Page 45 of Devil’s Night (The Shadows of Darkness Universe #3)

Chapter thirty-three

Kill The Boy Echo Kane

Katya

I ’ve never seen Catalyst this quiet.

Not when it’s awake.

The underground war room buzzes with low light and static screens, the sound of shifting paper and fingers tapping keys filling the air like distant thunder. No one’s yelling. No one’s panicking. But there’s a charge in the air, one that coils in my chest like a storm waiting to strike.

They’re planning how to dismantle my father.

Echo stands at the center of the table, shirt sleeves rolled up, neck still red from where I kissed him hours ago, but his eyes hold nothing of that softness now. He’s sharp angles and colder intentions, focused and calculating, the leader I’ve only just begun to understand outside the bedroom.

Roman stands to his right, arms crossed, jaw tight. He hasn’t spoken much since the vault, but he doesn’t have to. He commands presence without words. Whatever pain he confessed, whatever ghosts he cracked open for a moment back there, are gone now. This is the soldier in him. The weapon.

Across from them, Ana flips through aerial schematics, her red hair pulled into a severe braid, lips pressed into a line that says she doesn’t trust me, not entirely. But she’s here. And that says something.

Noah leans against the wall beside her, the glow of the screen illuminating the scars flecking his skin. Unlike the others, he’s watching me more than the table. Not out of suspicion, but curiosity, like he’s wondering where I’ll be when this all starts burning.

I haven’t spoken since they called me down here.

I just listen.

Watch.

Try not to think about how the walls on this screen, the outer perimeters of the estate I grew up in, used to feel like home.

Echo is speaking again. “We go in through the garden utility gate, east side. Minimal guard rotation, and Dimitri won’t have them watching the greenhouse tunnels. He’s arrogant, not stupid. He’ll fortify the front, not the roots.”

Roman taps the map. “Once we’re inside, we split. Noah and I will sweep the upper levels, trigger the security loop, and wipe the interior grid. Ana and Echo head to the lower cells, extract the children first. Quiet. Fast. If we’re seen, we abort.”

Noah speaks up. “What about the blind girl in Cell Five?”

The question lands like a blow to my ribs. My stomach tightens.

I swallow. “She’s mine.”

Four pairs of eyes snap to me.

“I’m going with you,” I say. “To the cellar. To the children. I’m not sitting behind a monitor while someone else walks through the hell my father built.”

Ana raises a brow. “You sure you can stomach it, princess?”

I meet her gaze, voice steady. “I grew up above it. I think it’s time I walk through it.”

Echo doesn’t interrupt. He watches me with something unreadable in his eyes, maybe pride. Maybe fear. Maybe both.

Roman exhales and looks to him. “Your call.”

Echo looks at me for a long moment, then nods once.

“She goes.”

The room shifts again. Back into motion. Back into planning.

But I feel it in my bones, this is the moment everything changes.

Because I’m not just betraying my father anymore.

I’m becoming the weapon that breaks him.

Ana clicks something on the tablet and the schematics shift again, rotating into a wireframe of the Romanov estate from beneath.

There it is, the garden gate, tucked into a slope of ivy and old stone walls I used to hide behind as a child.

I remember picking mint leaves there. I remember feeding the birds.

I never knew there was a tunnel right beneath my feet used for smuggling blood.

No one speaks as the layout loads fully. The tunnels twist like veins beneath the manor, branching paths leading into darkness, some blocked off, others pulsing red where Catalyst scouts have marked security hotspots.

Echo leans forward, hands braced on the table.

“The eastern greenhouse tunnel is our best entry point. It runs under the main ballroom and out toward the wine vault, which sits just above the cells. It’s unguarded because no one’s used it in over a decade.

If we time it right, we’ll get through without tripping the pressure sensors on the ground floor. ”

Roman eyes the map. “Time it wrong, and we’ll trigger the silent perimeter lockdown. The house’ll seal like a tomb.”

“That’s why we go during the gala.” Ana speaks up, her voice crisp. “There’s one scheduled three nights from now. He’ll be too focused on the show to monitor the old pathways. Half the estate will be buzzing with political pawns and blood donors. Noise is cover.”

I clench my fists against my thighs. That’s how they talk about it, blood donors. Not prisoners. Not children. Just… supply.

“We’ll have twenty minutes, tops,” Noah adds. “Roman and I hit the estate security first, loop the feeds, spike the backups. We take out the exterior comm relay in the west corridor. If we’re clean, we ghost the whole upper system.”

Echo nods. “Once the grid’s down, Ana, Katya, and I drop through the wine vault access hatch and get to the cells. There’s a steel partition separating the older donor blocks from the new ones, Katya, you’ll get us through.”

I nod once, already feeling my pulse beginning to quicken. “The keypad in the third corridor, he uses my birthdate as the override.”

Roman scoffs. “Cute.”

“I know the codes. I know the layout. I know the staff schedules. He never thought I’d turn on him.”

“That’s because he still thinks he owns you,” Echo says without looking up. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t walk out believing that.”

Ana gestures to the far-right screen. A rotating digital model of the underground cell system appears, layered with blinking tags: Cell 1 through 12. Red means occupied. Two are flashing yellow.

“Those two,” she says, pointing. “Children with irregular vitals. One’s been moved from extraction protocol twice in the past week. If he’s draining them that fast-”

“He is,” I cut in quietly. “The girl in Cell Five… she has Romanov blood. I overheard him tell one of the handlers he’s trying to refine her.”

