He left me alone in the room, but his presence lingered like smoke in my lungs—cloying, toxic, intoxicating.
Rafael Antonov.
I knew the name long before I ever saw the man.
To some, he was a ghost. To others, a monster in silk gloves. In every story, he was power incarnate—untouchable, cold, a man who never raised his voice and never left loose ends. A man whose empire was stitched together with blood and silence.
But they never told me he'd look like that.
Not one whispered tale, not one grainy photo in a classified file, prepared me for the man who stood before me. Not for the way the dim light curved against his body—broad, solid, built from war. Not for the slow grace in the way he walked, like a beast who knew he'd already won. And not for the face—sharp, symmetrical, devastating in its simplicity. No adornments. No arrogance. Just raw, terrifying control.
And those eyes… glacial grey, but not cold. Not dead. No, his eyes watched everything—measured, calculated, like he was stripping me down layer by layer. I've been studied before, but never seen. Not like that. Not like he wanted to learn what I'd do right before he made me break.
The bastard didn't touch me. He didn't need to.
His presence alone was a chokehold.
I should've been focused on escape. On survival. But every move I made was a negotiation between instinct and anger. Every breath tasted like betrayal.
They sold me.
Not metaphorically. Not politically.
They sold me.
The people I bled for. Killed for. Trained under for over a decade. They handed me over like a bargaining chip wrapped in flesh. An alliance sealed in bone.
I was supposed to kill Antonov.
They told me it was a clean job—get in, eliminate the target, disappear. What they didn't tell me was that I was being handed to him like some sacrificial whore disguised as an assassin. No exit strategy. No extraction. Just chains disguised as duty.
I should've seen it coming.
But I didn't.
I paced the perimeter of the room, wrists still bound, blood pulsing at my temples. Every corner, every shadow, I catalogued. The windows were reinforced. No ventilation grates wide enough to slip through. One door. Probably locked. It was a beautiful cage—tasteful, expensive, subtle in its domination.
Of course it was.
Antonov didn't strike me as the type to use brute force. No, he'd let the walls close in slow. Let you sweat. Let your own mind drive you to your knees.
He'd study me.
And then he'd unravel me.
But I've lived with shadows longer than he can imagine. I've killed with bare hands and slept beside corpses. I've smiled at monsters and slit their throats while they begged.
I am not breakable.
Not for him.
Not for anyone.
And yet…
That voice. That infuriating calm.
The way he said my name—like it belonged to him already. Like he wasn't going to own me, but undo me.
It stirred something in me I hated. Something low and feral. Something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Not desire.
Not submission.
No, this was something else entirely.
Curiosity.
I'd never met a man like him. I'd never wanted to.
But now that I had…
I wanted to see what it would take to bring him to his knees.