Chapter Text
Chapter One Jeremy
People are disappointments. That’s not just something I believe—it’s a fact carved into bone.
Trust is weakness. Vulnerability is for fools. Expecting more than betrayal is the luxury of idiots.
And yet, sometimes I wonder if I’m the biggest hypocrite of them all.
I sit between my so-called friends—a collection of psychopaths, killers, and liars no sane person would rely on—and I catch myself believing in them. Not blindly, not without suspicion, but enough that it unsettles me.
Somehow, they’ve become the only thing I can call family. These heathens. These monsters. These men who bleed chaos and make me believe in something as laughable as loyalty.
The hypocrisy isn’t in the lies they tell—it’s in how easily I accept them. No matter what destruction they drag to my feet, no matter how deep they drive the blade, I continue to trust them. And that feels so fucking wrong.
With Nikolai, I know he’d take a bullet for me, and I’d return the favor. Still, every time I walk beside him, I feel the echo of solitude pressing against my ribs.
When Killian says he has everything under control, I don’t doubt his brilliance. He thrives where others choke. And yet I still strategize, still prepare, because it’s against my nature to surrender control to anyone—not even him.
Then there’s Gareth. He sees too much, knows too much. He notices the smallest twitch in my expression and checks in with a kind of care that shouldn’t exist in our world. And still, I search for the motive buried beneath it.
Will I ever look at someone and simply breathe? Hand them my life without suspicion gnawing at my throat?
No. Not in this lifetime.
So imagine my disgust when I spot Creighton and my little sister—our Anoushka—sitting next to Landon fucking King.
Of course, the rest of their pathetic circle is gathered around too. The Elites. Needy, pretentious brats who’ve always mistaken survival for power. As if Landon hasn’t already fucked them all over a hundred times, as if they’ve forgotten the blood he spilled simply because boredom demanded it.
I don’t voice any of it. I never do. But the question claws at me every time—why do they still let him close? Haven’t they learned? Haven’t they seen what he is?
Sacrificial lambs. That’s all they are to him. He tells them with every move, and they still kneel.
I’ll give Brandon and Glyndon the blood relation excuse, though even Glyndon can barely stomach him. The rest? Idiots.
If Killian ever dragged us into his little games, he wouldn’t live to see the sunrise. That’s the difference between us and them. Even our resident psychopath knows where the line is.
Can’t say the same for their golden boy.
“I can’t believe you motherfuckers dragged me to class,” Nikolai groans, pulling my eyes away from the group.
I light a cigarette, offer him one, but my gaze cuts back almost instantly. My frown hardens when I catch Remi lying down with his head in Annika’s lap. Motherfucker.
“Man, I’m so happy Mia and Maya don’t date,” Nikolai chuckles, following my line of sight. “I’d kill any man who touched them.”
“They’re not fucking dating,” I grit out.
“Something about this picture is very wrong.” Killian’s monotone slices through, the bastard appearing without a sound. “Jeremy’s little sister sitting with our sworn enemies, I mean.”
Landon leans back in his chair, legs stretched out like he owns the ground beneath him. He doesn’t speak, not really—just tilts his head at something Creighton says, lips curling into that lazy smirk I’ve seen too many times.
It isn’t charm. It’s a performance. Every movement measured, calculated to make them lean closer, to draw them in. And the fucked-up part? They do. Even my sister.
He brushes invisible lint from his sleeve, as if the world dirties him simply by existing. Then he taps his fingers against the table—slow, deliberate, a beat that makes the rest of them wait, hang on his silence.
What the hell do they see in him?
I track the small things: the way Glyndon glares but doesn’t move, the way Annika stiffens when his gaze flickers over her, the way Brandon forces laughter too loud, too easy. Landon doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t need to. His presence does the talking.
A king among fools. And I hate that it fits.
“Wanna go there and stir shit up?” Nikolai asks, already grinning like a wolf cub who smells blood. He bounces on his heels, restless, like a fight’s the only cure for his boredom. “I won’t say no to any excuse to land a fist in their preppy faces.”
“As fun as that sounds, I’d have to sit this one out, boys.” Killian’s tone is flat, almost bored. “Made promises I intend to keep.”
Ah. Yes. His newest obsession, Landon’s little sister Glyndon.
“Pussy,” Nikolai snorts, taking a long drag from his cigarette before turning to me. “Come on, Jer. I know you want to.”
I stay quiet, eyes locked on Landon.
He tilts his head, says something I can’t hear. The Elites laugh on cue. He doesn’t. He just watches them the way a sculptor might study clay, already imagining what to carve away first.
“Not now.”
The words come out low, final.
Nikolai groans, muttering curses under his breath. Killian’s gaze follows mine across the courtyard, sharp and knowing. He doesn’t say anything, but the corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s already dissected every thought I’m not willing to admit.
I can’t tear my eyes away. Every movement Landon makes is deliberate—calculated. The lazy curl of his smirk. The way he leans, casual, confident, like the world bends around him. My teeth grind. I hate how much attention I pay.
And then, as if sensing it, his eyes flick up. A slow, deliberate sweep across the courtyard. They land on me.
For a heartbeat, the world narrows to him. I see the faint glint in his iris, the tilt of his head that says you’re watching me, aren’t you. Not accusation. Not surprise. Just… amusement.
He doesn’t look away. Doesn’t blink first. He leans back a little more, fingers drumming against the table, still holding that infuriating, lazy composure. And somewhere beneath the surface, I know—he likes this.
“Not that I’m one to give advice on playing with fire—by all means, go ahead and burn,” Killian drawls beside me, that infuriating smirk in place. “But Landon King will burn whoever he has his eyes on. And my dear Jer… you’re standing squarely in his sights.”
“He can try,” I reply, dry, controlled.
“Oh, let the motherfucker try,” Nikolai snaps, cracking his knuckles. “Gives us a reason to tear them to the ground.”
“So predictable,” Killian sighs, the sound dripping with boredom.
“We’ll leave the mind games to you, Satan’s heir,” Nikolai grins, sharp. “we’ll handle the blood.”
Landon hasn’t broken our gaze. Neither have I. And as much as I usually disagree with Nikolai’s methods, I know this is coming.
There will be blood.
And I will be the one drawing it.
“Let’s go.” I flick the cigarette butt and crush it under my boot. “We have plans to discuss.”
“Regarding what, exactly?” Killian asks, tilting his head with feigned curiosity.
“Serpents.”
He sighs, a long-suffering sound. “Boring.”
I throw my leg over the bike and grab my helmet. Nikolai follows without a word, swinging onto his own. “Are you coming or not?”
“I’ll meet you at home.” Killian turns, already melting back into the shadows without another word.
I switch the key. The engine snarls to life, a beast echoing the one in my chest.
Just as I’m about to pull out, my eyes cut across the courtyard one last time. He’s still there. Landon King. Eyes locked on mine, unblinking, unwavering. A statue of cold amusement. My jaw tightens.
I hesitate, just for a second. A single, violent impulse—fuck it, snap his neck, gut Creighton for everything he’s done.
But I don’t.
Not now.
Timing is everything.
Landon King will get what’s coming to him.
And it will be on my terms.
Chapter 2
Notes:
i'm attempting to write in first POV like the author of the original books. it's kinda hard cuz i've never done that before. i hope it's going well :))
I'm going a plausible route saying "what if Jeremy didn't notice Cecily on initiation?" it might not make sense but to those who don't care that much and continue to read... thank you!
Chapter Text
Chapter Two
Jeremy
Power comes in many forms. Money. Status. Physical dominance. But the most important shape of power? Knowledge.
Everyone has secrets. Things they would kill to keep buried. I have them. My friends have them. My enemies have them. I know the lengths I’ll go to protect mine—and I know the desperation that comes from someone trying to hide theirs. That desperation tells me more than any words ever could.
Friend or enemy, I look for it.
Spies are everywhere—between the serpents, among the elites. Lately, though, my focus has narrowed. One person. Landon fucking King.
Even saying his name makes my teeth grit.
Years have passed since our first encounter, and from the very beginning, I trusted him as much as a venomous snake resting in my palm. I sent my best people to dig. I ordered them to tear his life apart looking for anything, everything. And yet… they found nothing. Nothing of any use. His public image is pristine. A respectable artist. Charming. A perfect fucking gentleman. It’s the most elaborate lie I’ve ever seen.
And it makes me want to punch through that face every time I think about it.
We tried to infiltrate his circle, send invitations to his friends and allies to turn them, gather intel—but nothing. They never came. Nothing worth a breath. All we know is Creighton’s invitation, Landon’s cousin, was scanned, but there was no trace of him.
Which meant someone else used his invitation. Who? I have no fucking clue. My bet is the bastard himself sneaked in and out managing to go unnoticed by all of us, which makes me even fucking angrier.
A while ago though, I learned about his nights at a particular club. Not just any club—a place that specialises on exhibitionism. I joined under a false name, purely to watch, to track. Never to intervene.
I don’t watch what he does. I watch who comes and goes. He collects strangers like trinkets, keeps them close just long enough to amuse himself, then discards them without a second glance. One night, I counted five different people leaving his private room. Five. Imagine the pristine, golden façade cracking under the weight of that truth.
Would he still be the golden boy everyone so stupidly believes he is?
Even Glyndon and Brandon are useless for this. Funny, isn’t it? He doesn’t even trust his own blood with his secrets. Not a scrap. Not a trace.
I need more. I need to know more.
I scrolled through my contacts, sending messages to every source I thought could be useful. I wanted everything. Hack the elites’ private surveillance networks. Pull every credit card statement. Flag every property, every vehicle, every shell company under his name or his family’s, anywhere on the goddamn planet. Which restaurants he frequented. Every purchase, every website, every porn site he visited. I wanted it all.
No detail was too small. No corner of his life too insignificant or too dark to illuminate. He had spent years building a flawless image, and I intended to tear it apart, brick by fucking brick.
Days passed. Responses trickled in. Most were useless, but some… some hinted at patterns. A particular club. Late nights. A few names repeated in hushed tones. Enough to start a map, enough to start watching.
I don’t do this for the thrill. This isn't a game; it's a dissection. Landon King thrives on control, on the illusion of perfection. But illusions are fragile. They shatter.
And I would be the one to swing the hammer. Because he deserves to burn.
I leaned back, staring at the list of leads, my mind already running calculations. Who would notice first? Who would slip? Which angle would hit hardest? Each question a weapon, each answer another step closer.
I didn’t need to see him to know how he moved. I’d studied his rhythm, his tells, the invisible chessboard he thought he owned. I could already predict his next move.
And when the time came, I wouldn’t hesitate.
Because Landon King, for all his polished charm, for all his golden-boy perfection… was mine to dismantle.
Piece by piece.
I grabbed my long-warmed beer can from the desk, the laptop screen burning my eyes in the dark. The cottage I’d bought for solitude—deep in the woods—was cold, with no heat except the chimney or good lighting.
I didn’t mind. The silence here was more peaceful than the echoing halls of the mansions and penthouses I’d grown used to.
My fingers flexed over the touchpad, clicking through another series of pictures. Landon King, captured over the past few days. My men had been tailing him. Decent enough work, by the looks of it.
He hadn’t noticed. At least, he’d given no sign.
And yet something felt off. In every single photo—he wore the mask. Always. Perfectly composed. Never a single crack, never a hint of what festered behind it. Isn’t it fucking exhausting, keeping up that facade?
I needed an opening, leverage, anything. So far, I had nothing but a gallery of a ghost. And that fucking infuriated me.
Patience was my only ally. Most people lacked it. I could outwait anyone.
I glanced at the time in the corner of the screen and sighed. I should sleep. I wouldn’t—but the ghost of responsibility insisted I try.
Shutting the computer, I stood and stretched, the muscles in my back pulling tight. I tossed the empty can into the trash with a clatter. Upstairs, I walked into the bedroom in perfect darkness. I didn’t need light to navigate my own space; it was a map carved into muscle memory.
I stripped off my shirt, collapsed onto the bed, and rubbed my temples. The constant, drilling headache from sleepless nights had been my most loyal companion for years. It always hit hardest when I tried to shut my brain off. A few hours of nightmare-riddled unconsciousness was the most I could ever ask for.
Sleep was almost about to drag me under—until the specific ringtone Ilya used shattered the silence. Groaning, I grabbed the phone from the nightstand and glared at the screen.
“What?”
Ilya’s voice was calm, utterly unaffected by my tone. “Sir. There’s a young woman here at the gates. She insists on seeing you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, teeth gritting. “What woman?”
A beat of silence. “Miss Cecily Knight.”
Annika’s little friend. Boring. Tedious. Holier-than-thou.
“Tell her to fuck off,” I bit out, moving to hang up.
“She insists,” Ilya continued, his tone never shifting. “Says she has information. About the fire.”
My hand clenched in the bedsheet. Her? The serpents started that fire. What the hell could she possibly know?
Is this some kind of game? She’s never warranted a second of my attention, just another blurry face in the elite entourage. Has she inserted herself into something she has no business with—just to play hero or piss us off?
She doesn’t seem like the type. Too soft. Too… naive.
Then why the hell is she at the heathen’s mansion, in the dead of night, at my gate?
“I’m on my way.” I hung up without waiting for a reply.
The fire last month was a shitshow to deal with. A direct attack—on us, on me. And I’ll be damned if anyone thinks they can pull a stunt like that and get away with it.
We’d already started hitting the Serpents back. Hard. Blood for blood. The amount of serpent blood on my hands? I’d lost count.
But the surveillance footage told me everything I needed to know. They’d known exactly which route to take through the forest, slipping past the cameras like they had a blueprint. Which meant someone gave them one.
Two possibilities.
The less likely? A spy among the guards. But no one’s stupid enough to betray the Bratva. Traitors don’t just die—we erase their bloodline.
The more likely? Someone mapped the cameras during initiation. Creighton’s code being scanned was the nail in the coffin for that theory.
Creighton wasn’t there. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be… was.
My bet? A Serpent got their hands on his code. Hacking into the Elites’ phones is child’s play.
The drive from the cottage to the mansion usually takes thirty minutes. I made it in fifteen.
As the gates opened, my eyes drifted to the blackened wood, the charred remains of what the fire had touched. Renovations were already underway, but the memory was fresh—the smoke, the heat, the burning in my lungs.
If Annika’s friend hadn’t been there… well, as much as it makes me grit my teeth to admit it, my little sister and Creighton are the reason I’m still standing.
And Nikolai—Nikolai always comes for me.
So why the fuck is this snob here, claiming she knows something about a matter far out of her depth?
Ilya was waiting on the deck, falling into step behind me as I climbed the stairs.
“Where?”
“The living room,” he said quietly. “It’s cold out. She wasn’t dressed for the weather.”
What the hell was so urgent she came running here in the middle of the night without a jacket?
“She say anything?”
“She’ll only talk to you.” He hesitated at the double doors. “Miss Annika and Nikolai are already inside. Nikolai heard the commotion—insisted on being present.”
Of course he did.
I pushed the doors open.
The blonde sat hunched on the couch, Annika’s hand rubbing circles on her back. Nikolai sprawled in the single chair in the corner, a half-empty bottle of whiskey twirling between his fingers, ashtray overflowing beside him. His forehead was creased, his eyes hollow and burning at once. Every muscle in his body clenched tight, even in his recline.
Perfect. He was in the middle of one of his episodes. If this girl said the wrong thing, I’d have to keep him from ripping her apart. At least in front of Anoushka.
Annika jumped to her feet when she saw me. “She only wants to talk to you, Jer—”
“Whatever she says to me, Nikolai hears too.” My voice left no room for argument. Now was not the time to set him off further.
Nikolai sat forward, dead eyes locked on the girl. “Well, he’s here. Start talking.”
I studied her.
Flushed skin. T-shirt and jeans. Hair disheveled. Her eyes were bloodshot, nose red, mascara streaked across her cheeks. She’d been crying—hard.
Cecily Knight. Hugging herself like she wanted to disappear under our gaze. Her wide eyes darted to Annika, pleading for support, and of course my saint of a sister sat down again, patting her like a stray she’d taken in.
Typical.
“This better be worth listening to,” I said, stepping closer but not sitting. Nikolai stayed slouched beside me, silent and coiled.
Cecily’s breath hitched. Her hands rubbed over her thighs again and again, nerves twitching through every movement. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. Nothing.
Shock. Something had broken her.
“Enough with the theatrics,” Nikolai snapped, voice cracking like a whip. “Start fucking talking.”
Cecily jolted, shoulders trembling. I almost felt bad for her. Almost.
“I—I’m so sorry.” Her voice was hoarse, trembling. “I didn’t… I didn’t know, I swear. He used me. I didn’t know.” A sob cut through the words.
My brow furrowed.
He.
Who the fuck is he?
Annika took her hand, voice gentle. “It’s okay. They won’t blame you. They’ll understand. Just tell them everything you told me.” She squeezed Cecily’s fingers, offering comfort she had no right to promise.
Don’t make promises on our behalf, Anoushka. We decide what we understand.
“He told me it was just a game,” Cecily started to ramble, her accent thickening with every breath. “That we could use the information if you ever decided to bother us. It was supposed to be just for us. If I had known he’d give it to them—if I had known they’d use it to set fire to the mansion, to actually hurt any of you—I wouldn’t have done it. I just wanted to help. I just wanted to make him happy.” Another sob wracked her chest. “And now you’re all in the middle of a war. People are dying. I swear I didn’t know.”
Oh.
So she’s the one. She used Creighton’s code. She mapped out our grounds.
Interesting. I hadn’t thought she had it in her.
“Calm down,” I said, making my voice even. Gentle, almost. I needed her to keep talking. She was scared—good. “We’re not going to hurt you. Thank you for coming to us. I can tell you care about my sister.”
I dropped down onto the arm of Nikolai’s chair, my hand pressing to his shoulder. His leg was bouncing, fists clenched, eyes burning. He needed to hold it together. We needed her trust.
Punishment would come later.
“But she could’ve died. Maybe I would’ve too if her friend hadn’t been there to drag us out. We just want to know who’s coming for us, so we can keep an eye on them.” Lies slid easily off my tongue.
The truth? I was going to kill them. Every last one.
Her red-rimmed eyes lifted, locking onto mine. She looked at me like I was a wolf circling her, and maybe I was. Scared, fragile, mascara streaking down her face—she was more interesting like this than she’d ever been before. For a second, the thought of bending her to me, of breaking her in an entirely different way, tugged at the edges of my mind.
Focus.
“He didn’t tell me he was going to use it for this, I swear,” she whispered. “You have to believe me. I’d never hurt anyone. He used me. How could I be so stupid? He just used me.”
“I believe you.” And I did. That didn’t make her innocent. “Who asked you to do it?”
She looked down, fingers tangling in her lap. “Landon.”
Motherfucker.
A vein pulsed hot in my temple. Limb by limb—I’d tear him apart. Box his pieces up and gift-wrap them for his parents. I should’ve known. Of course it was him.
I forced a deep breath. “He asked you to come here initiation night?”
She nodded.
“And he asked you to map the cameras. The guards.”
“Yes.”
“And you just did it? No hesitation? Didn’t stop to ask why that psychopath wanted it?” Nikolai’s voice was a snarl, low and lethal. “You didn’t think for a second what he could use it for? And you expect us to believe you had nothing to do with the fire?” His volume rose with every word, rage radiating off him in waves.
Cecily flinched, hands trembling harder. He’d struck a nerve.
“You just do whatever he says, is that it?” Nikolai spat. “No questions, no thought of your own. Puppets. All of you. Dancing for him like clowns. Pathetic.”
Her tears kept coming, shoulders shaking.
“I just wanted to be part of it,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I just wanted him to—”
Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
Love. She’s in love with him. Just like the rest of them.
Pathetic.
“Why now?” I asked, my voice cold. “Why are you telling us this now? What changed? What made you throw him under the bus?”
“Jeremy—” Annika’s voice was soft, pleading.
“Stay out of this.” My snarl cut through her words, sharp enough to make her flinch.
Cecily hiccuped, shame turning her skin blotchy and red. Her face shifted—fear, grief, self-loathing—and then something sharper took root. Anger. Bitterness. A hunger for payback.
“Because I see it now,” she said, her voice trembling into something harder. “I’m nothing to him. It’s all a game, and I was just a pawn. I was so stupid. I’m nothing to him. Nothing.” A broken laugh left her lips, jagged and bitter.
“So that’s what this is?” I tilted my head, studying her. “Revenge because he rejected you?”
Her eyes widened. “He didn’t—”
“He did.” I cut her off. “You wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.”
“Jeremy, there’s no reason for you to—” Annika started again, protective, too soft.
“If you cut me or her off one more time, I’ll have the guards lock you upstairs.” My tone snapped like a whip. “Не вмешивайся, поняла?” Don’t interfere. Got it?
