,” I reply. “I have something you’ll want to see. If you don’t help me access an encrypted server—one I know you’ve been sniffing around—I’ll see to it your editor gets the files in a package with your name on the return label.”
His voice sharpens. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.”
The line crackles with static, then his grudging answer: “Send me the details.”
When I hang up, my pulse is racing. Not from fear. From the rush of power. For years I thought of myself as a survivor, clawing through the wreckage left by men who thought they were untouchable. Now I’m not just surviving. I’m playing the same game they are. And I’m winning.
I sit with the feeling for a long time, staring at the scattered files around me.
Justice was supposed to be my motive. My father’s ghost was supposed to be the compass.
But as I press deeper, I wonder if that’s still true.
Maybe justice is just the word I gave to the hunger.
Maybe what I want is revenge, pure and sharp and intoxicating.
***
The shift comes the night one of our assassins reports a failure. The target slipped the noose, tipped off before the blade could fall. Alexei’s men bristle, muttering about bad luck and sloppy intel, but I see the truth instantly.
“Someone’s leaking information,” I say.
The room goes quiet. Alexei’s gaze meets mine, grim and steady. He knows I’m right.
We find the man within hours; a soldier too close to the operations, suddenly flush with money he shouldn’t have. He’s dragged into the basement, hands bound, face pale as chalk. Alexei moves to question him, but I step forward first.
“No,” I say. “Let me.”
The room stills. Alexei studies me for a long beat before stepping back, gesturing for me to continue.
I stand before the man, arms folded, my voice calm as I ask him who he’s been speaking to. He denies it at first, trembling, swearing on his family’s lives. But I’ve heard a thousand liars before. I press harder, peeling away excuses, cornering him with his own words until the truth spills out.
Names. Dates. Payments. The confirmation that everything I suspected was right.
I turn to Alexei, my decision already made. “He dies.”
The man screams, begging, promising to change, but the sound barely touches me. Alexei waits for me to take it back, to flinch, but I don’t. My voice doesn’t waver. “Execute him.”
The shot rings out. His body falls.
For a moment, the silence is deafening.
I look down at my hands, half expecting them to shake, to reach for tears that don’t come. Instead, they’re steady. My chest is hollow, my throat dry, but there is no grief. No guilt. Only the weight of the choice, solid and immovable.
That night, alone in the dark, I stare at my palms as if blood still stains them. I could cry. I should cry, but the tears never come.
I’ve crossed a line, and deep down, I don’t want to go back.
***
Back in our room, the silence presses down heavier than any argument could. The walls seem too close, the shadows too long. The taste of smoke and gunpowder lingers in my mouth, even though I never touched the gun. It doesn’t matter, because I gave the order. That makes the blood mine too.
Alexei moves around the room with the same restless energy he carries after every confrontation, shoulders tight, jaw clenched. He pulls his jacket off, tosses it onto the chair, but his hands keep moving: grabbing a glass, pouring vodka, drinking it in one swallow. He doesn’t look at me.
The weight of what we’ve done sits between us, thick and choking. I don’t want to speak, but the silence is worse.
“You were going to let him talk longer,” I say.
His head lifts sharply, gray eyes cutting across the room. “I was going to confirm before deciding.”
“He confessed.” My voice is sharper than I mean it to be. “What more did you need?”
His hand tightens on the glass. “He was still one of mine.”
The words land like a blade. I step forward, fury rising to meet his. “One of yours who was selling us out. You wanted to hesitate? That hesitation would’ve killed us.”
“I don’t hesitate,” he snaps, turning fully toward me now. His eyes burn, the mask he wears with his men stripped away. “I weigh. I measure, because when I make a choice, it’s final.”
“So do I.” My chest heaves, heat rushing up my neck. “I made a decision. He deserved to die.”
For a long moment, we stand there, breaths colliding, neither of us willing to yield. Then he shakes his head, muttering low, “You’re becoming me.”
The words should cut. They should break something inside me. Instead, they ignite.
I step closer, closing the gap until I can feel the heat of his body. “Maybe that’s what you wanted all along.”
He exhales sharply, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a curse. He moves as if to walk past me, to put space between us, but I catch his wrist. “Don’t you dare walk away from me now.”
That’s all it takes.
The argument explodes, our voices colliding, accusations thrown like knives.
Every word drips with venom, with grief, with the truth neither of us wants to admit—that we’re too far gone to crawl back to who we were before.
My hands shove at his chest, his slam against the wall beside me.