Echo turns his head toward me, slow and deliberate. “You’re saying she’s family?”

“I’m saying she’s leverage.”

A beat of silence falls again, heavier this time.

Then Echo straightens and squares his shoulders, his tone turning steel. “We get the girl. We get them all. Then we burn the place down.”

Roman snorts. “We blow the tunnels after we’re out. Send a message with it. No more quiet disappearances. No more whispers.”

Ana’s eyes flick toward me. “You sure you’re not going to hesitate when it’s time to put your father in the ground?”

The question lands like a slap, but I don’t flinch. I meet her eyes, steady and cold.

“I won’t hesitate,” I say. “But I am going to look him in the eye when it happens.”

Echo’s hand brushes mine under the table, brief but grounding. A silent promise.

Roman closes the tablet with a snap. “Three nights. Be ready.”

After the meeting ends, no one speaks for a while.

We just know.

The countdown has started.

Three nights.

Three nights of silence. Of shadows. Of pretending.

Echo and I won’t be returning to Catalyst. We’ll go back to the Romanov manor. Back to the halls where blood is currency and power is spoken in whispers. Back to the place where I was raised to obey, and now plan to betray.

It’s the only way this works.

We stay inside.

We stay close.

We wear our loyalty like a second skin until it’s time to tear it off and strike.

To my father, we are exactly what he needs us to be, his daughter, reclaimed; and Echo Kane, the wolf collared at last. He thinks Echo has shifted his allegiance from Catalyst to House Romanov, and he thinks I’ve fallen right into place, eager to serve the legacy I was born into.

We let him believe it.

We let him feed on the illusion.

Because the closer we stay to him, the easier it will be to gut him.

Echo and I have rehearsed every angle. Every entrance.

Every exit. We’ve mapped out the estate in silence, marking routes for extraction and escape.

There’s a locked servant passage behind the wine vault, a second access point through the garden cellar, and a hidden stairwell that connects the west wing to the lower levels.

I memorized those walls as a child. Now, I’ll use them to tear his world down.

We communicate in looks, in touches, in half-muttered lies between the sheets. At night, we lie in the same bed just a few doors down from Dimitri’s chamber, our skin still warm from his hands, our mouths still full of secrets.

We don’t sleep. Not really.

We stay sharp. We listen.

We exist in this careful choreography of trust and deception, of hunger and hatred. Echo touches me like he needs the reminder that I’m still here, that we’re still us. I kiss him back to remember what we’re fighting for.

It’s a strange kind of intimacy, to plan a man’s downfall while sleeping under his roof.

To share meals with a monster.

To call him Father while plotting his execution.

But I’ve learned to survive on performance.

Now, I’ll survive on vengeance.

Because the clock is ticking.

And when the moment comes, when the system goes dark and the security grid drops, Echo and I won’t hesitate.

We’ll take the keys. Open the doors. And unleash hell from the inside.

Dinner at my father’s table always feels like a performance.

Tonight, it’s a symphony of silverware on porcelain, quiet sips from crystal glasses, and silence dressed in civility. The chandelier overhead throws fractured gold light across the table, catching the sharp edges of Echo’s profile and the glint of a blade resting beside a barely-touched steak.

My father sits at the head, calm and composed, dressed in his usual black-on-black tailored to perfection. His rings glint with each movement of his fork, his wine untouched as usual, he’s never trusted what others drink.

I force myself to eat, each bite tasting like ash, my throat raw with the weight of the lies I’m about to feed him.

But Echo speaks first.

“Catalyst will be yours in three days.”

His voice is smooth. Steady. Laced with quiet conviction.

The lie slips from his lips like he’s telling the truth.

Dimitri looks up, amused, his gaze drifting from Echo to me. “So it’s done, then?” he asks softly, as if the idea of conquering the most formidable resistance cell in the country is as simple as pouring a second glass of wine.

“Roman’s lost the reins,” Echo replies. “The fractures were already there, we just widened them.”

I nod once, adding to the illusion. “The loyalty cells have started responding to new leadership. We’ve given them someone more… decisive to follow.”

My father smiles, slow and sharp.

“Good. Catalyst has been wasted on idealists for too long. Soldiers who think sentiment is strategy.”

Echo lifts his glass in mock agreement, but I can feel the tension behind his calm. He’s wearing it like a suit of armor tonight, polished, silent, ready to draw blood the second it cracks.

“And Roman?” Dimitri asks, voice soft but expectant.

“Handled,” Echo answers.

The word is a lie soaked in blood, but it lands exactly the way Dimitri wants it to.

He leans back in his chair, the shadows collecting in the hollows of his face, satisfied. “You’ve done well, both of you. You make a powerful pair. Loyalty and love, dangerous when aligned correctly.”

He raises his glass, but still doesn’t drink.

“To the beginning of a new era.”

Echo and I lift ours. The glass is cool in my hand, but the wine burns on my tongue.

“To legacy,” I murmur.

“To control,” Echo says.

We drink.

And every swallow feels like swallowing glass.

My father watches us over the rim of his untouched glass, and I wonder, just for a second, if he suspects.

But he doesn’t.

Not yet.

Because tonight, we’ve convinced him the empire is already his.

And in three days, we’ll reduce it to ash.