Annika’s nostrils flared, hatred darkening her eyes. Let her run to Father. Good. He’d tell her the same.
“So Landon fucking King asked his side piece to gather intel for him,” Nikolai bit out, his thoughts spilling in sync with mine. “Didn’t care if she got her head smashed in during initiation. Sold it to the Serpents just to sit back and laugh while we tear each other apart.”
Cecily winced. Because he was right. To Landon, it was nothing but a game.
“Anything else we need to know?” I asked, each word deliberate, slow. “Anything else he’s doing? Planning?”
Her head shook violently. “Nothing I know about.”
I studied her, watching her face. I didn’t see a lie.
“You must know we’ll retaliate,” I said. “You must’ve known when you came here. Do you hate him that much now?”
Her brows furrowed, lips trembling into a frown. “He uses and discards me and my friends all the time. He needs to be knocked down from his throne.”
Interesting. I’d do more than knock him down.
“Take her upstairs. Get her something warmer. Guards will drop her off in the morning,” I ordered Annika, dismissing the conversation.
Annika huffed, glaring as she guided Cecily toward the door.
But Cecily paused, turning back, her eyes cutting into me. “Are you going to hurt him?”
I blinked once. “I will.”
She hesitated, breath catching. “Will you kill him?”
I didn’t answer.
But the silence was answer enough.
Chapter Text
Jeremy
Audacity. That’s the only word that came close to describing Landon King. The sheer, fucking audacity of it. The way he’d maneuvered, lied, used a lovesick girl as a disposable pawn, all while maintaining that flawless, golden-boy mask.
I should have seen it. I’d wanted to see it. I had spent months looking for a single crack in that pristine image, a weakness to exploit. And yet, he had danced around every trap I laid, smirked through every attempt to corner him. Until now.
Now, Cecily had handed me the reason—the justification—on a silver fucking platter.
Every detail replayed itself in my mind, sharpening into a brutal blueprint: initiation night, the fire, the stolen code, the Serpents slithering through the forest like it was all part of some twisted performance he was directing. And at the center of it all, Landon. Calm. Calculating. Enjoying it. Watching us bleed without ever getting a drop of blood on his own hands.
My fists clenched at my sides. Rage coiled, tight and hot, in my chest—but it was a precise, controlled burn. This wasn't the blind, explosive fury I usually carried into battle. This was colder. Deeper. Strategy dressed as venom. He had given me the opening I needed, and I would use it to break him, piece by calculated piece.
Now, it was my turn.
The scales would tip, and they would not balance again.
Landon would learn, in every way possible, that crossing me meant consequences that couldn’t be spun, dodged, or survived.
And when it was over, no one—not the Bratva, not the elites, not a single soul in this godforsaken city—would be able to claim I started the war.
This wasn’t revenge. This was a correction. An eradication.
And I was just getting started.
The door clicked open and they entered like predators stepping into a new lair, each carrying their own weather. Nikolai, a thunderstorm looking for a target. Killian, a cold front moving in. Gareth, the calm, assessing eye of the hurricane. I stayed silent, arms crossed, leaning against the table, letting the storm swirl around me.
Nikolai didn’t bother with a chair. He slammed his fist onto the table, making the wood groan. “I don’t care about your plans or your fucking strategy. That motherfucker played us. He’s going to pay, and I don’t care how.” His eyes were burning coals, jaw muscle ticking, veins corded in his neck. “We hit them hard, we hit them now.”
“Yeah, well,” Killian said smoothly, lowering himself into a chair with unnatural grace. He steepled his fingers, a scholar considering a particularly interesting problem. “We don’t just blow up his life and call it a day. There’s more at stake. Glyndon…” His gaze flicked, almost imperceptibly, toward the door, a silent reminder that walls have ears, and one of them belonged to a princess who might object to her brother’s messy demise. “…wouldn’t appreciate the fallout. I also prefer to keep our hands clean enough to manipulate the narrative afterward.”
I didn’t need to speak to know the gears turning in Killian’s mind. He’d rather slip a blade between the ribs than swing an axe.
“She doesn’t matter right now!” Nikolai shot back, the words gritted out between clenched teeth. “We take the fight to him. We make him regret ever thinking he could play with us. Start cutting at his people, his resources, everything he loves—hell, I don’t care. I’ll burn this whole fucking city if I have to.”
“Brutal,” Gareth said calmly, drumming his fingers on the table in a slow, rhythmic tap. “But predictable. He’s smart. He won’t act without backup or an exit strategy.”
Killian nodded, his lips thinning into a tight line. “Exactly. We play it like chess, not a back-alley brawl. Jeremy.” His dark eyes shifted to me. “Your thoughts?”
“We know his habits. We know his vulnerabilities.” My voice was low, a statement of fact.
“Then why the hesitation?” Nikolai growled, the sound animalistic. “We know what he’s done. Why talk about Glyndon or strategy? This is war!”
“Because war isn’t just blood and fire, you caveman,” Killian said, his voice dropping to a low, sharp whisper that was more cutting than a shout.
I said nothing. Let them do the talking. Every word, every gesture, every possible angle of this operation passed through my mind, filtered and cataloged. They were passion and impulse. I was the balance. The control. I always was.
I finally spoke, my voice cutting through the tension like a shard of ice. “Enough.”
The room stilled.
“Let me handle this.”
Nikolai’s head snapped toward me, eyes blazing with unchecked fury. “Handle him? Handle what, Jer? You want him to get away after everything he’s done? I’ll gut him myself before he even thinks of—”
“You won’t,” I said flatly, meeting his glare without a flicker of emotion. “Not yet. Let me isolate him first.”
Nikolai’s fists tightened, his whole body vibrating with the need for violence. “You’re talking like he’s some child.”
“He is a child,” I replied, the words cold and absolute. “Timing is everything. If we strike too soon, it ends in chaos, not control. If we strike too late, the advantage is gone. I will choose the moment. And when I do…” My lips curved into a thin, dangerous smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “…I promise, blood will spill, and I’ll make sure every one of you gets a front-row seat.”
Killian raised a brow, a faint, approving smirk tugging at his lips. “Very Jeremy.”
Gareth leaned back in his chair, nodding slowly. “Makes sense. Give him the room to plan.”
Nikolai growled, a low, frustrated sound in his throat, but he didn’t argue further. I could see the tension still coiling in him, a spring ready to snap, but he understood—even if he’d rather chew glass than admit it—that letting me take the lead was necessary. It was how we won.
I let the silence settle for a moment, letting the weight of my command sink in. They’d follow, as they always did. They just didn’t always like it.
“Good,” I said finally, the single word marking the end of the discussion.
Nikolai muttered a string of vicious curses under his breath, clearly unsatisfied, but he fell into line.
He always did.
I always liked it that way.
This meeting had to happen. Each of them was unpredictable in their own way. Nikolai needed to stay in line—no impulsive fights, no reckless moves. Killian… he was slipping, distracted by Glyndon, obsession creeping in with every passing day. And Gareth… well, Gareth never liked being in the middle of what we did. His comfort came from hiding behind that green mask, letting arrows do the talking instead of himself.
Aside from Nikolai, the brothers preferred to keep their distance from a war with the elites. I couldn’t blame them. Killian would have jumped at the chance once, but now… he was torn between loyalty to his girl and loyalty to us. I knew he would never betray me, but I didn’t want to put him in a position where he had to choose.
And as always, there was one unspoken rule in my world: don’t cross the psychopath sleeping in the room next to you.
The more I planned, the angrier I became, and the angrier I became, the clearer everything felt.
King’s routines were simple to exploit. Clubs, galleries, the people he surrounded himself with—everything he thought was predictable could be a trap. A meeting scheduled at the wrong time, a friend subtly misled, a route subtly altered. Little things, almost invisible. But cumulative, like pressure building until the glass shatters.
I picked up my phone and dialed Ilya, my fingers curling around the device like a weapon ready to strike.
“Yes, sir?” Ilya’s calm, precise voice came through.
“Where is he?” I asked, voice low, measured.
“Landon King,” Ilya replied immediately, “is at a chess club. Same one he frequents on Tuesday evenings.”
Chess. I let the word linger in my mind. Strategy. Patience. Manipulation. Perfectly him. A smirk twisted at my lips.
“Address, now.” I said, sharp.
As I hung up, I leaned back in my chair, staring at the empty room and considered the possibilities. Should I make my presence known? Let him feel the shadow of me creeping closer, test the fear I could instill without lifting a hand? Or should I wait, let the tension build until he had no choice but to realize the hunt had already begun?
The thought alone made a pulse of satisfaction ripple through me. Landon King had always loved games. I intended to make this the most personal, most inescapable one he’d ever play.
The ride was quiet, the streets empty under the sickly yellow glow of streetlights. The city’s normal chaos felt too loud, too vibrant, too careless. I preferred isolation, but tonight, I needed proximity. Proximity to him. By the time I pulled up outside the club, a flickering neon sign cast a weak, blue light over the entrance. A small crowd milled about—students, amateurs, a few serious players with stoic expressions. None of them mattered. Only one did. I stepped out, letting the cool night air bite at my skin. My jacket hung loose, my posture deceptively relaxed, but every sense was hyper-alert, tuned to a single frequency. He was in there, probably pretending he was untouchable, probably smirking at some hollow victory. I didn’t immediately go inside. Instead, I melted into the shadows across the street, becoming part of the night. I wanted to see him in his element, see how he carried himself when he thought no one who mattered was watching.
It didn’t take long.
Through the grime-specked window, I found him. Leaning over the chessboard, his jaw sharp, hands long and deliberate as they hovered over the pieces. The dim light carved out the angles of his face, the cold gleam in his eyes. His hair fell with a careless perfection he’d undoubtedly practiced. Every detail was a performance. I couldn’t hear his words, but I could read the language of his arrogance: the slight tilt of his head, the twitch of his lips, the faint lift of an eyebrow. Even from across the street, I could feel the magnetic pull he exerted, the way people leaned in, hung on his every word.
The way his shoulders shifted when he considered a move. The curl of his lips when he believed he’d won some invisible victory. The arrogance practically radiating off him.
I watch as people scatter around him, drifting to their own boards or finally giving up on the thrill of waiting for something exciting to happen in a game that’s already as dull as watching paint dry. Chess. The least interesting thing on the planet. And yet here he sits, the center of it all.
Then I catch it. The moment he thinks no one is really watching—when even his opponent is too absorbed in plotting the next move to notice. The mask drops. Just for a flicker.
And I see him.
The real fucking Landon King.
Bored. Cold. Empty. No smile, no charm, no pretense. Disgust and apathy etched into every line of his face. He looks at his opponent like the man is nothing more than a roach, one he would crush with revulsion rather than satisfaction. Dominance was his nature, but their proximity was a chore he merely tolerated.
I see you.
It’s time to let you see me.
I circled the building, stepping through the front door without hesitation. Eyes flicked to me—surprised glances, hushed murmurs trailing in my wake. I didn’t blame them. My presence here was a grenade in a china shop.
Perfect timing. I caught Landon mid-move, knocking over his opponent’s queen with a lazy finger, his lips curling into that practiced, condescending pout. “Checkmate.” The mask was back on, seamless and infuriating.
His opponent, some kid who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, exhaled, accepted defeat with a shrug, and walked away. Landon stretched, a glimmer of that infuriating smirk on his face as his shirt rode up, revealing pale skin and defined, lean muscle.
I made no sound as I slipped into the chair his opponent had abandoned.
The second his hands came down from his stretch, his eyes snapped to mine. Shock flickered in those cold depths, just for a heartbeat, before it was smothered by that infuriating, smug composure.
Good. You have no idea what’s coming.
“Well, hello there, mafioso,” Landon’s voice dripped with condescending amusement, that crisp accent sharpening every word. “Are you lost?”
I tapped a finger against the table, tilting my head as I watched him.
Landon's smirk didn't waver. He reached for his fallen pieces, beginning to reset the board with languid, precise movements. His fingers, elegant and sure, placed each piece as if performing a ritual.
"I assume you're here for a game," he said, not looking up. His tone was light, conversational, as if discussing the weather. "Though I must warn you, I don't go easy on beginners. It ruins the lesson.”
The condescension was a weapon, and he wield it beautifully. I didn't move. Didn't blink. I just let the silence stretch, thick and heavy, until it became its own answer.
"Cat got your tongue, Volkov?" He finally glanced up, his eyes glinting with cold amusement. "Or are you just here to watch? I didn't take you for a spectator.”
I leaned forward, just slightly, finally breaking my stillness. My voice was a low, quiet rumble, meant for him alone. "I'm not here to play your game, King.”
"Then you're in the wrong place." He placed the final piece—the white king—with a soft click. "This is all I have to offer." He gestured to the board between us, a challenge in his gaze.
"Is it?" I let my eyes sweep slowly around the room—the worn tables, the eager students, the pathetic desperation for his approval—before returning to him. My gaze was a physical weight. "This is your kingdom? A room full of pawns who don't know they're already off the board?”
A flicker of irritation crossed his features, so fast I would have missed it if I weren't already looking for it. His mask was good, but it wasn't perfect. Not with me.
"Everyone serves a purpose," he replied smoothly, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Even those who don't understand the game. But you... you strike me as someone who prefers to bludgeon his way to checkmate. All force, no finesse.”
I smiled then, a cold, sharp thing that held no warmth. "You confuse finesse with cowardice. Hiding behind other people's moves. Using their hands to get yours dirty." I let my meaning hang in the air between us, a direct reference to the fire, to Cecily. "I prefer a direct approach. When I make a move, my opponent knows it was me.”
He held my stare, the air crackling with the unspoken accusation. For a moment, the smug superiority in his eyes shifted into something else—something calculating and dark. He knew why I was here. He just didn't know what I would do next.
Then, just as quickly, the mask was back. He gestured to the board again, a king dismissing a nuisance. "Your move, then. Unless you're all talk.”
I didn't look at the board. My eyes stayed locked on his. Slowly, deliberately, I reached out and flicked his white king. It teetered for a moment before toppling over onto its side with a clatter that echoed in the sudden quiet of the club.
"I already made it," I said, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "You just haven't felt it yet.”
I stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. The message was delivered. The hunt was officially declared. I turned and walked out, leaving him sitting there with his fallen king, the eyes of his entire pathetic court upon him.
I didn't need to look back to know the expression on his face. The first crack had finally appeared.
Notes:
yo it's hard to jump between their characters while writing. :))))))))
i love talking to you guys who are reading, so don't be shy, give me suggestions, any comments, anything you think would be fun to see in the story, i'd love to see if i can bring it to life <3
Chapter 4
Notes:
this is short just to give you guys an insight on how Landon thinks during all of this hehehe, writing Landon's POV is so fun lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Four
Landon
Oh, finally.
Fucking finally.
I was absolutely, completely, losing every last ounce of my sanity to the sheer, soul-crushing boredom. Life is tedious. People are profoundly, terminally dull. I’d prefer a lump of clay I can shape and carve to my own pristine standards—a mute, unmoving statue—over God’s boring, dusty creations any day.
And now, this behemoth of a killing machine, this absolute ogre of a man who thinks with his fists instead of his brain, has finally bit the fucking bait.
Oh, how thrilling. How absolutely, fucking thrilling.
And the best part? He thinks he has the upper hand. The sheer, humorously pathetic arrogance of it.
They disappointed me, the so-called Heathens. I was expecting them to figure it was me weeks ago. I had to practically send little Cecily sobbing to their doorstep with my name on a silver platter. I should perhaps feel a flicker of guilt for twisting every one of her fragile little buttons until she hated me enough to betray me… but I don’t. Not even a whisper. She needed the wake-up call. Amusing her had become as interesting as watching plaster set.
But I was fucking bored, and I was craving a spark, a splash of color, anything to tear through the monotonous grey.
And now I have it. Jeremy bloody Volkov, starting a game with me.
A game I will win, of course. But he’s splashed a brilliant, violent red across the canvas of my life, and at this point, I’ll take my entertainment where I can get it—even if it’s from a dumb wall of useless muscle.
I stared at the white king piece he had so dramatically knocked over, twisting it between my fingers. A little souvenir I’d pocketed on my way out. One must always be prepared for the right moment. I’m known for my theatrics, after all.
I wonder if I should leave it on his corpse when I’m done with him. A final, silent message for everyone to find. A signature. It was me.
The thought alone is absolutely maddeningly thrilling.
I knew he had his people following me for years. It came in waves. Every time he got bored of his mundane life of violence and threats, his little shadows would show up again, as if he was a bloodhound looking for something—anything—to bite. But after I fed him nothing but a pristine, boring image, they would disappear for a while. Then, inevitably, the cycle would repeat.
His little game of cat and mouse was becoming tiresome. Predictable. So I simply… pushed him in the right direction. Gave the cat a reason to finally pounce.
The fire?
The fire was just me saying ‘hello, how are you?’
Oh, this is fantastic.
The king piece felt cool and solid in my palm, a perfect, weighted truth. Jeremy Volkov had no idea the gift he’d given me. A prop for my final act.
A smile, sharp and genuine for the first time in months, touched my lips. He’d stood there in that dreary little club, all brooding intensity and silent threats, believing he was the predator finally cornering his prey.
Oh, you beautiful, stupid brute. You have no idea you’ve been performing in my play from the very beginning.
The obsession… it was never just his. Let’s be perfectly, brutally honest. That first day I saw him—a storm contained in human form, all barely leashed violence and silent judgment—I was… intrigued. Most people are open books, their desires pathetic and transparent. But him? Jeremy Volkov was a locked vault. And I have never been able to resist a puzzle.
He thought he was hunting me. He thought his spies were so clever, his surveillance so discreet. He never once considered that every time his men followed me, I was leading them on a tour. I performed for them. I gave them exactly the pristine, boring image they were looking for, all the while imagining the frustration simmering beneath his stoic surface. It was my favorite game.
I’d see him across a crowded courtyard at that pretentious academy, and I’d make a point to laugh just a little too loud, to meet his gaze for a fraction of a second too long—just to see that muscle in his jaw tick. Just to know I could get under that impenetrable skin.
He was watching me? Good. I was orchestrating every single glance.
I wanted to crack him open. I wanted to be the one to make that control shatter. I wanted to see what sound he would make when he finally broke. Would it be a roar? A whisper? Would he finally look at me without that veil of cold disdain and see the mirror I am?
The fire wasn’t just a ‘hello.’ It was a letter. A poem written in smoke and chaos, designed for an audience of one. Look what I can do. Look how I can make your world burn. Now, come and find me.
And he did. Oh, he did. He took the bait so perfectly, so predictably. He thinks this is his war. He thinks he’s in control.
He doesn’t understand that this—this thrilling, delicious tension—is exactly where I’ve always wanted him. Finally, finally looking directly at me. Not at the king, or the artist, or the golden boy.
At me.
The thought was a sweet hum in my veins as I crossed the campus grounds, the morning sun doing little to warm the chill I preferred. And then I saw them. My… circle.
A picturesque little tableau of discontent: Brandon, my dear twin, his usually easy-going face set in a hard line; Glyndon, my sister, a storm brewing behind her carefully neutral expression; Ava, all childish pouts and furious frowns; Remi, loyal and tense; Creighton, a dark cloud of silent judgment; and nestled among them, like a precious jewel among thorns, Annika Volkova. Jeremy’s little sister. How… convenient.
A slow, charming smile spread across my face. This was too good an opportunity to miss. Time to push some buttons. It’s what I do best.
“Well, don’t you all look like you’ve just lost your favorite toy,” I drawled, sliding onto the empty space on the stone bench next to Glyndon, my posture the picture of relaxed elegance. “Did I miss a memo? Are we mourning the loss of collective brain cells?”
The silence that fell was frigid. No one returned my smile.
It was Brandon who broke first, his voice low and strained. “Where’s your head at, Landon?”
I tilted my head, feigning innocence. “On my shoulders, where it usually is. Why? Is there a problem?”
“Cecily,” Glyndon said, her voice clipped and cold. She didn’t look at me, her gaze fixed on some distant point. “Care to explain?”
“Explain what?” I gave a light, airy laugh, brushing an invisible piece of lint from my sleeve. “That some people can’t handle a little honesty? She read into things that weren’t there. I simply clarified the situation. It’s not my fault she built a fantasy in that pretty little head of hers.”
Annika flinched. Creighton’s hand, which had been resting on the table, tightened into a white-knuckled fist.
“You didn’t have to be so cruel about it,” Ava said, her tone aggressively sharp. “There’s a difference between clarity and cruelty, Landon. You excel at the latter, which is being a complete douchebag.”
“Cruel?” I let the word hang, my smile never wavering. “I was saving her from future embarrassment. I’d call it a mercy.”
