Chapter 16 External Threat
Leonidas Volkov didn't go up to the penthouse after the incident in the library.
The touch had been a breach of protocol, but a different kind. Unplanned. Not tactical. The heat of her skin through his shirt, the way she'd fit against him for a fraction of a second before recoiling like a startled animal.
It left him restless. Unsettled.
He was in his true office, the control room in the concrete heart of the Bastion, trying to drown out the memory of how her skin felt beneath his hands with cold, hard numbers. He was analyzing shipping reports from the docks, forcing his mind back to logic.
Amara was a distraction, just as Marius had warned. A distraction that was becoming... complicated.
A silent alarm flashed in the lower corner of his main monitor. It wasn't a perimeter alarm. It was an internal panic indicator.
LUX LEVEL. VIP ZONE. CODE RED.
Leonidas didn't even blink. He watched the indicator pulse three times. Before he could touch the intercom, his office door hissed open.
Marius entered. Not with his usual deliberate calm. There was urgency in his steps. His face, normally a mask of neutral efficiency, was tense.
“Sir,” Marius said, his voice low and controlled but charged with adrenaline. “We're under attack.”
Leonidas looked up slowly from the monitor. “Where?”
“Lux. Your private section. Not a robbery.”
“The Reapers,” Leonidas stated. It wasn't a question.
Marius nodded, his face pale. “Yes. Three of them. Came in through the main entrance posing as clients. In the VIP Zone, they didn't draw guns. Just knives. It was surgical.”
Marius activated the wall screen. Surveillance footage from Lux began to play. Chaos. Civilians screaming, fleeing. But the attack team wasn't focused on them. They moved directly to Leonidas's corner table—the one he used when he was there.
“They knew your pattern,” Marius said.
Leonidas watched the footage with deadly calm. The men—the Reapers—were fast, brutal, and efficient. They neutralized his two Lux guards before they could draw their weapons.
“The target,” Leonidas said.
“Sarkis,” Marius replied.
Leonidas felt a stab of irritation. Sarkis was his best front man, the one who handled the most sensitive art transactions.
“They didn't kill him,” Marius continued. “They did worse.”
The footage zoomed in. The Reapers had pinned Sarkis to the chair. One held Sarkis's head back, while the other...
Leonidas watched, impassive, as the Reaper cut off Sarkis's eyelids.
“They left a message,” Marius said. “He'll see everything, but never be able to close his eyes again. They left this on the table.”
Marius passed an image to the main screen. A single small, rusted scythe, driven into the expensive wood of Leonidas's table. The Reapers' symbol.
Leonidas Volkov stood.
He didn't shout. He didn't slam the desk.
His rage was a cold chemical reaction—an abrupt drop in temperature, a vacuum that sucked all heat and sound from the room. His voice dropped, becoming deadly quiet.
“They came into my house,” he hissed.
He turned to Marius. His “War King” mode was activated. There was no panic, only absolute, icy control.
“Lock down the Bastion,” he ordered. “Now. No one enters. No one leaves. I want Alpha-level codes on all service doors.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want their eyes,” Leonidas continued, beginning to pace the room, not with nervousness, but like a predator marking territory.
“The Reapers have three money-laundering fronts in the port zone. I want them in flames. Not an accidental fire, Marius. I want them to know it was intentional. I want the ashes to rain down on them.”
“It will be done,” Marius said, his fingers flying over the tablet, transmitting the orders.
“They attacked my art front. Respond in kind. Their leader, the man who calls himself 'The Gardener,' has a collection of vintage cars he loves. Find it. Crush it. Leave the engines running so he can hear the gasoline run out.”
The orders were precise. Brutal. Disproportionate. This was how he ruled. An offense against the Bastion was answered with total annihilation.
“And the leader of the team that entered Lux,” Leonidas said, stopping in front of the screen, staring at the face of the man who held the knife. “I want him. Not dead. Bring him to the lower levels. I'll deal with him personally.”
Marius nodded. “Understood.”
Leonidas paused. His gaze was fixed on the footage of civilians fleeing from Lux. Normal people, rich, stupid, caught in the crossfire.
His world and the civilian world had just collided violently.
And suddenly, his mind shifted. In an instant, the tactical war against the Reapers became secondary.
His mind flew upward. To the upper floors. To the glass cage.
To Amara.
Marius’s words from days ago echoed in his head with the force of thunder: “She is a vulnerability.”
The Reapers had attacked the Lux—his softest, most public front. They had struck where his empire touched the outside world.
Amara was the outside world, living at the heart of his domain.
His immediate thought was sharp, possessive: Could they find out about her?
She was his innocent, his anomaly. And now, she was his greatest weakness—the perfect hostage.
The mere idea of the Reapers—those brutal butchers who mutilated men in nightclubs—even knowing her name turned his cold fury into something primitive, feral.
The touch. Her warmth. The way she had defied him in the library.
She was his.
He turned to Marius. The consigliere saw the change in his eyes, the shift from war strategy to something darker, more personal.
“The penthouse,” Leonidas said, his voice cutting.
Marius waited.
“Double the security on the private elevator. Now.” Leonidas didn’t ask. He ordered. “I want two of my Praetorians—from my personal guard, not Lux security—at that door. Twenty-four hours a day.”
“Sir,” Marius said carefully, “this will… cage her in. She’ll know something has changed.”
“Good,” Leonidas retorted. “Let her know. She doesn’t leave that apartment. No one enters that apartment except me or you, and you only with my direct authorization.”
The external threat didn’t make him question his decision to keep her. It did the opposite. It cemented it.
She was his secret. She was his vulnerability. And Leonidas Volkov protected his territory with absolute brutality.
“Under no circumstances,” Leonidas finished, his gaze fixed on Marius’s, “does she leave. The world out there just became far more dangerous. And I will not allow my enemies to lay hands on what is mine.”
The Reapers’ threat had just transformed Amara’s golden cage into an impenetrable fortress. It had turned the jailer into a fierce protector.