Page 75 of Fractured Allegiance

I slip it on without music, without mood, without any romantic delusion that this is about beauty. It’s about war paint. About choosing what weapon you bring to the table when you already know the table’s rigged.

I do my makeup again. Not polished — defined. Black liner, pressed lips, high contour to catch the light only when I want it to.

No perfume.

Drazen doesn’t get that part of me.

Not tonight.

When I slide the dagger-toed heels on and check the mirror again, the woman staring back doesn’t ask who she is anymore.

She already knows.

She’s the answer to a question no one was brave enough to voice.

The entrance to the upper lounge has no sign.

Just a narrow staircase tucked behind the velvet partition near the private booths. Most people don’t even know it exists.

Drazen’s men don’t search me. They don’t speak. They lead me to a door at the end of a narrow hall lined with red velvet and closed cameras.

Inside, Drazen is alone. There are no guards, no ledger of demands; there’s just a bottle of whiskey and two untouched glasses.

For a moment, I don’t understand.

“This isn’t a deal,” he says, gesturing at the chair across from him. “It’s a pause. Even storms need an eye.”

I take the seat, even though every part of me wants to walk out. But leaving now would look too much like running, and Drazen's favorite game is watching people run so he can decide whether to chase them or let them bleed out alone.

He pours whiskey—expensive, amber, the kind that costs more than most people make in a month—but doesn't push ittoward me. Just sets it on the desk between us like a test I haven't been given the parameters for yet.

"You've kept my world intact longer than most," he says, voice smooth as the liquor he's not offering. "I thought you'd earned a moment of... respite."

The word feels wrong in his mouth. Dangerous. Like a promise wrapped around a blade.

Respite isn't something Drazen gives. It's something he uses—a brief loosening of the collar before he pulls it tighter, just to remind you it was never really off.

I've seen this before. Not just once. Multiple times over the two years since Elias's stepped back and I found myself standing in the wreckage, looking for something—anything—to hold onto. Drazen was there, offering structure when everything else was chaos. Safety, he called it. Opportunity. A place where my particular skills would be valued.

I was desperate enough to believe him.

At first, it felt like salvation. He gave me assignments that used my mind instead of just my body. Respected my boundaries—or seemed to. Let me keep my apartment, my autonomy, the illusion that I was choosing this.

Then, six months in, when I'd gotten comfortable, he reminded me exactly what the cost of that safety was.

A late-night call. His office, not a hotel. Just the two of us and a manila folder he slid across the desk like it was nothing.

"I thought you should see what I've been holding," he said.

Inside: bank records with my name. Transfers I never made to accounts I'd never opened. Emails with my signature discussing deals I'd never brokered. Photographs—me leavingbuildings where people had died, timestamped perfectly to suggest involvement.

All of it fake or half truth.

All of it believable.

"Insurance," he called it. "In case you ever forget where your loyalties lie."

I stared at the pages, my hands steady even as my stomach dropped. "This wouldn't hold up. Anyone could see it's fabricated."