“A mercy?” Remi finally spoke, her loyalty to the group overriding her usual hesitation to challenge me. “She’s been crying for two days straight. She thought you cared about her.”
“And that,” I said, my voice dropping into a conspiratorial, condescending whisper, “is precisely the issue. Thinking without facts is a dangerous pastime.”
It was the wrong thing to say. It was, in fact, the exact right thing to say to escalate things beautifully.
Ava shot to her feet, her chair scraping back violently. “You’re unbelievable. You strung her along for years and then tossed her aside like garbage the second you got bored. You used her, Landon. For what? Your own amusement?”
Delusions, delusions. I just smiled at her a bit wider. “Don’t be dramatic, Barbie,” I sighed, as if explaining something to a child. “Everyone uses everyone. It’s the fundamental basis of society.”
Glyndon finally turned her head, and the look in her eyes wasn’t just anger. It was disappointment. “You went too far this time, Landon. Even for you.”
I looked at their faces—Brandon’s betrayal, Glyndon’s disdain, the others’ cold judgment—and felt a thrill. This was better than I’d hoped. I’d gotten under all their skins.
Cecily had so many people who cared for her, I mused internally, why was she throwing a fit over nothing? She’s the one who basically put my name on a death list when she gave it to Jeremy the other night. I wonder how our little group of friends would feel if they found out that little detail she had so interestingly decided not to mention.
My eyes finally landed on Annika, who had been watching me with a mixture of fear and fascination. She knew, though. She definitely knew Cecily had set her brother on my trail.
I gave her a slow, deliberate wink before rising smoothly to my feet.
“Well, this has been utterly draining,” I announced, adjusting my cufflinks. “If you’ll all excuse me, I have a world to run. Do try to find a new topic of conversation. This one is getting terribly dull.”
And with that, I turned and walked away, leaving a tornado of anger and hurt in my wake. The smile on my face was real. Let them be angry. Let them hate me.
They always came crawling back. None of them had the backbone to stay away… they were… how shall I put this in a way that doesn’t make me a complete monster? Too trusting? Naive? They cared too much?
All of the above.
Anyways. It only made the game more interesting. And Jeremy Volkov’s precious little sister was now watching me walk away.
Perfect.
Now, where was I? Oh right, Jeremy Volkov.
How to make the dog bite next?
He’d made his opening move—a clumsy, obvious strike in a public place. A declaration of war. Predictable. But now… now the board was set. It was my turn. The key wasn’t to attack him directly. A brute-force response would be just as predictable as his initial move.
No. The way to make a predator truly lose its mind is to go after what it protects. Not through force, but through poison. Not with a knife, but with a whisper.
A slow, darkly euphoric idea began to form, beautiful in its simplicity and cruelty. He values control above all else. Control over his empire, his men, his family… his own volatile emotions.
So I will take it from him. Piece by piece.
I could start with his business. A whispered rumor in the right ear. A key shipment… misplaced. A trusted associate suddenly developing a crisis of conscience, all thanks to a anonymously delivered packet of… compelling information. He’d spend weeks putting out fires, looking for an enemy he can’t punch.
But that’s too distant. Too corporate. He’d see it as business, not personal.
This needs to be intimate.
My thoughts drifted to Annika’s face, that fascinating blend of fear and fascination. His precious little sister, now orbiting my world. Jeremy would hate that. The mere idea of me so much as glancing in her direction would make that vein in his temple pulse.
Perhaps a conversation. A chance meeting. I could be… charming. Helpful. Express my concerns about her brother’s recent, aggressive behavior. Warn her he might be making powerful enemies. I’d be the voice of reason, of course. Just a concerned citizen. She’d report every word back to him, and he would hear nothing but a threat wrapped in silk.
He’d feel the walls closing in, but he wouldn’t be able to see them. He wouldn’t know where the next strike was coming from. That’s the true art of it—the anticipation, the paranoia, is so much more destructive than the blow itself.
I want him looking over his shoulder at shadows I create. I want him questioning his allies, his routines, his own sanity.
I want him to know, on a primal level, that he is in a game he does not understand, with a player who is infinitely his superior.
A genuine smile, cold and sharp, touched my lips. The plan crystallized, perfect and gleaming.
Time to give the beast a reason to charge straight into my trap. And the bait… the bait would be utterly irresistible.
Let the games truly begin.
This is absolutely going to be the highlight of my year.
Notes:
i would like to think when it came to their friend the elites would stand up to even Landon after how he treated Cecily, so that's where the discussion with the group came from. Also Landon is quite the attention whore so, yeah.
Chapter 5
Notes:
in my head, they're too chaotic for small jabs. Landon and Jeremy are the definition of wild, so i feel like their hits would be wild too. they definitely wouldn't pull back their hits when it comes to each other.
Chapter Text
Chapter Five
Jeremy
What. The. Fuck.
What the fuck is happening?
I yank at my collar, frustration crawling up my throat, and slam the door to my father’s New York study. Home. Across the goddamn ocean, because the family business is imploding in a way I’ve never seen before. Not an attack. Not a hit. Worse.
A fucking infection.
Every hour, another fire. It started while I was still in class. My phone, silent, lit up like a detonation cord. Calls. Missed alerts. Guards. Lieutenants. My father. And then the stares—my classmates glancing from their phones to me with a cocktail of curiosity and fear.
A smear campaign. Juvenile lies splattered across tabloids and social media—but effective. Poison spreading faster than bullets.
Partners pulling out. Shipments delayed. Banking transactions “frozen for review.” Our empire suffocating under a web of rumors.
My father, Adrian Volkov, stands by the window, vodka dangling from his fingers. The tension in his shoulders is its own language.
“They are like ghosts,” he says, his voice low, dangerous. “I cannot shoot a ghost. I cannot threaten a rumor.”
I pace the rug like a caged animal. “It’s not ghosts. It’s strategy. Calculated.”
“By who?” He finally turns, Volkov blue eyes locking on mine. “The Serpents lack this finesse. The Italians would have sent a message first. This is different. An attack for the modern world. It kills our credibility, not our bodies.”
Credibility. Finesse.
That words cut. This isn’t random. It’s personal. A game.
And I know exactly who’s playing.
“It’s him.” I chuckle dryly, tugging at my hair not believing I didn’t figure it out sooner. “Landon king.”
For a fraction of a second, my father stills, and that’s as close to surprise as Adrian Volkov gets. “The artist?”
“He’s not just an artist.” The words scrape my throat raw. “He’s been circling me. Prodding, needling. The fire. All the same hand.”
“He is a boy.”
“No.” My laugh is bitter. “He’s a boy who knows how to use the board. He doesn’t care about blood. He wants humiliation. He wants to prove he can move pieces without touching them. That he can pull strings and watch me dance.”
My father studies me like he’s weighing whether to believe me, then finally tips back the vodka.
If he wants to play chess, I’ll flip the whole fucking board.
Adrian sets his glass down with a deliberate click. “And what will you do?”
I meet his stare, and for the first time in days, I feel calm. “Answer whispers with a scream.”
I leave before he can argue. The door shuts behind me, and I call the one shadow I can always rely on.
“Ilya.”
“Sir?”
“The jet. We’re going back to London.”
There’s a pause. “Sir, your father—”
“The problem isn’t here.” My voice is razor-thin. “It’s the source. And I’ll cut it out at the root.” I didn’t wait for a response. Pulling out my phone, I navigated to Killian’s contact. He was the link. The tether to that world. And he was about to choose a side.
The phone rang once before he picked up.
“Jeremy.” His tone was its usual flat monotone, but I could hear the underlying tension. He knew.
Of course he knew.
“I need an address,” I said, bypassing any greeting. My voice left no room for debate.
A beat of silence. Calculating. “Whose address?”
“Landon’s parents.”
The silence on the other end stretched, thick and heavy. I could almost hear the gears turning in his ruthlessly logical mind. “Why?” The single word was sharp, a blade of pure suspicion. “What do you plan to do?”
My answer was simple, absolute, and devoid of all emotion. “I plan to remind them who they’re dealing with. They raised a viper. Now they get to face the consequences.”
“Jeremy.” Killian’s voice lost its flatness, gaining an edge I rarely heard. A warning. “That is a line. Glyndon—”
“—is your concern,” I cut him off, my tone freezing over. “My concern is my family. My name. My legacy. Landon fucked with it. So now I fuck with his. That’s the math. It’s simple.”
Another pause. I could feel his resistance.
“This isn’t strategic. This is a declaration of war on an entirely different front. You’ll bring their entire world down on us.”
“They,” I snarled, the fury finally breaking through the ice, “are already at war with us. They just don’t know it yet. I’m simply answering the door. Now. The address.”
“And if I say no?” Killian challenged, his voice dropping to a whisper.
The threat in my response was a physical thing. “Then you’re choosing his family over your own. And I will teach you the same lesson I’m about to teach them.”
The line was silent, Then, a soft, almost inaudible sigh. A second later, my phone buzzed. A text message. An address.
I didn’t thank him. Gratitude had no place in this. “We’re done playing nice on your behalf, Killian,” I said, my voice final. “The gloves are off.” I ended the call and headed for the waiting car.
.
.
.
.
I could barely hold in my aggression throughout the flight. Sleep was a foreign concept. Each mile was a mile closer to the confrontation. I sat in the dark, private cabin, my knuckles white as I gripped the armrests, staring out at the endless black below. I took a cold shower, the water doing little to sluice away the heat of my anger, only sharpening it into a clearer, more deadly point.
This could end catastrophically. I knew that. Declaring war on a family like the Kings was a gamble that could ignite a conflict spanning continents. It could fracture my brotherhood with Killian. But it was a gamble I was willing to make.
Landon didn’t dream I would respond like this. He’d probably expected the whole Bratva to run around like headless chickens, chasing rumors. He’d hidden his tracks well. But I didn’t need proof. I *knew*. The entire scheme reeked of his particular smell: clever, arrogant, and utterly detached from the real-world consequences of violence. That was his biggest mistake. This wasn’t a fucking school club debate. This was the Bratva. He was lucky my father let me handle it myself. If Adrian Volkov had spoken the King name aloud in a council meeting, the retribution would be swift, bloody, and absolute. There would be no more Kings.
In a way, I was doing them a favor. I was giving them a chance. A choice. All Landon needed to do was kneel. Once and for all. Or his family would pay the price.
The jet began its descent. I stared out at the city lights glittering below. I hoped, for all their sakes, that Landon King was ready to submit. The jet landed with a final, deafening roar that matched the one in my skull. I didn't wait for the stairs to fully deploy before I was moving, Ilya a silent shadow at my back.
I expected to head straight for a car. But my path was blocked.
Killian is waiting for me when I step off the jet. Arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes like storm clouds. Ilya shifts behind me, but I don’t slow my stride.
“What are you doing here?” I ask flatly.
“I’m giving you a ride.”
“I already have one.”
“You have a death wish. And I’m not letting you drive it straight into their house.”
He thinks I don’t get it. He thinks my anger is a cloud, something that dulls my senses. He doesn’t understand that for me, rage isn’t a fog; it’s a laser. It burns away everything except the target. And the target is Landon King.
I stop, turn, meet his eyes. The silence between us is electric.
“He started it,” I say. “He doesn’t get to hide behind his parents.”
Killian doesn’t blink. “I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting her.”
There it is. The truth. His Achilles heel. Glyndon. Landon’s sister.
My lip curls. “Then you should’ve controlled her fucking brother.”
His shoulders tense, his face going colder than I’ve ever seen it. “Watch it.”
Killian is worried about Glyndon. I get it. But my concern is my sister. My father. The thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on the fear our name inspires. Landon threatened that. Directly. He doesn’t get to hide behind his sister’s skirt any more than I would let Anoushka hide behind mine.
This isn’t about pride. It’s about principle. The simplest principle there is: you hit me, I hit you back harder. You try to burn me, I’ll reduce your entire world to ash. It’s a promise. It’s the only promise people like us can ever truly make and keep.
“My loyalty is to the family first,” I remind him, voice a whip crack. “Yours better be too.”
The challenge hangs there, heavy.
Killian finally exhales, and instead of arguing, he pulls his phone out. “What’s your plan?”
“Simple. I walk into their house. Sit in their living room. Tell them every dollar we lost, every deal broken, will be extracted from them. Their art. Their charities. Their name. And then I tell them they have a choice: leash their son, or watch their empire burn. Either way, Landon kneels.”
Killian was silent, processing the sheer scale of it. "You're declaring a genocide on a dynasty. For what? Pride?”
"For respect," I corrected, a snarl. "He thought there were no consequences. I am the consequence. I'm reminding everyone what the Volkov name means. And if I have to make an example of the Kings to do it, then so be it.” I held his gaze. "Your move, Killian. Are you driving me there? Or are you getting in my way?”
“Landon overstepped. He doesn’t imagine this is the response. His methods are for uni clubs and childish rivalries. He doesn’t understand the language of true consequence.” He paused. “You don’t need to actually carry out the threat. Not yet. You just need to plant the seed in *his* head. The thought alone will torture him more than anything you could do. He will look at them and see the vulnerabilities *he* created.”
“So,” he concluded. “I will drive you there. But we won’t go in. You will snap a picture of them. Oblivious. Happy. Safe. You will send it to Landon. No text. No threat. Just the image. Let him write the narrative.” He looked at me. “And if he doesn’t oblige? Then I will step aside. And you can do as you please.”
It’s clever. Cruel. Psychological.
Exactly something Killian would say.
I was a man of direct force. But I was not a fool. His plan was… smarter. It was a threat wrapped in silence. The ghost of my rage, sent to haunt him.
I consider it, then nod once. “For now, fine, but,” I turned to him, my eyes stark with truth. “If I don’t take him out, the games will continue. The fire was his first move. I showed restraint. And he took it as a challenge. He tried to burn our entire legacy to the ground.” I shook my head. “He’s not a rival. He’s a disease. You contain a rival. A disease you cut out.”
“He will always be a threat. This picture might scare him for a month. A year. But he will get bored. And he will come again. The only way this ends is when I end him.” I let the grim prognosis hang in the air. “So you tell me, Killian. You’re the strategist. How does this end without a body? Because I don’t see it.”
This ends when Landon King is on his knees. Not because of a threat, but because he is broken. Because he finally, truly understands that he picked a fight with a force of nature. That his money, his name, his art, his clever little mind—none of it can protect him from the consequences of his own arrogance.
Chapter Text
Chapter Six
Landon
I might have gone a teensy bit overboard.
But, and this is a very significant but, it is technically not all my fault.
The plan was simple, really. A work of art, even. I sent a beautifully crafted fake story—laced with just enough tantalizing, true details to make it utterly believable—to a particularly trashy, notoriously unscrupulous online tabloid. The goal? To annoy Jeremy Volkov. To prick that impenetrable, stoic exterior of his and see if I could get a real, unscripted reaction. A little online drama. Some amusing gossip for the elites to cluck over. A minor irritant.
It is really not my fault the entire goddamn world was apparently waiting for a single excuse to tear the Volkovs limb from limb. I provided a spark; I am not responsible for the powder keg they’ve been sitting on. Who knew the Bratva had so many enemies just salivating for any scrap to latch onto?
My little story was a stone thrown into a pond. I expected ripples. I did not expect a tsunami.
Oh well. C’est la vie. What’s done is done.
Jeremy vanished from campus last week, no doubt summoned by his dear father to manage some part of the hell currently raining down on them from every conceivable angle. A pity. The view from afar was becoming so entertaining.
Again, for the record, not my doing. I merely whispered one scandal about tax evasion into the wrong ear. The ensuing avalanche of shit? That’s on them. Their reputation was clearly already hanging by a thread.
I am merely the artist who pointed out how easily it could be cut.
My studio is, naturally, a reflection of my genius. A sprawling, flawlessly chaotic loft where creation and destruction dance a beautiful waltz. Sculptures—some masterpieces, some mercifully abandoned failures—lean against exposed brick. The air smells of turpentine, expensive tobacco, and potential. A fine layer of clay dust coats everything, a testament to the beautiful mess of bringing perfection into the world.
Today, however, my medium was betraying me.
I was perched on my stool, a cigarette dangling from my lips like a punctuation mark of nonchalance. My hands were buried in a wretchedly uncooperative block of clay, my clothes a lost cause. The form on the stand was meant to be a study in restrained power—a tribute to tension itself.
Instead, it looked like a melted candle. It was bland. It was formless. It was, frankly, an insult to my talent.
I took a long drag, blowing smoke at the pathetic lump. “You could try to be a little more inspired,” I told it. It had the audacity to remain stubbornly uninspired.
This entire situation was putting me off my game. This was supposed to be a delightful game of cat and mouse. My game. I’m the one who drops the breadcrumbs. I’m the one who leads the dance. I show Jeremy just enough of my hand to keep him fascinated and furious, trailing after me.
I never signed up to play against the entire fucking Bratva orchestra.
A particularly stubborn section of clay refused to hold its shape, slumping with a depressing lack of ambition. Like certain people I could mention.
My little joke had metastasized. Every news alert was another symptom, another business partner fleeing the plague of association I’d so cleverly engineered. It was magnificent. It was… excessive.
And Jeremy, for all his Neanderthal tendencies, is not a complete idiot. He’ll connect the dots. He’ll see my signature on the chaos. It’s what I wanted.
So why did the thought feel less like a victory and more like I’d poked a bear with a very, very large and well-armed family?
With a sudden, elegant surge of frustration, I decided the sculpture was beyond saving. A lost cause. I drove my fist through its center.
Cathartic.
Cold, wet clay exploded everywhere. A glob landed on my cheek. Another splattered across a half-finished painting of a stormy sea. How fitting.
I sat there, amidst the beautiful destruction, breathing in the scent of my own petulance. I wiped my hand on my thigh, examining the ruins.
A perfect, messy metaphor.
What’s done is done, I thought, a smirk finally touching my lips. Let them try to blame the artist for the world’s inability to handle his art.
He knew. He had to know.
And the game, against my slightly-more-careful-than-I’d-admit-out-loud better judgment, was finally getting… interesting.
The smirk felt brittle on my face. A performance for an audience of one: myself. The clay was cold and slimy between my fingers, a gritty reminder of my failure. The silence in the loft, usually so full of potential, now felt heavy and accusatory.
I cracked my neck, a sharp, satisfying pop that did nothing to release the tension coiling at the base of my skull. The gesture was pure habit, a physical reset button that had failed. The hum of disquiet was still there, a low-frequency buzz under my skin that I couldn’t switch off.
This is ridiculous, I thought, the words sharp and mocking in my own head. This is beneath you. He’s a thug. A beautifully brutal, infuriatingly predictable thug. You are Landon King. You control the narrative.
But the narrative felt like it was slipping, the pages scattering in a wind I’d summoned but couldn’t direct.
I stood up, my joints stiff, and stalked over to the sink, washing the clay from my hands. The water ran gray, swirling down the drain like all my good intentions. I caught my reflection in the dark window glass—a pale face smudged with dirt, eyes too bright, too aware. I looked… unsettled. It was an unacceptable look.
A sharp buzz cut through the silence.
My phone, vibrating against the metal table where I’d tossed it.
I didn’t move. Let it ring. The world could wait. The artist was brooding.
The buzzing stopped. Blessed silence returned for all of ten seconds before it started again. Insistent. Annoying.
Fine.
With a sigh of profound exasperation, I decided to abandon the sculpture. It was a lost cause. Tonight was a lost cause. Maybe I’d burn the whole thing tomorrow. There was a certain appeal in that—purification by fire.
I grabbed a rag, wiping the last of the grime from my hands as I ambled toward the phone. It was probably Glyndon, wanting to dissect some inconsequential drama. Or Brandon, needing to be emotionally managed. The demands of being the sun in everyone’s solar system were exhausting.
I picked up the phone. The screen glowed in the dim studio light.
Unknown Number.
My thumb hovered over the notification. A prickle of something—not fear, never fear—a heightened sense of interest traced a cold finger down my spine. Unknown numbers were either delightful surprises or tedious obligations. I was in the mood for neither.
I almost dismissed it. Deleted it. The world of obligations could wait until tomorrow.
But the night’s failures had made me curious. Or maybe just masochistic.
I tapped the screen.
The message loaded. A single image. No text. No warning.
My breath hitched, just for a fraction of a second, caught in my throat.
It was a picture of my house. The familiar Georgian facade, the wisteria climbing the pale stone. Taken from the street, through the large kitchen window.
And inside, framed perfectly by the window like a living portrait, were my parents.
My mother was leaning against the marble island, her head thrown back in a laugh, a glass of white wine in her hand. My father stood beside her, one hand on her shoulder, his face softened by a genuine, crinkled-eyed smile. They were caught in a moment of pure, unguarded bliss. They looked happy. Gut-wrenchingly, naively, stupidly happy.
