Page 133 of Shadow Waltz
Fifteen years of building an empire from nothing, fifteen years of calculated violence and strategic brutality, fifteen years of convincing myself that power was the only thing worth having—all of it reduced to ash by the simple fact that the person who'd become my entire world was gone, taken by people who understood exactly how to destroy me without firing a single shot.
“Sir,” Troy's voice carried through my earpiece with professional calm that couldn't quite hide the desperationunderneath. “We need to move. Local law enforcement is converging on our position, ETA four minutes.”
But I couldn't move, couldn't tear myself away from staring at empty sky where Ash had vanished, couldn't process the reality that international task forces had just accomplished what fifteen years of rival organizations and federal investigations had failed to achieve—they'd taken away the only thing that mattered to me.
“Sir,” Troy repeated, closer now, his hand settling on my shoulder with careful pressure. “We have to go.”
I turned to look at him, seeing concern and something that might have been pity in his gray eyes, and felt rage unfurl in my chest like napalm igniting. “They took him,” I said, the words coming out flat and dead despite the inferno building behind them. “They fucking took him.”
“We'll get him back,” Troy replied, but there was something in his voice that suggested he understood exactly how impossible that task had become. “Whatever it takes, however long it takes, we'll find a way.”
But as we made our way through the safe house toward extraction vehicles that would carry us away from this scene of systematic failure, I caught sight of the one person whose betrayal had made tonight's disaster possible. Carina sat zip-tied to a chair in what had been our communications center, blood running from a cut on her forehead where falling debris had caught her during the explosions.
She looked up when I entered, and in her dark eyes I saw something that might have been regret mixed with the stubborn conviction that she'd done what was necessary to save me from my own weakness. Even now, even after her betrayal had cost me everything that mattered, she believed she'd been protecting me from the vulnerability that loving Ash represented.
“Luka,” she said quietly, voice carrying the weight of five years of shared violence and mutual trust. “I can explain.”
“No,” I replied, moving toward her with the kind of controlled calm that preceded systematic violence. “You can't. There's no explanation that justifies what you've done. No rationalization that makes betraying me and destroying my happiness acceptable.”
I pulled out the knife I'd carried for fifteen years, the blade that had opened throats and settled disputes and reminded people why crossing the Prince was a terminal mistake. But tonight it felt heavier in my hand, weighted with the understanding that some betrayals could only be answered with blood.
“You think I betrayed you,” Carina said, watching the knife with the steady gaze of someone who'd always understood that death was an occupational hazard. “But I saved you. From weakness, from vulnerability, from the kind of emotional attachment that gets leaders killed.”
“You destroyed me,” I corrected, testing the blade's edge against my thumb and feeling blood well up in a thin line. “You took away the only person who ever made me feel human, who ever made me believe that power could coexist with love instead of destroying it.”
“He made you weak,” Carina insisted, and the conviction in her voice revealed exactly how thoroughly she'd convinced herself that her betrayal was salvation. “I watched you lose focus, watched you make decisions based on emotion instead of strategy, watched you become vulnerable in ways that would have gotten you killed.”
The knife found her cheek with surgical accuracy, opening a line from temple to jaw that bled freely down her neck. She didn't flinch, didn't cry out, just maintained eye contact with thesteady resolve of someone who'd lived with violence long enough to understand its rhythms and requirements.
“Weak,” I repeated, letting the word hang in the air between us like smoke from a funeral pyre. “Is that what you call it when someone finds something worth more than power? When someone discovers that love can be weapon rather than weakness?”
“I call it the beginning of the end,” Carina replied, blood running down her chin but voice remaining steady. “I've seen what happens to men like you when they start caring more about someone else than themselves. They make mistakes, take unnecessary risks, get themselves and everyone around them killed.”
The knife moved to her other cheek, mirroring the first cut with methodical care. This wasn't about causing pain—this was about marking her, branding her with evidence of the consequences that came from betraying family. Each line I opened would serve as reminder of why loyalty wasn't optional in my organization.
“You're right,” I said, moving the blade down to trace her collarbone with delicate pressure. “I did become different. Less careful, more vulnerable, willing to risk everything for someone who'd learned to matter more than my own survival.”
I paused, letting the admission settle between us like a blade finding its mark. “But you made one crucial miscalculation, Carina. You assumed that loving Ash made me weaker. What it actually did was give me something worth burning the world to protect.”
The knife slid between her ribs with the kind of practiced ease that came from fifteen years of settling disputes through violence. Not deep enough to hit anything vital—not yet—just deep enough to remind her that I held her life in my hands and could squeeze whenever the mood struck me.
“Every federal agent who dies tonight dies because you gave them intelligence about our operations,” I continued, withdrawing the blade and watching blood seep through her expensive shirt. “Every friend we lose, every ally who gets captured or killed, every piece of our organization that gets destroyed—all of it traces back to your decision to sacrifice Ash to save me from myself.”
Carina's breathing was becoming labored, but her eyes remained defiant, burning with the conviction that she'd made the only choice that could have preserved what we'd built together. “I saved you from becoming another cautionary tale about powerful men destroyed by their own hearts.”
“No,” I said, the knife finding new targets with methodical thoroughness—shoulders, arms, thighs, each cut deeper than the last but carefully positioned to avoid major arteries. “You destroyed the only good thing I'd ever built. You eliminated the only person who'd ever made me believe that monsters like us could find redemption through choosing to love someone more than we loved power.”
The sound she made when the blade found the nerve cluster in her shoulder was more gasp than scream, but it carried enough pain to confirm that my point was being received. This wasn't interrogation or information gathering—this was punishment, pure and simple, the kind of systematic retribution that reminded everyone why betraying me was a mistake people made only once.
“He would have gotten you killed,” Carina whispered, blood frothing at the corners of her mouth as internal damage began to manifest. “Sooner or later, your feelings for him would have compromised your judgment in ways that destroyed everything we've built.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, moving the knife to her throat and letting her feel its edge against the pulse point that hammered withincreasing desperation. “But that would have been my choice to make. My risk to take. My life to lose if I decided that love was worth more than survival.”
I pressed deeper, feeling skin part under the blade's caress, watching blood well up in the groove I was carving. “What you took away was my right to choose my own destruction. My right to decide that some things were worth dying for.”
Carina's eyes were starting to glaze with shock and blood loss, but she managed one final attempt at justification. “I loved you too much to watch you throw everything away for someone who would never be worth what you sacrificed for them.”
The words hit like acid on an open wound, because they revealed the depth of her delusion. She'd convinced herself that destroying my happiness was an act of love, that eliminating the person who'd given my life meaning was somehow protective rather than vindictive.