I should be afraid. I’m not. The fury in him mirrors my own, and for the first time, I don’t feel like I’m drowning in it alone.
Then it crashes. His mouth claims mine, all teeth and fire. I bite back, nails digging into his skin, yanking him closer. He lifts me without hesitation, my back slamming into the wall as his hands grip my thighs. Our kiss is brutal, unrestrained, nothing like the careful dances we tried before.
I taste the violence in him, and he tastes it in me.
Clothes come off in a frenzy, ripped, shoved aside, forgotten on the floor. His body pins mine, every thrust of his tongue, every scrape of his teeth a reminder that neither of us is untouched anymore. I gave the order tonight. I crossed the line.
He takes me like he knows it. Like he sees the blood on my hands and doesn’t flinch.
We collide on the bed, tangled in sheets, in rage, in want.
His hand fists in my hair, mine claws down his back, both of us marking, claiming, erasing everything but the desperate need to burn.
The world outside doesn’t exist. Only this: his weight, his heat, the raw violence of our bodies demanding more, more, more until I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only drown in him.
His mouth drags over mine, hot and bruising, teeth scraping until I gasp against his lips. He swallows the sound, his tongue forcing past mine as though he can claim the air from my lungs.
His hands are everywhere at once—fisting in my hair, gripping my thighs, pressing me harder into the wall. I cling to him, nails raking across his back, and the guttural sound he makes only feeds the fire licking through me.
He shoves me onto the bed again, the impact rattling through my bones, and follows me down before I can draw breath. His mouth is on my neck, biting, sucking, leaving marks I know he won’t apologize for.
“Fuck, Vivienne,” he mutters against my skin, the words low and broken. His hand slides between my thighs, fingers slipping against me, rough and sure. I arch, a cry tearing from my throat as he presses two inside, filling me fast and deep.
His thumb circles my clit with punishing precision, and I can’t hold still. My hips buck against his hand, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
“You’re already soaked,” he growls, curling his fingers until sparks explode behind my eyes.
He pushes me until I break, pleasure ripping through me so violently I bite his shoulder to keep from screaming. My body shakes, clenching around his fingers as he drives me through it, relentless until I’m trembling beneath him.
Before I can catch my breath, he’s looming over me, cock pressed against my inner thigh. My eyes widen when I see him—thick, heavy, the head flushed dark. My body clenches in anticipation. He fists himself once, twice, before pressing against me, the blunt head sliding through my slick folds.
I grab his shoulders, nails biting into his skin. “Do it,” I hiss, my voice raw. “Don’t you fucking wait.”
He doesn’t.
He thrusts into me hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, burying himself to the hilt. My cry echoes off the walls, part pain, part desperate relief. He’s so big it feels like I might tear apart, stretched wide around him, but I don’t want him to stop. I want him deeper, harder.
He sets a brutal pace, every thrust driving me into the mattress, the sound of our bodies slamming together filling the room.
His hand locks around my throat, squeezing just enough to steal some of my breath.
My eyes roll back, my body clenching tighter around him, and he groans, the sound guttural.
“You feel like fucking fire,” he grits out, slamming into me again, again, until I’m keening beneath him. “Mine. Every inch of you.”
“Yes,” I gasp, my voice breaking. “Yours.”
The word tastes like surrender, but it doesn’t scare me. It thrills me.
He flips me onto my stomach, hauling my hips up, and drives into me from behind.
The angle is deeper, merciless. My scream muffles against the sheets, my hands clutching the mattress as he pounds into me, relentless.
His grip bruises my hips, holding me still as he fucks me like he means to break me.
I meet every thrust, my body wild, desperate, lost in him. Pleasure claws at me again, sharper this time, spiraling fast. My clit throbs, my body clenching so tight around him he curses, his rhythm faltering.
“Come for me,” he growls, yanking me up against his chest, his hand sliding between my legs to rub my clit in ruthless circles. “Now.”
The command shatters me. My climax rips through me, violent and overwhelming, my scream muffled against his shoulder. I convulse around him, my entire body trembling as he keeps pounding into me, fucking me through every wave.
He follows moments later, slamming deep one last time as he groans my name, spilling hot inside me. His body jerks against mine, every muscle straining as he empties himself, holding me tight to his chest like he’ll never let me go.
We collapse onto the bed in a tangle of sweat and twisted sheets, our breaths ragged, the room thick with the scent of sex. My body aches, marked everywhere by him—bruises, bites, scratches, but I don’t care.