The kind of happiness that is so complete, it doesn’t even know it’s being watched.
The world shrank to the glowing rectangle in my hand. The buzz of the studio lights, the distant sound of the birds chirping outside in the woods—it all faded into a dull roar.
My first thought was absurd, trivial: That’s a terrible angle. The composition is awful. The lighting is harsh.
My second thought was a cold, sharp shard of glass sliding directly into my heart.
He’s there.
This wasn’t a message. It was a shot across the bow. A silent, devastating declaration.
Jeremy Volkov wasn’t just smart. He was as poetic as I was.
He hadn’t sent a threat. He hadn’t made a demand. He’d sent me their happiness. Their peace. Their obliviousness.
And he’d sent it from a number I didn’t know, proving he could get to them, could see them, could touch them, anytime he wanted.
The clay dust on my hands felt suddenly filthy. The arrogance I’d worn like a crown moments before felt cheap and hollow.
The game hadn’t just gotten interesting.
It had just become real. And the board was no longer mine.
The cold shock that iced my veins instantly vaporized into a white-hot, incandescent rage.
How dare he.
The thought wasn't fear. It was pure, undiluted fury. A violation. A trespass.
They are mine. My parents. My legacy. My beautiful, pristine anchors in a world of mediocrity. Their happiness is a reflection of my curation; their peace, a testament to the perfect world I've built around us. A threat to them isn't about their safety—it's a threat to my assets. My equilibrium. My control.
They are the crown jewels in my museum, and Jeremy Volkov just put his grubby hands on the glass.
My fingers clenched around the phone, the screen threatening to crack. I wanted to find him. To make him regret ever looking in their direction.
But just as quickly, the rage was snuffed out. Smothered by something colder, sharper, and infinitely more familiar: calculation.
The performer stepped back onto the stage.
Think. Think fast.
Responding with anger is what the brute expects. That’s playing his game.
No. I need a performance. A masterpiece of misdirection.
I need to say the exact thing he wants to hear. I need to sound… contained. Cornered. Sorry.
I need to ensure my possessions are immediately, unequivocally, taken off the board.
A slow, cold smile, devoid of any warmth, touches my lips. The artist has a new, more challenging medium: Jeremy Volkov’s expectations.
I take a breath I don't need, my heart already cold and still. My thumbs move over the screen, precise, each word a carefully chosen tool.
Unknown Number: A picture is worth a thousand words. I believe one will suffice from me.
You have my attention.
The game is ours. Leave them out of it.
What do you want?
I read it over. Perfect.
It acknowledges the threat. It shows capitulation. It establishes a new, personal boundary—the game is ours—that implicitly agrees to his terms while making it seem like I’m the one conceding.
It’s a lie, of course. Every word of it. The game was never not mine. I just need to remind him who the real player is.
But for now, it’s the lie he needs to hear. The one that will make the beast think he’s won this round.
I hit send.
The message delivers. Read.
And now, I wait. The ball is back in the beast's court.
The three dots appear almost instantly. He was waiting. A thrill, sharp and electric, shot through me. The beast was on the hook.
Unknown Number: > Kneel.
I almost laughed. Of course. So predictably primal. So utterly Jeremy. He didn't want an explanation or an apology. He wanted a symbol. A victory.
He wanted to see me break.
I could practically feel the command vibrating through the phone, expecting immediate, groveling compliance.
My thumbs flew over the screen, my smile all teeth.
Landon: > Darling, I’m an artist. We don’t kneel. We inspire kneeling.
You’ve made your point. It was… dramatically effective. What exactly would you have me do?
I needed him to spell it out. I needed the terms of my surrender so I could later twist them into a new form of attack.
The dots appeared. Lingered. He was choosing his words with that lethal precision of his.
Unknown Number: > Fix it. Every lie. Every lost dollar. You started the fire. You put it out.
You have 48 hours.
Or the next picture I send won’t be through a window.
The threat was so blunt it was almost artistic. No flourish. Just a promise of violence. It should have chilled me. Instead, it fascinated me. This was the real Jeremy Volkov, stripped of pretense.
He didn’t want a performance. He wanted results.
I could work with that.
Landon: > A tall order for 48 hours. Rumors, once released, are such fickle creatures. But for you? I’ll see what magic I can perform.
A truce, then? For their sake.
I had to add that last part. I had to make him believe his threat was the only thing that worked. That I was doing this under duress, for them, not because he’d actually outmaneuvered me.
His reply was immediate.
Unknown Number: > There is no truce. There is your obedience.
The air left my lungs in a quiet rush. Obedience. The word was a brand. He wasn’t negotiating. He was dictating. And the most terrifying part? Part of me… liked it. The clarity of it. The sheer, uncompromising force of his will.
I had to claw back some control. Just a sliver.
Landon: > Understood. I’ll be in touch.
Try not to miss me too much, Volkov.
It was a risk. A flash of the old Landon, a reminder that I wasn’t completely cowed. A final, defiant wink.
I held my breath, waiting for the fury. The final, threatening command.
The read receipt appeared.
But no dots followed.
He was gone. The conversation was over on his terms.
I stared at the screen, at our entire exchange laid bare. He’d given me an order. A timeframe. A consequence.
And I, Landon King, had just agreed to obey.
The game had changed entirely. And for the first time, I wasn't sure who was truly holding the leash.
I’ll get it back, I always do.
The screen went dark, reflecting my own face back at me—pale, smudged with clay, eyes alight with a strange, furious exhilaration.
Silence.
He was gone. Just like that. The absolute audacity of him to issue a command and then simply… leave. As if my compliance was a foregone conclusion.
Obedience.
The word echoed in the silent studio, a ghost he’d left behind to haunt me. It should have made me furious. It did make me furious. But beneath the fury, a cold, razor-sharp focus was taking hold.
Fine.
He wanted it fixed? I would fix it. Not for him. Never for him. But because he had threatened what was mine, and the most efficient way to neutralize that threat was to meet his absurd demand. This wasn't surrender; it was strategic recalibration.
I placed the phone down on the workbench with a quiet, deliberate click. The time for sculpting clay was over. Now, it was time to sculpt reality.
A slow, dark smile touched my lips. The performer was off the stage. The puppeteer was back in the wings.
I cracked my knuckles, the sound sharp in the quiet room. Where to even begin? The beautiful, chaotic web I’d woven was now a mess I had to untangle. Luckily, I am an expert weaver.
My mind began to click through the connections, the favors, the debts. A mental file cabinet of every dirty secret and owed loyalty in this city flickered to life.
First, the source. The editor at the trashy tabloid. He owed me for spiking a story about his rather… creative accounting practices last year. I found his private number and typed a single line.
Landon: > The story you ran on the Volkovs. Retract it. Cite “unverifiable sources.” Do it within the hour.
I didn’t wait for a reply. He would do it.
Next, the financial whispers. A contact at the financial regulatory board. His son’s rather expensive drug habit was a secret I’d been saving for a rainy day. It was pouring.
Landon: > The Volkov accounts flagged for review. A clerical error, I assume. See that it’s corrected. Today.
The beauty of it was the sheer scale of my reach. I didn’t need to be Bratva to have power. I had better power. The kind that wore suits, sat in boardrooms, and signed paperwork that could make or break empires. I held their sins in my palm, and now it was time to collect.
For the next hour, my studio wasn’t a place of art. It was a command center. Texts flew out into the night. Not requests. Instructions. Reminders of mutual interests. And, when necessary, elegantly veiled threats.
There’s a socialite who gossiped too eagerly. Her husband doesn’t know about her girlfriend. She’ll recant her “anonymous” tip.
There’s a business rival who amplified the story. He’s currently seeking investors for a new venture. He’ll discover his funding has suddenly, mysteriously dried up unless he publicly praises Volkov integrity.
Piece by piece. Favor by favor. Threat by threat.
It was exhausting. It was beneath me. It was cleaning up a mess with a toothbrush.
But with every text sent, every call made, I could feel the narrative shifting. The avalanche I’d started, I was now painstakingly pushing back up the mountain.
And with every move I made, one thought burned in the back of my mind, a constant, aggravating motivator:
Jeremy Volkov will not have the satisfaction of seeing me fail.
He wanted obedience? He would get perfection. He would get efficiency so flawless it would be insulting. He would get his world restored, and he would have to live with the infuriating knowledge that I, Landon King, was the only reason it happened.
The game was far from over. He’d just forced me to change the playing field.
And I always win on any field.
Notes:
tsk tsk tsk.
Chapter Text
Chapter Seven
Jeremy
The cottage was a tomb. Cold, dark, and smelling of damp wood and isolation. I’d bought it for the silence, and right now, the silence was fucking deafening.
I was slumped in the only decent chair—a worn leather thing that groaned under my weight—staring at the laptop screen glowing on the rickety kitchen table. I’d left the Kings’ pristine neighborhood the second I’d sent the picture, disappearing back onto the island like a ghost. No one knew I was here. Not my father, not my men. Only Killian.
And Killian looked about as happy to be here as I was to have him. He was perched on a wooden kitchen chair that was one wrong move from splintering into firewood, his expression flat enough to be carved from stone.
“I still don’t understand why you bought a haunted house and didn’t even furnish it right,” he muttered, shifting his weight with a wince. “My ass is going numb. Did you get this chair from a medieval torture museum?”
I ignored him. My focus was on the screen. Headline after headline refreshed on the financial and gossip sites I had pulled up.
‘Volkov Holdings Vindicated: Sources Retract Earlier Claims.’ ‘Regulatory Freeze on Volkov Accounts Lifted: Cited as “Administrative Error.”’ ‘Prominent Business Figures Praise Volkov Family’s “Unshakable Integrity.”’
It was happening in real time. A coordinated, flawless, near-surgical reversal of the entire shitstorm. The lies were being erased so fast it was like they’d never existed. The very people who’d been sharpening their knives yesterday were now tripping over themselves to kiss the ring.
It should have felt like a victory. It just felt… cold.
Landon was doing it. He was actually fucking doing it.
I’d given him forty-eight hours. He wasn't even going to need twenty-four.
“He’s powerful after all,” I said, the words coming out low, more for myself than for Killian.
It wasn’t a compliment. It was a threat assessment. This wasn’t some rich kid playing with his trust fund. This was a network. This was influence. This was a level of control over the world of whispers and paperwork that was, in its own way, as lethal as a loaded gun. He could burn you down with a word and rebuild you with another, all without leaving his fucking art studio.
That made him an even bigger threat.
Killian stopped pretending to try and get comfortable. He followed my gaze to the screen, watching another article flip from accusation to apology.
“I’ll admit,” he said, his voice its usual monotone, but I could hear the grudging respect in it. “I didn’t think the pretty boy had it in him. Or that many favors to call in. This isn’t just damage control. This is a masterclass in manipulation.”
He leaned forward, the chair creaking in protest. “He’s not just fixing it. He’s making them love you for it. That takes a special kind of twisted genius.”
I grunted, my eyes still glued to the screen. “Means he had the power to stop it before it started. He chose not to.”
“He was bored,” Killian stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You were a new, shiny toy. He didn’t expect you to hit the panic button and set the whole playroom on fire.”
He was right. This was a game to Landon. A twisted, high-stakes game where he moved people and corporations around like chess pieces. And I’d just shown him I don’t play chess. I flip the board and break the player’s fingers.
“He’s almost fixed the whole fuckery in less than a day,” Killian said, voicing my own thought. “What’s your next move? You can’t exactly kill him now. He’s doing exactly what you told him to.”
That was the problem. He was. With terrifying efficiency. The obedience was perfect. And it was the most infuriating, arrogant thing he could have possibly done.
It proved he could have stopped this at any time. It proved this was all just a game to him. And it proved that the power he had was real, vast, and dangerous.
My next move?
I finally looked away from the screen, meeting Killian’s waiting gaze. The cold calm was settling over me again, the kind that came before a storm.
“We wait for him to finish,” I said, my voice quiet and dead serious. “Then we see how he thinks this ends.”
The phone vibrating on the table was like a gunshot in the silent cottage. The screen lit up with a single word: FATHER.
Killian’s eyes flicked from the phone to me, his expression unreadable, but his silence was commentary enough. He knew, like I did, that this call wasn’t a coincidence. The news moved fast. My father’s network moved faster.
I answered on the third ring, putting it on speaker. I had no secrets from Killian. Not about this.
“Jeremy.” My father’s voice was a low, familiar rumble, but there was a different texture to it. Something almost… approving.
“Father.”
“The freeze on the London accounts has been lifted. The partners are calling again. Apologizing.” He paused, and I could hear the faint clink of ice in a glass on his end. “The retractions are… comprehensive. This was handled. Efficiently.”
It was the closest thing to praise I’d get. Adrian Volkov didn’t deal in compliments; he dealt in results.
“It’s handled,” I confirmed, my voice flat.
Another pause, longer this time. Calculating. “The response was… uncharacteristically swift. The methods, precise. This doesn’t smell like Nikolai’s work. Or Killian’s.” He left the question hanging in the air between us, a silent demand for an answer.
I didn’t hesitate. I don’t lie to my father. “It wasn’t.”
“Then who?”
“Landon King.”
The silence on the other end of the line was absolute. I could picture him in his study, the glass halfway to his lips, his sharp mind recalibrating everything he thought he knew.
“The artist,” he finally said, the word laced with a new, dark curiosity. “Explain.”
“He started the fire. I made him put it out.” The truth, simple and brutal.
“You made him,” my father repeated, and I could hear the faintest trace of something that sounded like grim amusement. “How?”
I looked at the laptop screen, at the headlines singing our praises. I saw the ghost of that picture I’d sent, of his parents laughing in their perfect kitchen.
“I reminded him that some games have real-world consequences,” I said, my voice dropping into a colder register. “I pointed out that his family’s world is made of glass. And that I have a very large hammer.”
Killian didn’t even blink. My father was silent for so long I thought the call had dropped.
“I see,” he said finally. The two words were heavy with understanding. He knew exactly what I hadn’t said. He knew the language of threats and leverage better than anyone. “And he complied.”
“He’s complying.”
Another thoughtful silence. “This… changes the board. The Kings have influence, but this is a different level of power. The boy is more connected than we knew.”
“Yes.”
“He is a significant threat, Jeremy.”
“I know.”
I could almost hear his mind working, the strategies shifting. “This is your play. You started it. You see it through. But remember—a cornered animal is unpredictable. And a connected one is dangerous. Don’t get sloppy.”
The line went dead. No goodbye. Just a final order and a warning.
I set the phone down. The cottage felt even quieter than before.
Killian let out a slow breath. “Well. He took that better than I expected.”
I said nothing. My father’s call had just made it all more real. He’d seen it, too. The scale of what Landon had just done. The power it represented.
This wasn’t over. It had just gotten started.
And my father was right. I couldn’t get sloppy.
The artist needed to be put in his cage. For good.
The silence after my father’s call stretched, thick and heavy. Killian didn’t break it. He just watched me, waiting to see which way I’d jump.
The options played out in my head, cold and clear.
I could honor the letter of my promise. The mess was being cleaned up. I could stand down. Wait. Let Landon believe he’d satisfied me. It would be the smart, strategic thing to do. The patient thing.
But patience was a luxury for people who weren’t dealing with a chaotic genius who got bored and decided to burn down empires for fun. He’d see standing down as weakness. As an invitation. The next shitstorm would be bigger. Smarter. He’d learn from this.
I couldn’t let him think a few phone calls and retracted headlines bought him a clean slate. A threat only works if the target believes you’ll pull the trigger.
Words hadn’t been enough. A picture hadn’t been enough. He needed to see the trigger. He needed to look it in the eye.
My decision clicked into place with finality. I looked across the table at Killian.
“Does Glyndon know where his studio is?”
The question hung in the cold air. No preamble. No justification.
Killian didn’t flinch. He didn’t sigh. He didn’t try to talk me out of it. He just held my gaze, his own eyes flat and understanding. He saw the same thing I did: this was between me and Landon now. A personal war. And as long as it stayed that way, as long as families and empires weren’t dragged into the crossfire, the specifics were irrelevant.
He’d tried to steer the hurricane. Now he was just getting out of the way.
“Yes,” he said, his voice devoid of any emotion. “She does.”
He stood up, the awful chair groaning in relief. He didn’t ask for a plan. He didn’t offer advice. He just started walking toward the door.
He paused with his hand on the knob, half-turning back. His final piece of council wasn’t a plea. It was a logistical note.
“Don’t kill him yet,” he said, his tone as casual as if he were commenting on the weather. “It would upset Glyndon. And the clean up would be a nightmare.”
Then he was gone, the cottage door clicking shut behind him, leaving me in the profound silence.
Don’t kill him yet.
The words weren’t a restraint; they were permission for everything short of that.
A text wouldn’t do. Another picture wouldn’t suffice. He needed to see that I could be a ghost. That I could appear anywhere, anytime. That his sanctuary wasn’t safe.
He needed to understand that I wasn’t just growling from a distance. I was already in the room with him.
I stood up, the leather of my jacket creaking in the quiet. I didn’t need an address. Killian would text it to me before I reached my bike.
Tonight, Landon King was going to get a personal visit.
The bike’s engine died a quarter mile out, the silence that followed heavier than the roar. I left the machine in the trees, a part of the darkness, and moved on foot.
Killian’s coordinates led to another house in the middle of fucking nowhere. Woods. Silence. Solitude. The irony was almost funny. We both hid from the world in the same way. The difference was what we did in the silence. My silence was for planning. His was probably for plotting.
A single light burned at the back of the house—a large window. The studio. The rest of the place was dark. Sleeping.
He thought he was safe here.
He was wrong.
Every sense sharpened. Landon was clever. A place like this, isolated, he’d have eyes. Cameras in the trees. Sensors. He loved his illusions of control.
So I became part of the night. A shadow moving through deeper shadows. My boots made no sound on the wet earth. My eyes tracked every branch, every gutter, every dark corner. Looking for the glint of a lens. The dull red eye of a hidden camera.
I was walking into a predator’s den. But I was the bigger predator.
The question was a cold knot in my gut. Why are you here?
He was fixing it. The problem was being erased. I could turn around. Leave. Let him think his obedience worked.
But it wouldn’t be enough. He’d learned he could push. He’d felt the thrill of it. He needed to learn the consequence.
But what was the consequence?
Kill him? The thought was there. Simple. Clean. My hands knew how to do it. It would be a permanent solution.
Hurt him? Break him. Make sure he remembered the price of fucking with me every time he took a breath.
Or just scare him. Let him see me here, in his space. Prove that his money and his name were no protection. That I could reach him anywhere.
I didn’t know.
The answer would come when I saw him.
I reached the tree line. The studio window was right there. A square of yellow light on the grass.
And there he was.
Landon. His back to the glass, hunched over a table. His hands were moving, sharp and frantic. He was talking to himself, his shoulders tight, his whole body coiled. He wasn’t the calm puppeteer. He wasn’t the bored artist.
He was stressed. Cornered.
The wild animal in its den, smelling the hunter but not seeing him yet.
My feet moved on their own.
Time to find out.
The door was unlocked. Arrogant, or just stupid. I slipped inside, a ghost in his machine.
The air hit me first. Cold. Smelling of wet clay, turpentine, and something else. Something metallic. Like ozone after a storm.
Then the sight of it.
The place wasn't a studio. It was a graveyard for fucked-up nightmares.
Monsters. That was the only word for them. Twisted, half-formed figures lunging from the shadows, their faces frozen in silent screams. Limbs bent at wrong angles. Things that looked almost human but weren't, their surfaces rough and angry, like they’d been clawed out of the earth, not sculpted.
This wasn't art. This was the inside of his head, vomited onto the floor.
My eyes scanned the room, taking in the chaos, and landed on him.
Landon stood in the middle of the open space, his back to me. His shoulders were heaving, not with sobs, but with ragged, furious breaths. He was covered in a fine gray dust, his hands filthy with clay.
And at his feet was the source of the destruction.
A statue. Or what was left of it.
It was him. The likeness was fucking eerie—the same sharp jawline, the arrogant tilt of the head, the lean build. It was Landon, captured in clay, perfect and pristine.
Except the face was gone.
Smashed. Obliterated. A crater of broken clay and twisted wire where his features should have been. Chunks of it were scattered across the floor, some ground into powder under his boots.
He’d done this. Recently. The violence of it was still hanging in the air, a thick, palpable thing.
My first thought was cold, clinical: He’s having a breakdown.
My second thought followed, sharp and certain: Because of me.
This wasn't a performance. This wasn't for an audience. There was no one here to see this. This was real. This was the pressure I’d applied finally cracking that perfect, polished facade. The obedient little puppet had broken its strings and turned on itself.
I’d won.
The victory should have tasted sweet. It should have felt like justice.
But standing there, watching him in the aftermath of his own self-destruction, surrounded by the monsters he created… it didn’t feel like winning.
It felt like I’d kicked a dog and found out it was rabid.
The anger that had fueled me here, the cold need for a consequence, suddenly felt… misplaced. Unnecessary. The consequence was already here. It was in the shattered pieces of his own image on the floor. It was in the frantic, lost-animal energy pouring off of him.
He wasn't a mastermind in this moment. He was just a boy who’d played with a monster and hadn’t liked the bite.
I didn't move. I didn't speak. I just watched.
The hunt was over. I’d cornered my prey.
And found it was already bleeding out.
I watched him for a long moment. The frantic energy. The self-destruction. The victory was already here, rotting at my feet. He was already broken.
"You should lock your door," I finally said, my voice low and cutting through the thick silence. "Anything could just walk in.”
He didn't jump. He didn't startle. But every muscle in his back went rigid, locking into place. For a few heartbeats, he didn't move at all, just stayed there, facing the wreckage of his own image.
Then, slowly, he turned.
A grin stretched across his face, a sharp, practiced thing. But it was all wrong. It was a crack in the porcelain, a desperate attempt to glue the pieces back together.
"Looks like anything just did," he said, his voice aiming for its usual lazy drawl but landing on something brittle. Something strained.
The mask was breaking. The facade was cracking right in front of me. I could see it in the too-wide set of his eyes, the faint tremor in the clay-caked hand he ran through his hair. He was trying to perform, to regain control of the stage, but the curtains were already torn down.
He’d lost. And he knew it.
And for the first time, I saw what was underneath all the arrogance and manipulation.
Not a King. Not a genius.
Just another fucked up monster like me.
"You're a long way from your throne, Volkov," Landon said, the grin not quite reaching his eyes. He didn't turn fully, just tilted his head, a predator acknowledging another in its territory. "Did you get lost? The wilderness isn't kind to creatures like you.”
"I found my way just fine," I said, my voice flat. I remained in the shadows, letting him feel the weight of my presence without seeing me fully. "The door was open. You should be more careful. Not everything that’s going to wander into your den is harmless.”
He finally turned, the movement slow, deliberate. His eyes were bright, but with a feverish intensity, not amusement. "Please. I knew you'd come. I just didn't expect you to skulk in the shadows. I thought you preferred a more direct approach.”
"I'm full of surprises. You miscalculated. Again. You’re slipping King.”
"Did I?" He kicked a piece of the shattered self-portrait. "Seems to me I got exactly the reaction I wanted. You're here, aren't you? Dragged all the way out to my... what did you call it? My 'den'? I'm flattered you think of me in such animalistic terms. It's almost romantic.”
"You call this a win?" I gestured to the destroyed sculpture at his feet. "This doesn't look like winning.”
The mask slipped for a microsecond. A flash of pure, raw fury in his eyes before it was buried under a wave of icy contempt. "This? This is a discarded draft. An idea that didn't work. I don't get sentimental over failed projects. I break them down and use the pieces for something better."
He took a step closer, his voice dropping, losing its performative edge and becoming something far more dangerous. "You interrupted me before I could start the new one.”
He was lying. We both knew it. But the defiance was absolute.
"You fixed your mess. That was the deal.”
"The deal," he repeated, as if tasting the word and finding it bitter. "Was for me to clean up the boring, tedious fallout of your overreaction. The game is still ours. Or did you think one little text would be enough to make me quit?”
He was backing me into a corner with words, trying to twist the narrative back into his control. Trying to make my show of force seem like a minor interruption.
"I don't care about your games. I care about consequences.”
"Consequences," he sighed, as if I were a dull student. "You're so linear, Jeremy. It's all cause and effect with you. You have no appreciation for... artistry. For the beauty of the move itself." He looked around the ruined studio, a strange, proud smile on his face. "This is just another move. You just don't see the board yet.”
He was fracturing in front of me, but he would never, ever back down. He'd just redefine the rules of the conflict so that losing was impossible.
I took the final step out of the shadows, into the light with him. "I see the board just fine. And I'm ending the game.”
His grin returned, wider and sharper than before. "You can't end a game I haven't finished playing.”
His grin was a challenge, a slash of white in the dim light. The clay on his cheek looked like a scar. I should have wanted to wipe that look off his face with my fist. I did want to. The urge was a live wire under my skin.
But something else, something unwanted and slippery, coiled in my gut. It was the intensity in his eyes. Not just anger, but a fever-bright fixation. He was a mess, standing in the wreckage of his own making, and he looked more alive than anyone I’d ever seen. The observation pissed me off.
"The game is over when I say it is," I said, my voice lower, rougher than I intended. "You don't get to make the rules anymore.”
"Who said I was following rules?" He took a step closer, invading the space I’d just claimed. The scent of clay and something uniquely him—expensive soap and cold night air—hit me. "Rules are for people who can't invent better ones. You want to play your way? Fine. But don't pretend for a second that you're in control of mine.”
His eyes weren't just blue. In the uneven light, they were the color of a glacier— pale, sharp, and capable of cutting you without ever changing expression. The thought was so sudden, so irrelevant, it threw me.
The confusion fueled my anger, making it hotter, more volatile. "You think your little mind games mean anything against what I can do to you?”
"I think," he said, his voice dropping to a taunting whisper, "that you're here. In the middle of the night. In my space. Instead of just ending it." He leaned in, just a fraction, his gaze dropping to my mouth before snapping back up to my eyes. A deliberate, calculated provocation. "You could have sent Nikolai to break my legs. You could have burned this place to the ground. But you came yourself. Why is that, Jeremy? Did you need to see me?”
My hand shot out, closing around the front of his ruined shirt, twisting the fabric in my fist. I jerked him forward until mere inches separated us. I could feel the heat coming off him, see the rapid pulse beating at the base of his throat. The urge to shake him, to hurt him, was a drumbeat in my blood.
But the feel of him—the lean muscle under my knuckles, the defiant tilt of his chin—it wasn't just about causing pain. It was something else, something I didn't have a name for, and that infuriated me more.
His breath hitched, but his grin never wavered. It widened. He was enjoying this.
"Careful, Volkov," he breathed, his words a ghost of a touch against my face. "I might think you care.”
I should have hit him. I should have thrown him into his pathetic sculptures and walked away.
But I didn't move. I just held him there, trapped in the silent, charged space between violence and something else entirely. The air was gone from the room. All that was left was the two of us, and a game that had just become infinitely more dangerous.
"This isn't about caring," I growled, the words feeling like a lie even as I said them.
"No," he agreed, his eyes glittering with a terrifying understanding. "It's much more interesting than that, isn't it?”
Landon didn't try to pull away from my grip. Instead, he went perfectly still, his gaze turning analytical, cold, as if he were studying a fascinating specimen.
"You're right," he said, his voice shifting from a taunting whisper to something flat and calculating. The change was so abrupt it was jarring. "This isn't about caring. It's about resource management.”
He didn't move, but he didn't have to. The invasion was entirely verbal.
"You've expended a significant amount of resources on me, Jeremy. Your time. Your focus. Your infamous Volkov rage." His eyes flickered over my face, reading me like a blueprint. "You flew across an ocean. You're standing in my studio in the middle of the night. For what? To threaten me? You already did that. Very effectively, I might add.”
He slowly, deliberately, raised his own clay-caked hands, not to push me away, but to show them, to emphasize his next point.
"I, on the other hand, spent my evening on the phone. A few calls. A few called-in favors. I undid in hours what took you days to panic over." A cruel, sharp smile touched his lips. "So tell me, who is really wasting their resources? The puppet master? Or the puppet who can't stop reacting?”
The verbal trap snapped shut around me. He'd taken a moment of raw, physical tension and reframed it into a clinical analysis of time and effort. He made my show of force look like a emotional, inefficient tantrum.
It was a brilliant, infuriating move. And it caught me completely off guard.
My grip on his shirt loosened, just slightly. The heat of my anger banked, replaced by a cold, unsettling realization. He wasn't just a spoiled brat with a sharp tongue. He was a strategist, and he'd just demonstrated that he could manipulate the situation even when he was physically at my mercy.
He saw the shift in my expression. The victory in his eyes was colder and more genuine than any grin.
"The game isn't over, Jeremy," he said softly, his voice dripping with condescending pity. "You're just finally realizing what you've actually been playing against. Now. Unless you plan on actually doing something useful with that fist, I suggest you leave. I have a sculpture to rebuild. Unlike some people, I know how to utilize my time productively.”
He turned his back on me. Just like that. Dismissing me as if I were a minor interruption.
The ultimate power play. And it worked.
I stood there, fist still clenched, surrounded by the monsters he'd created, feeling for the first time that I might have genuinely underestimated the enemy. The anger was still there, but it was now mixed with a grudging, horrified respect.
The air crackled with the silence he left in his wake. I could still feel the ghost of his shirt in my fist, the heat of his defiance on my skin.
He thought he’d won the exchange by turning his back. By dismissing me.
He was wrong.
I didn’t move for a long moment, just watched him. He picked up a new lump of clay, his movements precise again, already shutting out the world. Already rebuilding. The arrogance was breathtaking.
And for the first time, the anger didn't curdle into a need for immediate violence. It transformed into something else entirely.
A slow, unsettling realization settled in my gut, cold and certain.
I enjoyed this.
The chaos. The calculation. The sheer, fucking audacity of him. He wasn't like the others. The sycophants, the rivals, the enemies who were all so predictably dull. Dealing with them was a chore. A tedious necessity.
Landon was none of those things. He was a puzzle made of broken glass and lightning.
Unpredictable. Dangerous. Fascinating.
I was mesmerized.
I wanted to see what he would do next. I wanted to see how far he would go. How far I could push him before he truly shattered, and what beautiful, terrible thing he would build from the pieces.
The rage was gone. In its place was a dark, thrilling curiosity.
He must have felt my stare because his shoulders tightened slightly, though he didn’t turn around.
I finally moved, walking toward the door without another word. But I paused on the threshold, the darkness of the woods waiting for me.
I didn’t look back. I let the words hang in the clay-dusty air between us, a promise and a new set of rules, all rolled into one.
“This stays between us, King,” I said, my voice low and final. “No more families. No more outsiders. Just you and me.”
I let the silence stretch, letting the weight of the offer—the challenge—sink in.
“The next move is yours. Make it interesting.”
And then I left, melting back into the shadows from which I came.
Notes:
this is a slow burn, i hope you don't mind... tension is there though :))
i'm always open to reading your ideas, comments anything really, inspires me to write and it gives me life to know there are people enjoying this
Mwah <3
Chapter 8
Notes:
i'm not loving how this turned outtttttttt buttttttt oh well, sorry if i disappoint
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Eight
Jeremy
Weeks.
The silence was its own kind of noise. A constant, buzzing static in the background of everything.
After the storm of our confrontation, I’d expected a countermove. A taunt. A clever trap. A fucking greeting card with a hidden insult. Something. Anything.
But there was nothing.
Radio silence.
It was as if Landon King had melted into the very rumors he loved to spin. I didn’t see him in the halls of the academy. His usual courtyard table was occupied by lesser, duller copies. No gallery openings, no parties, no smirk from the corner. Nothing.
Yet a predator always senses another predator in the woods.
I could feel him. A prickle at the back of my neck. A subtle shift in the air seconds after entering a room. A chair slightly out of place. A faint, expensive scent lingering just long enough to make me look. A laugh abruptly cut short.
He was there. Always just there. A ghost I kept missing by half a second.
And his name was everywhere—a constant echo in every whisper, every headline, every deal.
“Landon curated the entire exhibit, but he didn’t even show up to the opening. Typical.”
“King secured the Berlin investors’ deal. No one even saw him in the country.”
“He’s been locked in that studio for weeks.”
He was a specter, weaving influence from shadows, untouchable by remaining unseen. A psychological siege—and it was working.
My focus, once a laser on the threats to my family empire, now had a hairline fracture running through it. A fraction of my attention always drifted, listening, watching, waiting for a sign he refused to give.
The silence wasn’t surrender. It was a masterstroke. He was making me watch shadows for him, think of him when I should have been thinking of a hundred other things.
The engine of my bike cooled in the quiet garage, ticking softly. I’d just returned from another pointless loop around the island—never admitting I was searching for a flash of brown hair, a smirk in a crowd.
The garage door creaked open. Killian. Hands in pockets, looking bored as ever. He leaned against my bike, elbow resting on the seat like he owned the place.
“So,” he drawled, flat as a knife, “how bad did you scare him for him to go into hiding? Did you actually threaten to break his fingers, or did you just use that face? The one that looks like you smelled something rotten.”
I didn’t look at him, my gaze fixed on a crack in the concrete floor. “I didn’t scare him into hiding.”
It was the truth. The realization had been fermenting in my gut for days. Landon King didn’t get scared. He got even.
Killian raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really. So the artiste’s sudden disappearance from public life, his complete radio silence, his apparent dedication to becoming a hermit… that’s not a direct result of you showing up in his studio in the middle of the night?”
“No.” I finally turned my head, meeting his deadpan stare.
Killian paused, processing. He knew me well enough to know I wasn’t offering excuses. He knew Landon well enough to know it was possible.
“No?” he repeated, the word loaded with disbelief tempered by curiosity. “What’s the endgame then? Is he annoying you?”
“He’s not trying to annoy me,” I said, the words spilling out like I was solving a puzzle aloud. “He’s trying to… pique my interest.”
Killian blinked once. Slowly. “You’ve lost your mind.”
He was wrong. I could see it now. Landon’s absence wasn’t retreat. It was performance art at its most ruthless. He’d made himself a ghost, and in doing so, he made me the haunted. He occupied every corner of my attention.
“He’s making me watch for him,” I said, voice low, measured. “Making me listen for his name. Making sure I can’t forget him for a single second, even though he’s nowhere to be seen.”
Killian studied me, then let out a short, humorless puff of air that was almost a laugh. “Well. Congratulations. You found the one person on the planet more psychologically fucked up than you are.” He shook his head and pushed off the bike.
He left, the garage quiet once again.
I returned my gaze to the crack in the floor.
The world returned, and it was a physical assault: laughter, shitty pop music, people infestating a space that wasn't theirs. I shoved the door open. The Heathens’ living room was a circus.
Mia and Maya were on the couch, absorbed in something vapid with nail polish. Brandon King hovered like a nervous specter. Killian and Glyndon were in the corner, apparently attempting to swallow each other’s faces. Disgusting.
I didn’t break stride. Headed straight for the stairs. This was why I had walls. My own walls. To keep this noise out.
I got to my room and slammed the door shut, blocking the noise from downstairs more or less.
The door to my room clicked shut, muting the circus below to a dull, irritating hum. Silence. Finally.
I tossed my phone onto the bed and shrugged out of my jacket. The frustration from the past few days was a low burn in my veins—endless meetings with skittish suppliers, putting out fires the Serpents kept lighting, the tedious, necessary brutality of reminding people why fear was a smarter option than betrayal.
And through it all, a constant, nagging static: Landon King.
I grabbed my phone again, thumbing through messages. Ilya. My father. A lieutenant reporting a resolved border dispute. Then the group chat.
Nikolai. Again. Another fucking picture of his dick, this time with a stupid Russian ushanka hat perched on it. The caption read: Kolya says privet.
I typed back, my fingers slamming into the screen. Put it away before I cut it off.
I tossed the phone down again. It vibrated immediately. Probably Niko laughing. I ignored it.
Scrolling through Instagram was a mindless habit. A way to check pulses. I liked a photo Anoushka posted of her and Glyndon. Liked a stark, black-and-white architectural shot Killian had posted. My thumb kept moving.
Then I stopped.
The suggestion tab. There he was.
Landon King
Of course he was.
I hesitated for a single beat. Then I clicked.
A million followers. Of course. A kingdom of sycophants and admirers.
I scrolled. It was a curated museum of his life. Pictures of his art—twisted metal, bleak landscapes, his sculptures. Photos at galas, smiling that empty, charming smile. Him and Brandon, arms slung around each other, a perfect golden family.
My jaw tightened. It was all a performance. A beautifully constructed lie.
Then I stopped on one.
It was recent. Landon, shirtless, covered in a fine sheen of sweat and clay dust. He was in his studio, leaning against a half-formed sculpture—a twisted figure with too many limbs. But he wasn't looking at the camera. He was kissing it. His lips were pressed against the cold, gray clay of the statue’s mouth, his eyes closed, his expression a twisted mix of devotion and mockery.
The caption was a single word: Masterpiece.
My thumb hovered over the image. I didn't like it. I didn't scroll past.
I just stared.
My eyes traced the lines of his back, the defined muscle shifting under pale skin. The sweat tracing a path down his spine. The sharp cut of his jaw, dusted with that same gray clay. The long fingers splayed possessively against the statue’s head.
It was fucked up. Arrogant. Pretentious as hell. He was calling himself the masterpiece.
But I couldn't look away.
A strange, cold heat coiled in my gut. This wasn't just annoyance. This wasn't just rivalry.
This was something else. Something that made my focus narrow to the screen, to the details of him. The physicality of him. The sheer, infuriating beauty of the image, even as I hated everything it stood for.
He was getting under my skin. Not as an enemy. Not as a problem to be solved.
But as a person. A man.
And that was far more dangerous than any taunt or business sabotage.
I quickly exited the app and threw my phone across the bed like it had burned me.
But the image was already seared into my brain. Masterpiece.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Enough.
It wasn't enough. He was in my head. A problem I couldn't solve. An equation that wouldn't balance.
I’ve been straight my entire life. Men were allies, enemies, or obstacles. Nothing more.
This was different. It wasn't sexual. It was… strategic. He was chaos. Pure, unpredictable chaos. And I needed to control it.
I wanted to map his every move, understand his every calculation. His mind was a weapon, and I wanted it sheathed at my hip. His chaos was a force, and I wanted it aimed at my enemies.
The most infuriating part? He didn't even try. It was just who he was. And it was the most compelling thing I’d ever seen.
This was stupid. Irrational. A distraction I couldn't afford.
And yet.
I wanted to own him. Not his obedience. His brilliance. His madness. Every fucked-up, brilliant part of him that no one else could touch. I wanted it leashed. I wanted it answering to me.
The knock on the door was sharp. Two precise raps.
"Come in," I said, my voice flat.
The door opened. Killian. He stood there for a moment, his blue eyes doing a quick, analytical sweep of the room before landing on me. He didn't need to say anything. I could read him instantly.
His chaos was different from Landon's. Killian's was a caged thing, a monster he'd been forced to tame because the world had never accepted it. He'd been called an abomination. Landon's chaos was the same beast, but it had been praised, polished, and let off its leash. They were mirrors. One reflecting light; the other, shadow.
"Fight's tonight," he said, leaning against the doorframe. His tone was offhand, but his gaze wasn't. It was a calculated probe. "Thought you might want to go. Blow off some steam. Sounds like you need it.”
I did. The idea of hitting something, of the simple, brutal logic of the ring, was a physical pull. A release valve for the pressure building in my skull.
Then he added, the words casual, a thrown knife disguised as an afterthought. "King's going. Brandon just said so downstairs. Picking fights with Serpents again. Seems suicidal.”
My entire body went still. The offer wasn't an offer. It was a test.
My eyes snapped to his. He was watching me, that unnerving, knowing look in his eyes. He saw it. He saw the shift in my focus, the immediate, laser-like precision with which his words had hooked me. He saw the obsession, laid bare.
A tense silence stretched between us, thick with everything unsaid.
Finally, a slow, almost imperceptible smirk touched Killian's lips. "Or we could stay in. Let the pretty boy get his teeth kicked in. Your call.”
The challenge was clear. He knew. And he was letting me know he knew.
“Just don’t let him know,” Killian adds, almost as an afterthought, “how much of a game he’s playing inside your head.” He was gone as quietly as he’d come in.
The door clicked shut, leaving me in the silence once more.
Oh, how I fucking hate being surrounded by psychopaths all the time.
.
.
.
.
.
The fight club wasn’t a place. It was a pulse. A raw, beating heart buried deep in the city. The air itself was thick with the smell of sweat, blood, and rust. The screech of unoiled pulleys echoed as the chain-link cage was lowered into place, a sacrament before the violence.
I stood with my back against a cold support beam, arms crossed. Killian was already in the cage, a study in cold efficiency as he systematically dismantled some Serpent lackey with precise, brutal strikes. Nikolai was bouncing on his heels beside me, a live wire of anticipation, cracking his knuckles as he waited for his turn.
“You not getting in tonight?” Niko asked, his gaze fixed on the cage where Killian’s opponent hit the mat with a wet thud. “Thought you needed to blow off steam.”
“Not feeling it,” I said, my voice flat.
It was a lie. My blood was up, thrumming with the same primal energy that fueled this place. But tonight was different. My focus wasn’t on the fight in front of me.
My eyes were constantly scanning the shifting crowd, the dark entries, the periphery. I wasn’t here to fight.
Nikolai shrugged, too hyped on his own adrenaline to question it. “Suit yourself.”
I gave a noncommittal grunt. My attention was elsewhere. I was waiting for a flash of red shorts. A familiar, arrogant tilt of a head. A smirk that felt like a personal challenge.
I wanted to see his face the second he saw me standing here. Watching. Nikolai’s fight was a blur of controlled violence. He won, of course. He always did. The crowd roared as his opponent slumped against the cage, and Niko emerged, chest heaving, a savage grin splitting his face. He clapped me on the shoulder, dripping sweat and adrenaline.
“You’re missing out Jer,” he panted.
I just nodded, my eyes already past him, scanning the entrance.
Then the air changed.
He didn’t make a grand entrance. He just appeared at the edge of the pit, as if he’d materialized from the shadows themselves. Dressed in those fucking red shorts. A target. A challenge.
Remi’s voice boomed. “MAIN CARD! Let’s get ready for KING!”
The crowd’s roar was different for him. Less a cheer of bloodlust, more a feverish adoration. The Elites were here in force, their voices sharp and eager amidst the general din. They chanted his name. King. King. King.
He slipped through the cage door, his movements fluid, almost lazy. He didn’t look at me. Not once.
But I knew. I could see it in the line of his shoulders. Too stiff. In the way he held his head—a fraction too high, too still. He’d seen me the second he walked in.
His opponent was a hulking Serpent enforcer, all coiled muscle and snarling tattoos. Landon looked like a poet who’d wandered into the wrong alley.
The bell rang.
Landon didn’t circle. He didn’t size him up. He just smiled. A wide, manic, terrifying thing that didn’t reach his eyes. And then he attacked.
It wasn’t clean fighting. It was a taunt made physical. He was faster than he had any right to be, slipping the Serpent’s powerful swings with an infuriating grace. He didn’t just hit him; he painted on him. A sharp jab. A stinging cross. A laugh bubbled out of him as he danced away from a wild hook.
The crowd ate it up, chanting his name louder.
He was putting on a show. But I could see the truth they missed. His muscles were rigid with a tension that had nothing to do with the fight. His laughter was too sharp, too high—the sound of a wire stretched to its breaking point. Every move was calculated, every smirk a deliberate act.
He was screaming on the inside. And he was channeling all of it into this brutal, beautiful performance.
He drove the Serpent into the corner, his blows coming faster now, less about technique and more about pure, unadulterated release. He wasn’t just fighting him; he was exorcising something. His fists were punctuation marks in a silent, furious monologue only I could hear.
King. King. King.
The chants were a crown he wore like a blade. He was everything they believed him to be in that moment—untouchable, brilliant, a chaotic king in his element.
The final blow landed with a wet, sickening thud. The Serpent crumpled, unconscious before he hit the canvas. The cage erupted, the roar a tidal wave of noise. I wasn't listening.
Landon didn't turn away. He stood over the fallen man, chest heaving. Sweat and blood streaked his pale skin, a jagged line of bruises already blooming across his ribs. His mouth was slick with his own blood, lips split. And yet, a smirk—dark, triumphant, and utterly unhinged—was tugging at the corner of his mouth.
For the first time in weeks, his eyes were on me. Not the crowd. Not the victory. Me.
The look in them wasn't exhaustion. It was a sharp, amused, dangerous clarity that cut through the noise and the heat and the stink of blood. It was a challenge. A question.
Did you see?
I hesitated. My chest tightened. My jaw went slack for a single, betraying beat. Then, despite myself, a low, rough chuckle escaped me.
Ridiculous. Stupid.
And completely true.
Even this—the violence, the blood, the performance—was a move on his board. Every strike, every calculated jab, every manic laugh was a performance, and I was the only audience he’d wanted.
I leaned back against the cold steel beam, arms crossed, letting the tension of his stare wash over me. I didn't move closer. I didn't speak.
But I was here. Fully present. Watching. And he knew it.
That was enough. For now.
I chuckled again, the sound quiet and lost in the roar.
Fascinating.
He was completely, utterly fascinating.
And I had no intention of letting that go.
Notes:
Landon's Pov is going up in a minute :)
Chapter 9
Notes:
i have a flight in two days and i should be packing. but i'm not.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Nine
Landon
Jeremy Volkov needs to crawl back to whatever frozen wasteland of concrete and vodka spawned him.
I don’t hate — hate requires investment, requires reverence of some kind. People don’t matter enough to hate. They’re background noise, brushstrokes in my masterpiece, fleeting shadows on my wall.
But him? That rabid, humorless hulk? He rattled me.
Do you understand the significance of that? Me. Rattled.
He’s not chaos. Chaos has rhythm, melody, genius. He’s demolition. A bulldozer dressed as a man. Dull, brutish, unsubtle. An insult to the art form.
And yet — for a fraction of a second, the animal made me stumble.
It infuriates me. It fascinates me. I despise the sight of him, and still, his shadow keeps creeping across my canvas.
He doesn’t play properly. I orchestrate. I weave symphonies out of whispers, I conduct the crowd with a flick of a smile. And what does he bring? Violence. Predictable, uninspired violence. The caveman’s brushstroke. The drunkard’s line across my mural.
He should bore me. He should disappear into the void where the rest of them live. But no. He pressed one fat, bloody finger into a crack I didn’t know was there. He reminded me I’d grown careless, and that—that—is unforgivable.
I am not careless. I am precision. I am the architect of downfall, the sculptor of ruin. I am every hand that pulls every string. Mistakes do not belong to me. And yet…
There he was. A grey-eyed monument to my single, humiliating lapse in judgment.
So yes. I stepped into the pit. Into his cesspool of sweat and knuckle-dragging applause. I had to remind myself—and the world—that even on his stage, I command. Even in his language, I rewrite the grammar.
And when the Serpent fell, when the crowd roared my name like worshippers at the altar, I felt it again. The order restored.
And of course, he was there. Leaning against a beam, pretending disinterest. Pretending he wasn’t watching my every move, my every breath, the blood dripping from my lip like rubies on marble. Pretending he wasn’t as enthralled as the rest of them.
That’s right, Jeremy. Drink it in.
You see fists and bruises. I see brushstrokes and sonnets. Violence is not your language. It’s mine. You think in blows; I compose symphonies. And even here, even now, I am the richer man.
For one moment, the balance tipped. For one moment, you made me falter. But look at me now. Look and remember.
I am King.
And yet—his eyes. The crowd cheered for a mask, for a character I wore like a crown. But he? He was staring at the fracture underneath. He saw it once, and he’ll never unsee it.
The victory soured in my mouth. Ash instead of wine.
So I left. Leapt from the cage like a god abandoning mortals, ignored their desperate hands, their shrieking praise. To the locker room. To silence. To space where I could wash the taste of his gaze off my skin.
But of course—he followed.
The door clicked, the lock turned. The mirror caught his shadow before I turned.
Jeremy Volkov. Filling the doorway. Blocking the exit like a brute mistaking himself for destiny.
I smirked into the glass, blood painting my teeth. “Sorry, no autographs.”
A curl at his lips. Almost—almost—a smile. And for a heartbeat, I thought, oh, so the beast does laugh.
Something in him had shifted. He didn’t snarl. He didn’t lunge. He leaned, folded those ridiculous arms across his chest. Studying me. Relaxed.
Relaxed? Jeremy Volkov? The man is a clenched fist pretending to be human. He broods for sport. He frowns like it’s a birthright. He has all the charm of a headstone.
But now? Now he looked… amused.
Unacceptable. Bring me back my rabid dog.
“Missed me, Volkov?” I flashed him blood and teeth, tilting my head like a crown. “Rumor says you’ve been asking about me.”
There’s no rumor. But why waste fact when fiction rips better holes?
“I did,” he said simply. Calm. Nodding like we were discussing weather.
For a moment, my mind stuttered. Where’s the rage? Where’s the growl? Did he hit that thick skull of his on a steel beam?
I plastered on a saccharine smile. “Well, I’m fresh out of favors, darling. Apologies.”
“You’ve never done me favors,” he shot back. Flat, matter-of-fact. “You cleaned up your own mess.”
“Oh, Jeremy.” I sighed, tragic, operatic. “We both know I won that discussion.”
Then—then—he had the audacity to say it. The words that sliced, the words that poisoned the air between us.
“Then why did you run?”
The words hang there, heavy, simple, brutish. Four syllables shaped into a cudgel. So utterly Jeremy.
I laugh. A sharp, brittle sound that cracks against the tile, too loud, too sudden—a performance to shatter the silence.
“Run?” I tilt my head, letting a drop of blood trace a path down my chin. A deliberate, crimson tear. “Is that the narrative you’re crafting? How pedestrian. No, darling. That wasn’t running. I simply grew bored.”
I gesture broadly, smearing a streak of red across my chest with the back of my hand like an artist signing a canvas. “The performance reached its crescendo. The final brushstroke was applied. The curtain fell. What remained? To stand there, marinating in the gore like some common butcher? That’s your finale, Jeremy. Not mine.”
His eyes don’t flicker. Cold steel. He’s a statue, unmoved, which only makes my grin widen, a flash of red-stained teeth.
“I don’t linger once the art is complete,” I continue, pitching my voice low, intimate—the tone one uses for a secret or a threat. “My apologies if you mistook my exit for anything but a critic leaving a tiresome exhibit.”
He watches me. A predator assessing, patient, relentless. He doesn’t take the bait.
So I lean back against the sink, crossing one ankle over the other, a picture of indolent ownership. “Besides,” I add, the words a lazy drawl, “if I had any genuine desire to run, do you truly believe you’d be the one to catch me?”
There. A flicker. The faintest tic at the corner of his mouth, a microscopic tightening of the jaw. A tell.
Oh, there you are.
“You keep telling yourself that,” he says, his voice a low, deliberate rumble. “But we both know you’ve been hiding. Because of me.”
The audacity. The sheer, monumental arrogance. And the tiny, buried hook of truth makes it sting. My smile falters for a microsecond—then I weaponize the falter, turn it into a wider, more condescending smirk. Let him think he’s scored a point.
“Oh, Jeremy.” I sigh, a long, theatrical exhalation dripping with false pity. “Poor, delusional Jeremy. You are a blunt instrument. Necessary on occasion. Effective in its way. But ultimately… artless. Dull. You are not worth the time it takes to be bored by you.”
I lean forward, catching his gaze in the grimy mirror, my voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “And here is the true tragedy: you keep circling, snarling, trying so very hard to pin me down. When will the penny drop? You. Bore. Me.”
A beat of silence. His reflection is immobile. But the air crackles, thick with unsaid violence.
He is furious.
He will never show it. But I feel it.
I always feel it.
I grin, blood-stained and utterly unrepentant. “So tell me, Volkov. Who’s really hiding now?”
The silence stretches, thick with the promise of violence. I wait for the explosion. For the snarl, the lunge, the satisfying crack of his control finally breaking.
But it doesn’t come.
Instead, a slow, dark smile spreads across Jeremy’s face. It’s not amusement. It’s something worse. Cold, clinical understanding. The smile of a man who has just solved a complex equation and found the answer… pathetic.
He exhales through his nose — a dismissive huff. “I didn’t peg you as someone who got this scared so fast, King.”
Not a taunt. Not a threat. A statement. Syllables sharpened into a guillotine.
My smirk freezes, dies. The air leaves my lungs. Scared? He thinks I’m… scared?
Before I can form a rebuttal — a masterpiece of venom and wit — he’s already turning away. As if I’m dismissed. As if I am no longer worth his time.
The sheer, unholy audacity.
It’s the dismissal. The casual, effortless turn of his back. The final, unforgivable straw.
A sound tears out of me — half snarl, half scream. All art, all performance evaporates. There is only white-hot rage.
I lunge. Not graceful. Not poetic. Just raw fury. My fist flies at his infuriatingly calm face.
He doesn’t even flinch.
His hand snaps up, catching my wrist an inch from his jaw. The grip is iron, inhuman. His other arm shoves, slamming me into the lockers so hard the metal howls. The breath rushes out of me.
And then he’s there. Looming. Pinning. One hand still manacling my wrist, the other pressing across my collarbones. I’m caged. Trapped. A wild thing in a snare.
I fight, of course. My body thrashes, my teeth bare. But it’s useless. He’s immovable. A monolith. The size difference has never been clearer — I’m forced to tilt my head back just to meet his eyes. His shadow swallows me whole.
And his face… it’s not triumphant. Not smug. It’s curious. Those grey eyes scan me like a surgeon dissecting a cadaver, layer by layer. He sees the panic, the fury, the raw chaos blazing through me.
He sees me.
And he doesn’t gloat. He doesn’t smirk. He just… looks. Like I’m a specimen pinned under glass.
I am not meant to be seen. I am meant to be adored. Feared. Worshipped. But seen? Never.
The fight drains out of me. Not because I’ve surrendered — no, never — but because I feel the horror of it: he’s peeling back my mask and staring at what’s underneath.
Then he speaks. His voice low, quiet. No anger, no mockery. Just fact.
“I don’t think less of you.”
I forget to breathe.
His eyes don’t waver. “I see you as an equal.”
The world buckles.
Equal.
The word detonates in my skull. It’s wrong. It doesn’t compute. I am not equal. I am above. Untouchable. Worshipped, crowned, divine. To call me equal is not a compliment — it is a dethroning.
And yet… the way he says it… it feels like something else. Like recognition. Like coronation.
My mind fractures. Static screaming between every thought. I want to laugh. To kill him. To kiss him. To burn the whole building down.
Equal.
I should spit in his face. I should twist the word into a joke. But all I can do is stare up at him, chest heaving, disarmed by the one thing I never accounted for.
Understanding.
A jagged laugh bursts out of me, broken, wild, nothing like the carefully curated sounds I usually make. It echoes off the tile like glass shattering.
The laugh keeps spilling out of me, jagged and wrong, scraping up my throat like broken glass.
Equal.
He called me his equal.
The audacity. The insult. The unbearable weight of it.
Because here’s the truth no one but me knows — I can’t afford to be equal. Not to anyone. The second I am, the second I step down from the pedestal I built out of blood, art, and worship, I become just another man. Just another body. Just another disappointment.
And Jeremy fucking Volkov — slab of meat, bastard heir, blunt weapon of a dynasty — dares to drag me down with him? To see me?
No. No. No.
My laughter fractures into a snarl, sharp enough to cut the air. “Equal?” I spit the word, tasting blood and iron. “You wish you were equal to me.”
I slam my head forward, skull connecting with his face in a vicious crack. Pain flares across my brow, but I relish it — the sharpness, the chaos, the proof I’m still in control of my body, if nothing else. He grunts, just barely, his grip not loosening, and I laugh again, manic, triumphant.
“You don’t get to see me, Volkov.” My voice is a ragged hymn, my lips stretching into a smile too wide, too feral. “You think you’ve solved me? That you’ve found the equation? What a fucking joke.”
I twist against his hold, baring my teeth in his face. “I am the equation. I am the proof and the problem, the god and the gallows. And you? You’re just another brute too stupid to realise you’re dancing on strings I knotted long before you even learned who I am.”
His eyes don’t waver. They never do. That infuriating calm is still there, steady as stone, and it makes me want to claw my nails down his face until he bleeds for daring to stay so unshaken.
“You think calling me an equal gives you power over me?” I hiss. “No. It paints a target on your back. It means I won’t rest until I’ve ground you into dust, until your name is a smear, until there is nothing left of you but silence.”
The words pour out of me in a torrent, venom and poetry, truth and lies tangled together until even I can’t separate them. My pulse is a hammer. My vision tunnels.
Because the truth, the one I’ll never admit, is simple:
He’s right.
He did see me.
And that is the one sin I cannot forgive.
So I lean in, close enough that he can taste the copper on my breath, and whisper, soft and certain, “You just signed your death warrant, Volkov.”
And I smile, blood dripping down my teeth like a promise.
Jeremy stares, a light I’ve never seen in his eyes before—something unhinged and feral—mirroring my madness. A slow, idiotic smile spreads across his face.
“I’d expect nothing less.”
Notes:
keyword is "SlowBurn"
Chapter 10
Notes:
i mean this chapter was a given considering how obsessive jeremy becomes (and the fact that he's a straight up stalker)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Ten
Jeremy
Landon King is losing his mind.
I saw it in his eyes when I called him my equal. The twitch in his smile. The hairline fracture in that polished mask of his. He tried to cover it with theatrics, with that manic laughter he uses as a shield, but the truth was right there. I’d gotten under his skin.
I’d rattled him.
And that should have been enough. I should have walked out of that locker room satisfied. Mission accomplished. But I didn’t.
Because here’s the truth I can no longer strategize around, the variable I can’t eliminate from the equation:
I don’t just want to rattle him. I don’t just want to push his buttons until he shatters.
I want him.
Not in the simple way. Not possession, not just sex, not the fleeting satisfaction of victory. This is worse. Deeper. More dangerous. I want every brilliant, twisted, fucked-up part of him under my thumb. I want to dissect the chaos until there’s nothing left but the raw, ugly core he hides from the world.
And that makes me obsessed.
I don’t use that word lightly. Obsession is a critical vulnerability. It clouds judgment, makes men sloppy, gets them killed. I’ve built my entire life on excising weakness before it can be exploited. And now, I’ve let Landon King become one.
That’s why this is dangerous.
Not for me.
For him.
Because the moment I mark something as mine, I don’t stop. I don’t get distracted. I don’t move on. I dig in. I strip away layer after layer until I own every last piece. I consume until nothing remains but the version I decide is worth keeping.
That’s what Landon doesn’t understand. His little games, his provocations—they’re irrelevant now.
This stopped being a game the second I saw just how much he reacts to me.
He wanted my undivided attention. Well, he has it. Now he doesn’t get to walk away.
I parked my bike across the street from a gallery in Mayfair, engine cooling with a series of soft ticks.
Not because I gave a single fuck about art. Not because I had any business being there.
Because he was inside.
The reason was simple. I was hunting what I wanted.
The place was a box of light and arrogance, all sleek glass and bleached stone, the kind of venue where old money and new pretension flocked for champagne and the chance to be seen. Inside, light spilled across polished concrete floors, illuminating vapid sculptures and paintings that were all concept and no soul. The crowd was a sea of black ties and calculated smiles, moving in predictable clusters.
But they all orbited a single, fixed point.
Him.
Landon didn’t just attend an event. He became the event. He wore a tailored black jacket that fit him like a second skin, the fabric so dark it seemed to drink the light, making the pale column of his throat and the sharp lines of his face seem almost luminous. His hair, that artfully disheveled mane of gold and brown, looked like he’d just rolled out of bed in the most expensive part of the city.
His laughter, sharp and crystalline, cut through the murmur of the crowd. It was a performance. Every gesture was calculated—a hand sweeping through the air to emphasize a point, a slight lean into a listener’s space to convey intimacy, a smirk bestowed like a favor. They were all drawn to him, leaning in, hanging on his every word like he was dispensing gospel. A court of peasants, and he was the bored, brilliant king holding court.
I didn’t go in. I remained in the shadows, a specter at his feast. I leaned against my bike, arms crossed, and simply watched.
And then it happened.
His head tilted, a lock of that perfect hair falling across his brow as his gaze swept lazily over the adoring crowd—until it snagged on the darkness beyond the glass.
On me.
The brilliant, practiced smile froze solid. Mid-sentence. Mid-performance. His mouth stayed half-open, the charming words dying on his tongue.
I didn’t smile. I didn’t need to. I lifted a hand and waved once, slow and deliberate. Mocking. He knew it.
He blinked. The smile faltered—then came back. The Facade snapping into place. And then he waved back. A lazy, two-fingered flick of his wrist, as if this was a game between neighbors, not war. As if turning his back on me and leaning into the woman next to him erased the fact that I was standing here.
Dismissal. That’s what he was trying for. It almost made me laugh.
I pulled out my phone, thumbed to his contact. The last words between us were the threats I’d made to his family. Fitting.
I typed.
Jeremy: This is the life you chose to have. Boring.
Then I looked up, waiting. Watching.
I saw the exact moment he felt the buzz in his pocket. A slight, almost imperceptible stiffening of his shoulders beneath that expensive jacket. He didn’t break character. He finished his sentence to the woman, his laugh a beat too sharp, before excusing himself with a gesture so fluid it was itself a lie.
He turned, pulling the phone from his pocket. His back was to the crowd now, his head bowed as he read the screen. The light from his phone illuminated the sharp planes of his face, wiping away the charming warmth, leaving only cold, pale angles.
He didn’t move for a full ten seconds. A statue of indecision. Then his thumbs flew over the screen. A rapid, furious response.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Landon: Then find better entertainment, you lumbering cretin. The door is that way. ->
The arrow was an insult in itself. Childish.
My response was immediate.
Jeremy: I prefer the view from here.
His head snapped up. His eyes found me again through the glass. This time, there was no attempt at a smile. His expression was flat, cold, a mirror of my own. He typed again, slower this time. Deliberate.
Landon: What do you want, Volkov? Come to gawk at civilization? It must be a novelty for you.
Jeremy: I told you what I want. You’re not listening.
He read the message. His jaw tightened. I could see the muscle flexing even from across the street. He was losing the battle to keep his composure, the irritation seeping through the cracks in his polish. Good.
Another buzz.
Landon: You’re delusional. And a bore. Stop clogging my messages. Some of us have actual engagements.
I could picture his voice, that crisp, condescending accent sharpening every word. He was trying to end it. To dismiss me again. He still thought he could.
I decided to end the conversation. But not before driving the point home. I typed one final message, my gaze locked on his distant figure.
Jeremy: Your ‘engagement’ is watching me. I’ll be here when you’re done pretending.
I sent it and slipped my phone back into my pocket. I didn’t look away.
He read the message. His hand, holding his own phone, dropped to his side as if the device had grown heavy. He didn’t type back. He didn’t wave. He just stood there, completely still amidst the swirling crowd, staring out at the darkness where I stood.
The king, utterly alone in the middle of his court.
I waited.
Finally, he moved. Not towards his adoring crowd, but through them. He cut a path with a sharp, dismissive grace, ignoring a hand on his arm, a question called out to him. He didn't look back. He pushed open the gallery's heavy glass door and stepped out into the night.
He stopped on the pavement, ten feet away. The sounds of the city framed the silence between us.
His expression was a mask of cold, amused contempt.
"Stalking is a rather brutish hobby, Volkov," he called out, his voice crisp and cutting. "Even for you. Don't you have a warehouse to intimidate? A kneecap to break?”
I didn't move from my bike. "You waved back.”
"A reflex for dealing with nuisances. One usually shoos away flies, one doesn't engage them in conversation." He took a step closer, his hands slipping into his pockets. A picture of casual elegance. A lie. "Yet here I am. My generosity is a character flaw.”
"Generosity isn't the word.”
"No? What is?" He was closer now, just outside arm's reach. His eyes scanned me, looking for the crack, the angle. He smelled like expensive cologne and champagne.
I said nothing. I just watched him. Let him fill the silence. He always did.
He sighed, a theatrical sound of profound boredom. "You're predictable. Looming in shadows. Sending your little messages. It's all so... dull. We've established you can disrupt my evening. Congratulations. Now what?”
He was trying to steer it back to his game. To make this about my pursuit, not his reaction. To make me justify myself.
I didn't bite. "You left your party.”
"Boredom. Not you." The lie was smooth, effortless. He held my gaze, his own icy and challenging. "The conversation in there was lacking a certain... primitive simplicity. Perhaps you can help with that. Grunt once for yes, twice for no.”
I moved then. Just one step forward. Closing the distance he’d so carefully maintained. He didn't flinch, but his posture went rigid.
"You talk too much when you're nervous," I said, my voice low.
The cold amusement on his face solidified. The mask tightened. "I'm not nervous, Jeremy. I'm disappointed. I thought you, of all people, would be more original. This is just sad.”
He was lying. I could see the pulse hammering in his throat.
"Liar."
The word hung in the air between us. Simple. Absolute.
All pretense of amusement vanished from his face. The shift was instantaneous. The charm evaporated, leaving only the razor-sharp menace underneath. His voice dropped to a venomous whisper.
"Careful," he said. "You're mistaking my patience for permission.”
He held my gaze for a heartbeat longer, the threat hanging in the air, a dark and mutual understanding. Then, with that same infuriating elegance, he turned and walked back towards the gallery door.
He didn't look back. He knew I was watching.
And I was.
The heavy door hissed shut behind him, sealing him back inside his world of light and lies. I didn’t move.
I saw him through the glass, reclaiming his place at the center of the room. The smile was back, the effortless charm. But I’d seen the crack. I’d felt the rigid tension in his frame.
So I waited.
I leaned against my bike, a statue in the shadows, and watched the clockwork motion of the party through the glass. The crowd ebbed and flowed around him. An hour passed. Then another. The champagne flutes were collected. The lights subtly brightened, a universal signal for guests to leave.
Finally, the doors opened for good, spilling out the last of the attendees into the night, their laughter fading as they scattered towards waiting cars. He was one of the last to exit, lingering in the doorway with the gallery owner, a final, polished exchange of empty pleasantries.
Then he was alone on the pavement.
He didn’t look my way immediately. He adjusted the cuff of his jacket, a pointless, elegant gesture. Buying time. Gathering the mask. Then, slowly, he turned his head. His eyes found me in the same spot, still watching.
He couldn’t stop the flicker of surprise. He’d thought—hoped—I’d be gone. That his dismissal had worked.
It hadn’t.
He walked toward me, his steps measured, until he was back on the curb, the street between us like a demilitarized zone.
“You’re still here.” His voice was flat, all the earlier theatrical boredom stripped away. Now it was just cold. “Did you lose the key to your kennel? Do you need me to call your handler?”
I said nothing. I just watched him. Letting the silence stretch. Letting him feel the weight of my unwavering attention.
“What a pathetic sight,” he mused, shaking his head with a contempt that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was unnerved. “The great Jeremy Volkov. Heir to an empire. Reduced to loitering outside a gallery like a common addict waiting for a fix. Don’t you have anything better to do? Anywhere else to be?”
His words were designed to provoke a reaction. To get a rise. To make me justify my presence so he could dissect and dismiss it.
I offered him nothing. Just my silence. My presence was the answer. You are what I have to do.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Ilya, no doubt, with a security update or a question needing immediate attention. I didn’t move to answer it. My gaze never left Landon.
He saw it. The proof of my prioritization.
He took a sharp, irritated breath, the sound loud in the quiet street. The performance was failing. He had no audience left to play for, and his usual tactics were crumbling against my silence.
“Fine,” he snapped, the word brittle. “Stand out here all night. See if I care. You’re just a shadow on the wall. Eventually, the sun comes up, and shadows disappear.”
He turned on his heel, a swift, angry motion, and began walking down the pavement, away from me. His posture was stiff, his hands clenched at his sides. A retreat that he would never, ever call a retreat.
Landon turns to leave, his posture stiff, his hands clenched at his sides. A retreat he would never call a retreat.
Just as he takes his third step away, my voice cuts through the night. Low. Flat. A command, not a question.
“King.”
He freezes. Doesn’t turn around.
I let the silence hang for a beat. Then I speak, the words clean and sharp.
“Get on the bike.”
He turns slowly, a look of pure, undiluted scorn etching his features. “I have a car,” he says, his voice a silken drawl. “It has a roof. Elegance. Class. Concepts I’m sure are foreign to you.”
“Predictable.”
He barks out a laugh, sharp and humorless. “And your two-wheeled death trap is what? Freedom? How tragically romantic. Did you read that on a bumper sticker?” He takes a step closer, his eyes glinting with malicious curiosity. “Let me guess your next line. ‘Live fast, die young.’ Please, do enlighten me with more clichés.”
I don’t rise to it. I kick the stand up, the bike settling under my weight. The engine is already running. The offer, such as it was, is on the table. I don’t look at him.
He watches me, his head tilted. The mockery is still there, but it’s now layered with something else—calculation.
“You are genuinely unbelievable,” he muses, not to me, but to the universe at large. “You loom outside my event for hours like a gargoyle with a head injury, and your grand romantic gesture is to grunt at me to get on your… thing.” He gestures vaguely at the bike as if it’s something he’s just scraped off his shoe.
He takes another step, now standing at the curb opposite me. He doesn’t get on. He wouldn’t.
“What’s the plan, Volkov?” he asks, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial, taunting whisper. “You’ll whisk me away to a warehouse? Interrogate me under a single swinging lightbulb? Finally show me what all that muscle is really for? I’m honoured really but I’ll have to pass.”
He’s trying to get a reaction. To paint a picture so absurd I’ll be forced to deny it, to engage on his terms.
I finally look at him. I let him see the utter lack of humor in my gaze. “You talk too much.”
A slow, dangerous smile spreads across his face. He’s enjoying this. Of course he is. It’s a new, thrilling game.
“And you don’t talk enough. It’s why you’re so dreadfully boring.” He shakes his head, a picture of false pity. “No, I don’t think I’ll be getting on your bike tonight. Or ever. But do feel free to follow my car. I’m sure you will anyway. You can be my very own, very drab hellhound. Try to keep up.”
With that final jab, he turns—not away, but toward a car waiting at the curb. Not just a car. A McLaren. Predatory lines. Black so deep it devours the light around it.
It fits him. Beautiful, precise, expensive.
He doesn’t look back. Slides into the driver’s seat. The engine hums alive, smooth and controlled. The opposite of my bike’s raw growl. His machine purrs. Mine snarls.
I kick my engine over. The sound rips the street open in answer. I don’t follow yet. Let him think he’s bought distance. A block ahead, his taillights blur into the dark, a phantom moving through the city.
Then I trail him.
He leaves the gilded heart of the city behind. No mansion. No guards. No audience. His path is deliberate.
He signals, then cuts down a dirt track that swallows him whole. The McLaren looks wrong here. Out of place. A Jewel in the mud.
I kill my lights. Watch his glow vanish between trees.
Toward his studio.
Interesting.
The mansion would’ve meant witnesses. Barriers. He didn’t choose that. He chose isolation. His ground.
He wants me here.
I give him two minutes. Then I follow. My bike hums low over dirt, sound eaten by the woods. The track curves, then opens.
There it is. The house. Two stories, weathered wood, abandoned to anyone else’s eyes. Except the window on the ground floor. Light spills out, a gold square against the dark. His McLaren waits crooked by the door, as if he didn’t care where it landed.
He’s already inside. Door closed. No crack left open.
Message received: Not worth the effort. Not worth a word. Not worth a glance.
It’s the most Landon King dismissal imaginable. Because he knows I followed.
He thinks silence is the sharper knife.
A smile cuts my face in the dark.
The heavy door swings inward without a sound. I step into the space.
The air is different here. Thick with the scent of damp clay, turpentine, and the faint, sweet smoke of his cigarette. It’s cold. The only light comes from a single, bare bulb hanging over a massive wooden table, creating a pool of stark white in the cavernous, shadow-filled room.
He is in the light.
Shirtless. Barefoot. The formal jacket and pretense are gone, discarded over the back of a ragged chair. His trousers are low on his hips, smudged with grey handprints of clay. A cigarette dangles from the corner of his lips, a slow curl of smoke rising into the hot glare of the bulb.
He doesn’t startle. Doesn’t turn. His hands are buried in a massive block of wet clay on the table, working it with a brutal, focused intensity. The muscles in his back and shoulders shift and cord with each movement, slick with a fine sheen of sweat despite the room’s chill.
He knows I’m here. The set of his shoulders, the slight tilt of his head—it’s all a performance of absorption. A masterpiece of ignoring me.
Perfect.
I don’t speak. I don’t need to. Words are his weapon, not mine.
I lean back against the doorframe, crossing my arms. I become part of the darkness, a spectator in his self-directed play. This is what I do best. I watch. I assess.
The silence is absolute, broken only by the wet, rhythmic sound of his hands working the clay. It is a violent, intimate noise.
My eyes track the line of his spine, the defined sweep of his back tapering to his waist. The sweat tracing a path down the groove between his shoulder blades. Not an observation of attraction. An assessment of form. Of physicality. He is built like a dancer—lean muscle, tensile strength. Not a brawler’s body. A strategist’s.
A fact. Nothing more.
He is trying to prove a point. That he is so consumed by his art, so utterly unconcerned by my presence, that I am less than a ghost.
But his performance is too perfect. The lines of his body are too rigid. The force he uses on the clay is not creation; it’s destruction. He’s not building something. He’s attacking the material.
Minutes pass. Five. Ten. The cigarette burns down to the filter on his lip. He finally plucks it out and crushes it dead against the table’s edge without missing a beat in his work.
He reaches for a wire tool, his fingers closing around it like it’s a blade. He begins to slice into the clay, carving away huge chunks, his movements sharp and angry.
A flicker of something—frustration, maybe—tightens low in my gut. Watching him is like watching a storm contained in skin. A waste of energy. A beautiful, inefficient mess.
I can see the frustration coiling in him. The arrogance that can’t stand being observed without being acknowledged. The performer who is dying without an audience to convince.
He wants me to break. To speak. To demand his attention. To give him a reason to turn around and unleash that sharp, condescending tongue.
I won’t give it to him.
My silence is heavier than his. My patience is deeper.
So I wait. And I watch. Taking in the sweat on his skin, the tension in his jaw, the furious, beautiful chaos of his hands. Memorizing the map of him without the mask.
This is better than any conversation. This is the truth.
And it is mine.
But of course, like always, Landon has to break the silence. The wire tool slices through the clay with a final, vicious tear. He stands back, chest rising and falling with a breath that isn’t from exertion. His hands, coated in grey muck, brace against the table’s edge.
He doesn't turn. His voice, when it comes, is a carefully curated drawl, but the edge is too sharp, the rhythm just a hair too fast.
“I must admit,” he says to the wall, to the clay, to the air. “I’m fascinated by the evolutionary psychology of it. A compulsion without purpose. A mindless pattern.” He flicks a piece of clay off his finger. “Tell me, Volkov, does it feel like purpose? Or just an itch in that primitive brain of yours that you’re too stupid to scratch?”
He’s trying to intellectualize me. To put me in a box he can label and dismiss. ‘Primitive’. ‘Mindless’. It makes him feel in control.
I say nothing.
He scoffs, a sound meant to sound bored but that lands as strained. “No thesis? No defense of your own pathetic existence? I suppose that’s to be expected. The observer effect is wasted on a subject that lacks any self-awareness to begin with.”
He’s spiraling. Using bigger words to build a higher wall. The more complex the monologue, the more desperate he is.
I see through you Landon.
He finally turns. Clay is smeared across his chest and stomach. His hair is damp with sweat. His eyes are bright, but not with amusement. With a kind of frantic, intellectual fury.
“Fine. You want to observe?” He spreads his arms, a mocking, clay-caked crucifixion. “Observe. The great Landon King, reduced to providing grist for the mill of a man who can’t even articulate his own obsession. It’s almost poetic in its tragedy. The unexamined life, examining me. The irony would be delicious if it weren’t so pathetically dull.”
There it is. The core of it. His greatest fear: being reduced, being used, being a means to someone else’s end. He just confessed it to me.
He drops his arms, his voice dropping into a colder, more intimate register. A venomous whisper.
“You’re not a hunter. You’re a stray dog that’s forgotten how to do anything but follow a scent. And I’m growing weary of the sound of your breathing.”
He’s laid out a complex web of insults, psychoanalysis, and theatrical dismissal. He’s given me everything except the simple, honest question he wants to ask.
He’s waiting for me to get tangled in it. To argue, to deny, to finally speak.
I finally push off from the doorframe. I take a single step into the room. My eyes never leave his. “Keep going.” I say, my voice low and steady.
I don’t stop after one step. I walk fully into the room, into his light, closing the distance between us without a hint of aggression.
His eyes track me, the fury in them shifting into pure, unadulterated shock as I pass him.
I reach his discarded jacket on the chair. I shrug off my own, a simple, functional black jacket, and drop it over his.
I see the packet of cigarettes and the lighter on the worktable, next to the brutalized clay.
I pluck a cigarette from the packet. I pick up the lighter. The click of the flame is the only sound in the room. I light the cigarette, draw in the smoke—it’s the same brand he smokes, it tastes like him—and exhale a slow, steady stream.
Then I sit in the chair. I lean back. I look at him.
He is frozen, utterly still, his chest barely moving. He is a statue of himself, covered in the evidence of his own unraveling.
I gesture with the hand holding the cigarette, a small, dismissive motion toward him and the clay.
“Well?” I say, my voice calm, almost bored. “It was starting to get interesting. What are you waiting for?”
I have taken his stage, his props, his vice. I have made myself at home in the center of his chaos. And I have told him to continue his performance for my entertainment.
All the color drains from his face, leaving two spots of high, furious color on his cheeks. His hands, covered in clay, curl into impotent fists at his sides.
He has no words. No grand soliloquy. Every weapon he had has been taken from him and turned into set dressing.
The performance is over. I am now the director, the audience, and the owner of the theater.
And he has never been more completely, utterly owned.
The silence after I speak is absolute. It’s a physical weight.
He doesn’t move. The clay on his hands is drying, cracking. His face goes pale. His eyes are locked on the cigarette in my hand—his cigarette. He’s watching his own property become mine.
Good.
He’s trying to find a new angle. His mind is scrambling. I can see it in the blankness of his stare.
He makes a sound. Not a laugh. The ghost of one. Empty.
“Interesting,” he says. His voice is different. Sanded down. The polished charm is gone. “You… settle in, don’t you, Volkov? Like a stain.”
An insult. Weak. He’s trying to regain footing by naming me. It doesn’t work.
He turns his back. He can’t look at me and do what he does next.
His hands don’t go back to the clay. Instead, he reaches for a rag, wiping the grey muck from his fingers with a slow, fastidious precision. Every movement is deliberate. A recalibration.
He’s cleaning up. Erasing the evidence of his loss of control.
He doesn’t look at me when he speaks again. His voice is low, but it’s found a new core. Not fury. Not pleading. Something colder. More lethal.
“You mistake a tactical retreat for a surrender,” he says, tossing the filthy rag onto the table. It lands with a soft, final thud. “Sit in my chair. Smoke my cigarettes. It’s a good look for you. Petty thievery suits a petty man.”
He finally turns. His face is a mask of cold contempt. The vulnerability is gone, sealed away behind a wall of ice.
“Do you really think you’ve won because you’ve proven you can be a slightly more persistent nuisance than usual?” A slow, cruel smile touches his lips. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
He holds my gaze, finally.
“The door’s behind you. See yourself out. I’m done performing for tonight.”
The audience is over. The king has retired.
But I’m not done.
“Sit.”
The word is flat. Absolute.
He freezes. His back is still to me, but every muscle in his shoulders locks.
His skin is covered in moles. They’re forming a line down his spine. I wonder how many he has, I wonder where else they are on his skin?
Slowly, with a stiffness that screams of violated dignity, he turns. His eyes are chips of ice. The cold contempt is still there, but it’s now layered with a spark of furious, unwilling intrigue.
“I beg your pardon?” The words are razor blades, meant to slice. A last, desperate attempt to reclaim the higher ground through formality.
“Sit, Landon,” I sigh, exhausted from all the talking he does. “Don’t make me force you.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. A violent, helpless fury flashes in his eyes, so raw it’s almost beautiful. For a heartbeat, I think he might actually lunge.
Then, it happens.
His posture changes. The rigid defiance melts into something else—something far more dangerous. A slow, terrifying smile spreads across his face. It’s not warm. It’s the smile of a shark.
He’s found a new role to play. What a fucking surprise.
He holds the edge of the table before hauling himself up on it, a mocking smile on his face. “Yes, papa?” He bats his eyelashes and stares at me with doe eyes, his voice going high. Clasping his hands in his lap like a good child. He’s so fucking ridiculous.
I laugh.
The sound is rough, unfamiliar in my own throat, a short, sharp burst of air that escapes before I can stop it. It’s not a mean sound. It’s just… a reaction. Pure and simple.
The effect is instantaneous.
His performative pout vanishes. The doe-eyed look shatters. His head tilts, the shark-like smile fading into an expression of genuine, uncalculated surprise. He’s thrown. Completely. He was prepared for anger, for coldness, for a power struggle. He was not prepared for this.
He doesn’t know what to do with a laugh.
Showing me a parody of a submission rather than just fucking listening for once in his life.
Like I said, he’s fascinating.
I shake my head, the last of the chuckle dying away. The air in the room feels different.
“You’re impossible,” I say, but the edge is gone from my voice. It’s just a statement. A fact.
He doesn’t fire back with a witty retort. He just watches me, his eyes narrowed slightly, analyzing this new data. Recalculating.
When does he ever stop plotting? Does Landon King ever just be himself? Does he ever just fucking breathe easy through a conversation? Is it always like this? What an exhausting life he leads.
The silence stretches, but it’s a different kind of quiet now. The rage has bled out of it, leaving something wary and uncertain.
“Do you always sculpt at night?” I ask. I’m genuinely curious. It’s a simple question. No subtext. No threat. Just a question.
His eyebrows lift in theatrical surprise. The mask slams back down, but it’s a different mask. Softer around the edges. Amused.
“Why, Jeremy,” he purrs, a slow, knowing smile spreading across his face. He leans back on his hands on the table, the picture of relaxed arrogance. “Are you taking an interest in my process? I’m touched. Truly.”
He gestures lazily with a clay-caked hand toward the ruined block. “The night is… more honest. Fewer distractions. The light is worse, the shadows are longer… it forces you to see the truth of the form, not the pretty lie you want to see in the daylight.” He tilts his head, his eyes glinting. “It’s also when all the interesting monsters come out to play. As you’ve so thoroughly demonstrated.”
He can’t help himself. Even the truth has to be a production. But the core is there. He prefers the dark.
I don’t acknowledge the jab. I just process the information. I look from him to the twisted, half-formed figures lurking in the shadows of the studio.
“I don’t understand anything about art,” I think out loud, I’m not pretending to be something I’m not unlike him. “Are these supposed to be people?”
Landon’s eyebrows raise. A flicker of genuine surprise. “Some of them,” he says, his voice dripping with amusement. He enjoys this.
I make a humming sound in the back of my throat. A non-committal grunt. I gesture with my chin toward a particularly grotesque piece, all elongated limbs and a screaming mouth. “Is this how you see them?”
His amused smirk doesn’t falter, but it tightens at the edges. “Oh, no, Jeremy,” he corrects softly, pushing off the table and taking a step toward the sculpture. He runs a clay-caked finger down its distorted arm. “This isn’t how I see them. This is what I see in them. The truth they all work so very hard to hide.”
He turns his head, his gaze cutting back to me, sharp and knowing. “The greed. The desperation. The rot. The pretty, pretty lies.” He gives a graceful, dismissive shrug. “I just… give it a shape. So they can see it too.”
He looks back at the twisted figure, his head tilting. “This one,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “was a politician. All smile and handshake and empty, hollow promises. I just made the inside… outside.”
He says it with the casual air of someone discussing the weather. This is normal for him. This is his world.
I look from the screaming clay face back to him. To his pale, composed features, his intelligent, cruel eyes.
“And what do you see,” I ask, my voice low, “when you look at me?”
The room goes very still. The air vanishes. I’ve turned the microscope back on him. I’ve asked the only question that matters.
His smile returns, but it’s slow. Different. Less amused. More… intrigued.
“Now, Jeremy,” he chides, his voice a silken whisper. “That would be telling. And some truths are too valuable to give away for free.”
He takes a step toward me, stopping just outside of arm’s reach. His eyes roam over my face, my shoulders, my hands, with a new, intense curiosity.
“But I will say this,” he adds, his lips curling. “You’re… refreshingly solid. A blank canvas. It’s almost frustrating.”
He’s lying. He sees something. He’s just not ready to sculpt it yet.
I huff out a laugh, looking up at him from the chair, tilting my head back with an easy smile. “Isn’t that the highest compliment I can get from you?”
He smiles. A real, toothy smile. Perfect teeth, dimples.
What a beautiful, refreshing sight on his face.
“It might be the only one you’ll ever get from me,” he teases, the words slipping out before he can stop them, laced with a surprising lack of malice.
I give him a real smile back. He’s earned it tonight. I hold his gaze.
He looks back at me, and for the first time, there’s no act in his eyes. Just a tired, wary curiosity. A silent question: What are we doing?
“Is this the part where we bond?” he asks, tilting his head, an almost childlike gesture. “Share our deepest secrets over my frankly appalling clay dust? Should I put the kettle on?”
The offer is a half-taunt. He’s testing the boundaries of this bizarre, sudden ceasefire. Seeing how far the weird mood will stretch.
I shake my head, sighing, before standing up. The change in height is immediate—now he’s looking up at me, but not with that cruel glare he always reserves for me. It’s… different. Like a rabid animal learning to trust its owner.
“I should get going,” I reply, the words tinged with a genuine fatigue. The kind that comes after a long fight.
Progress. That’s something.
I grab my jacket, slinging it on. And just because I can’t help myself—because he’s too close, the moment is too strange, too tempting—I lean forward, my voice dropping to a whisper near his ear.
“See you, King.”
Notes:
we listen and we don't judge
Chapter 11
Notes:
Warning for readers :
This chapter contains Landon engaging in sexual acts with a man who is not Jeremy, if you're not comfortable with that, don't proceed.
I will say though, the sex scene isn't written in an intimate way, it doesn't contain feelings, it's more like a show Landon is putting. A release and nothing more for him.
But Jeremy's there, so if you don't mind, go ahead :)))
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Eleven
Landon
I will destroy Jeremy Volkov.
Not someday. Not perhaps. I will.
The plan is immaculate in my mind: precise, elegant, absolute. Every weakness catalogued. Every moment of his life mapped for dissection. By the time I’m finished, he will wish the very ground had swallowed him whole. And the symphony of his ruin will be mine to conduct.
I scrub the clay from my hands. Grey water swirls down the drain like blood from a wound. My reflection stares back at me—pale, perfect, unflinching. The ghost of a king.
I will destroy him.
And then. He laughed.
Not a mocking, manipulative sort of sound. Not a polite, measured chuckle. A proper, real laugh. Rough around the edges. Unpolished. Genuine. Bloody hell, he laughed. At me.
I froze. That laugh—his laugh—was a weapon aimed straight at the heart of my ego. It shattered my composure, just for a moment, and I felt it. The corner of my mind, the small, traitorous part I keep buried beneath all the charm and menace, actually entertained the absurd notion… that I might be amusing.
He’d sat in my chair. Smoked my cigarettes. Touched my monsters—not to mock, not to conquer, but to… see. He saw the machinery behind the mask. The man behind the curtain. And he didn’t try to break it. He just… understood it. And in that understanding, he had the sheer audacity to simply exist.
The pretense is exhausting, and frankly, beneath me. Let’s call it what it is: pure, unadulterated hatred. There isn’t another word in the English language that fits the particular, virulent brand of feeling he inspires. The irony is almost poetic—Jeremy Volkov, a man of such staggering brutality and minimal wit, has accomplished what no one else could: he’s made me feel something. And it is, of course, a spectacular and all-consuming loathing.
I hate him. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anything. But now the hatred is tangled, sharp with something I refuse to name. There’s the laugh. The way he leaned into my space, not with violence, but with the quiet audacity of his presence. The calm certainty that he could stand in my world and not be the least bit crushed.
Christ, he’s so loud in his silence.
I want to ruin him. I want to watch him crawl through the ruins of his own life and taste the despair I am so capable of dispensing.
And yet.
I want to see him again. I want to see what he’ll do next.
The plan is perfect. Elegant. Cruel. And it is paused, simmering on the back burner, because first—I need to untangle the impossible puzzle that is Jeremy Volkov.
He is a problem I intend to dominate. A curiosity I desperately want to dissect. And a force I find myself utterly incapable of ignoring.
He smiled. He laughed. He challenged my entire godhood without even trying. And I, for the first time in recent memory, felt… intrigued.
God help him.
Every fibre of my being demanded retaliation, a proper strike, a thorough dismantling. And yet… there it was, the problem: the laugh. The slow, considering tilt of his head. The calm calculation that made his every motion deliberate, intentional. He wasn’t scared. Wasn’t intimidated. Wasn’t even mildly impressed. He just was.
And worse. Worse than infuriating, worse than insufferable… he was docile.
Docile.
A single word, so small, yet it completely detonates my carefully maintained narrative. Jeremy Volkov, the wrecking ball of my life, the heir to all things chaotic, suddenly… compliant. Curious. Attentive. Present. Not afraid.
The thought makes my jaw ache with the force of my tension. I want to smash something. I want to rearrange the world until it bends to my design. But first… I need to understand.
Why?
Why did he—this interloper, this walking, breathing disruption—become quiet in my presence?
He wasn’t negotiating. He wasn’t pleading. He wasn’t begging for a scrap of approval. He watched, he listened, and he responded only when he damn well chose to. Every choice deliberate. Every pause measured. Every action a subtle challenge.
I hate him so fucking much.
And yet—oh, the infuriating beauty of it—I am compelled. Drawn. Bloody obsessed. Because he is dangerous. Not in the obvious, brute-force sense. Not with fists and blood. But dangerous because he is… fundamentally outside my reach. He sees me, but he does not fear me. He judges me, but he does not submit. He exists on the perimeter of my control and refuses to even acknowledge the line I drew around myself.
I will break him.
I will.
I want to ruin him. I want to tear his world down to its foundations and salt the earth.
But first, I need to figure out what the hell last night was.
And then I need to decide how I’m going to make him regret it most.
The tyres of the McLaren ate up the tarmac, the purr of the engine a soothing counterpoint to the static in my head. The countryside bled into the outskirts of the city.
A subpar night of civilised conversation? A shared cigarette? He could delude himself all he liked. The climate of my disposition remained a perpetual winter where he was concerned.
He thought a ceasefire had been called. How adorably naive.
A slow, cold smile touched my lips. A ceasefire implied both parties laid down their arms. I never made such promises.
My phone lay on the passenger seat. My thumb flew over the screen with chilling, precise calm. Each message was a scalpel, aimed perfectly at a nerve.
To a discreet, exorbitantly expensive private investigator: I require a full asset trace. Jeremy Volkov. Every property, every shell company, every single bank account, no matter how small or well-hidden. I want to know where he keeps his spare change. Depth, not breadth. Bill me accordingly.
To a master forger who owed me for a past discretion: I need a set of access cards and biometric replicas for the following high-security storage facilities. The client is… impatient. Compensation will reflect the urgency.
To the head of security at the Heathens' compound, from a cloned, untraceable number: Your eastern perimeter is compromised. Again. I’d recommend a full sweep. And perhaps a review of your employment records. Loyalty can be so expensive these days.
To the proprietress of the exclusive gym Jeremy frequents: A health and safety inspection has been triggered. Anonymous tip regarding structural integrity. The building is condemned until further notice. Such a shame.
To his favourite tailor on Savile Row: A tragedy. A fire in the back room. All current orders, including Mr. Volkov’s, are lost. Irreplaceable fabrics. I suggest you close for the foreseeable future. I will cover your… relocation costs.
This wasn't just inconvenience. This was a systematic invasion. I was having his financial life dissected. I was threatening his most secure spaces from the inside, implying his own men couldn't be trusted. I was destroying his routines and his possessions.
He would wake up to a fortress under siege from ghosts. He’d find his few personal comforts obliterated. He would feel the walls closing in, and he would know, with absolute certainty, that it was me.
He would know it was a message. That our night changed nothing. That my focus on him was now absolute, intimate, and merciless.
I was not backing off. I was demonstrating the depth of my reach. Let him feel watched. Let him feel hunted. Let him remember that my attention is a cage.
I pulled up to the iron gates of the Elites’ mansion. The messages were sent. The first moves made.
The game was most certainly still on.
And I, as always, was the one who got to decide the rules. Let him try to have a peaceful day.
He doesn’t get to after I lost a night of sleep.
The silence in the Elites’ mansion was a physical weight, thick and suffocating. Pathetic. My own personal kingdom, and it was empty. Brandon was God-knows-where, doubtless doing something unbearably tedious with unbearably tedious people. The rest of the court was absent. No one to manipulate. The boredom was a dull ache behind my eyes.
I stalked upstairs to my room, the pristine perfection of it all feeling suddenly sterile. A gilded cage. I threw myself onto the divan, pulling out my phone. A few texts. Nothing major. Just enough to stir up some minor drama. Something to make the world twitch.
I absently opened Instagram, a mindless scroll for distraction.
And there it was.
The first post. Glyndon. My sister.
She was in the Heathens’ mansion. That brutish, concrete fortress. And there he was. Killian. That pretentious, brooding waste of space with his hands on her.
And next to him.
Him.
Jeremy Volkov. In his own home. On his own throne. And my sister was sitting there, on his couch, smiling. As if she belonged there. As if he had any right to her presence.
The audacity. The sheer, unmitigated gall.
A soundless, furious laugh caught in my throat. So this is where he scurried off to after leaving my studio. Needing to be surrounded by his sycophants to feel important again. Needing to parade my sister around his den of brutes like a trophy.
Rage, cold and sharp, lanced through me. It was immediately followed by a wave of pure, undiluted contempt.
Look at him. The king of the savages. I bet the conversation was scintillating.
My thumb hovered. A comment on Glyndon’s post would be beneath me. This required a direct line.
I took a screenshot. A perfect, frozen moment of this violation.
I navigated to his number.
I attached the screenshot.
My thumbs flew over the screen, each word honed to a razor's edge.
Landon: Care to explain why my little sister appears to be holding court in your… what do you call it? Your rec room?
I hit send.
There.
Let him look at that from his cheap sofa. Let him feel the cold drip of my displeasure in his own home. He wanted to play at being civil? He wanted to laugh in my studio? He could now explain why he thought it appropriate to have my family in his gutter.
My eyes tracked the immediate read receipt under my text and I snorted.
It’s like I threw a dog a bone.
The three dots appear. They linger.
Jeremy: She’s with Killian.
Landon: Semantics. She’s under your roof, which makes her your problem. And I do not like my siblings being your entertainment. Send her home.
Jeremy: No.
Landon: No? How eloquently put. Did it take you long to think of that?
Jeremy: She’s an adult. She stays if she wants.
Landon: She is a King. And we do not fraternize with the thugs. Tell Killian his little playdate is over. Now.
Jeremy: Make me.
The challenge is so simple, so utterly Jeremy, that it steals my breath for a second. He knows I can't. He's in his fortress, surrounded by his men, and I am here, alone. The impotence is maddening.
Landon: You are insufferably dull. Is this your grand plan? To lure my siblings into your hovel one by one? First Brandon, now Glyndon? It’s a pathetic strategy, even for you.
Jeremy: You’re projecting.
Landon: I am observing. There’s a difference. One requires a brain. I suggest you try it.
Jeremy: She’s happy. You should try it.
The text is a direct hit. He’s not arguing about rights or ownership. He’s pointing to a simple, undeniable fact that completely undermines my entire premise. She’s happy. And I am not the cause of it.
Landon: Happiness is a fleeting and overrated emotion for people with simple needs. I expect better for her. I expect a world that doesn’t smell of stale beer, poor decisions and teenage pregnancies.
Jeremy: Then build her one. Doesn’t seem like you have.
The three dots appear as I type a scathing retort, but they stop. He’s said his piece. He won’t text again.
I stare at the screen, at his last message.
Then build her one.
The anger is still there, white-hot and coiling. But beneath it, something else—something colder and far more unsettling. He’s stating facts. And the fact is, my sister is in his house, by her own choice, and I am here, alone, texting him like a jealous child.
I throw the phone across the room. It smacks into the wall with a satisfying crack.
He was right about one thing, the bastard. I couldn’t make him do anything. Not from here.
The silence in the room was deafening. It was a vacuum, and it was sucking all the air out of me.
I needed a distraction.
A simple shag wouldn’t do it. Some mindless, pretty thing sighing yes to anything I suggested? Pathetic. Tedious. It would be like putting a bandage on a bullet wound. The frustration wasn’t in my body; it was in my head. A frantic, buzzing static that his laugh had started and his infuriating texts had amplified.
I needed to quiet the noise. I needed to remember who I was.
I hadn’t been in weeks.
The thought was the final spur. I pushed off the divan and went to my closet. The clothes I chose weren’t for warmth or comfort. They were a costume. Armor. A sleek, black shirt that felt like a second skin, trousers cut with severe precision. I looked in the mirror. Perfect.
The drive to the club was a blur of light and motion. I didn’t think. I just moved. The bouncer at the unmarked door knew me, his nod of recognition a silent, familiar echo of my own importance. The door swung open.
The club was not simply a place; it was a gallery. And like all galleries, it demanded an audience.
Private rooms lined the velvet-draped hallways, each one paneled with mirrored glass that wasn’t merely transparent but alive. Paintings—masterpieces of obscene grandeur—hung on the walls, their gilded frames concealing sliding mechanisms that turned them into apertures of indulgence. At the touch of a button, the brushstrokes parted, the canvas receded, and suddenly the art wasn’t oil and pigment, but flesh and hunger, revealed to whoever cared to watch.
It was brilliant, really. A constant question: is the painting just a painting… or is there someone watching on the other side? Exhibitionism dressed in elegance. Voyeurism disguised as curation. The whole place was a study in duplicity, and I adored it.
This was not the brutish anonymity of cheap sin. This was decadence, sanctioned, polished, sharpened until it gleamed. Every voyeur here thought themselves chosen. Every performer imagined themselves immortal. Fools, all of them—except me.
Because I didn’t perform. I reigned.
This was how I let it out. Not by feeling it, but by using it as fuel. To become so utterly untouchable that my presence felt like a punishment to everyone else for not being me.
The central chamber was mine, of course. Always had been. A throne room masquerading as a boudoir. The walls were framed by four vast canvases—monochrome, abstract strokes of shadow and crimson. At any moment, the paintings could shift, peel back, and reveal the eyes beyond them. An audience hidden in plain sight, straining to witness the spectacle.
I knew they were already there, breathless in their velvet seats, fingers twitching against switches that controlled their view. Some would watch in secret, cowards too shy to announce themselves. Others would fling the paintings open and drink me in like a sacrament.
And I would give them what they wanted. No—what I decided they deserved.
The door sealed shut behind me, the whisper of hydraulics like a curtain rising. The silence inside was thick, anticipatory, electric. I shrugged out of my jacket with the precision of a ritual. My shirt sleeves were already rolled high, my throat bare. Every movement intentional. Every gesture sharpened to a blade.
Let them watch. Let them kneel in the dark, faces pressed to the glass, praying for the smallest glimpse.
I would not give them sex. I would give them a sermon.
A reminder that even in their most private fantasies, even behind closed doors and velvet curtains, they belonged to me.
The man beneath me was older, slender, his body pliant in a way that begged for structure, for command. And I obliged, of course. Every thrust was measured, each angle chosen not for his pleasure, but for mine. His whimpers painted the air, thin and reedy, like a violin strung too tight. I relished it. I orchestrated it. His begging was the applause, his trembling the crescendo.
“Louder,” I murmured, dragging my mouth along the edge of his jaw, the command as natural as breathing. He obeyed, of course. They always did. His cries rose, desperate, obedient. He’d come here for release. He’d found religion instead.
And around us, the paintings shifted. One by one, the brushstrokes peeled back, and the audience revealed itself in fractured glimpses. Eyes wide. Lips parted. Hands already busy beneath the velvet seats. A gallery of voyeurs, starved for a glimpse of divinity.
How many times had I done this? How many times had I reduced strangers to worshippers, wrung awe from their lungs as easily as breath?
And yet—mid-stroke, mid-performance, as I tightened my grip in the man’s hair and made him sob my name into the sheets—I felt it.
The hair on my neck rose, sharp and unbidden.
A gaze. Familiar. Infuriatingly familiar.
I let the rhythm falter just slightly, just enough to glance at the far canvas. One of the paintings had slid back. A single square of glass. A single seat occupied.
Him.
Jeremy.
Alone. Predictable as clockwork. A glass of clear liquid, vodka of course, in his hand, his posture deceptively relaxed, his gaze anything but. He wasn’t aroused. He wasn’t impressed. He was furious.
It radiated from him in waves, that silent rage he wore like a second skin. Rage at what? At my little amusements—my tampering with his world, his fortress, his routines? Or was this it? Watching me. Watching me fuck someone else in the middle of my kingdom, with an audience begging at the glass, and him unable to look away.
Rage as surveillance. Rage as obsession. Rage as… attention.
I smiled.
Of course I did. Shock was beneath me. Fear was for mortals. Jeremy Volkov would not see me undone, not here, not anywhere.
I arched a brow, pressed harder into the trembling body beneath me, and angled my head so Jeremy could see the slow curl of my lips.
“You’re being watched,” I whispered into my partner’s ear, loud enough to carry. His whimper was immediate, frantic. The audience shivered. And I tilted my head toward Jeremy, as if the entire performance had been for him all along.
A toast to his fury. A crown to my throne.
He thought his gaze was a message—I’m angry, I know it was you.
But I made it my message instead: Look at me. Look how untouchable I am.
The man beneath me sobbed. The spectators pressed closer. And Jeremy, behind the glass, lifted his glass of vodka, his eyes like ice, unblinking.
Oh, he hated me. Deliciously so.
And God, how I savored it.
Jeremy’s glass tilted, the clear liquid catching the dim light as though it had any hope of distracting from the glacial rage in his eyes.
I almost laughed.
Poor, predictable Jeremy.
Pathetic.
Utterly, gloriously pathetic.
He came here. He walked into my world, sat his brooding arse down with his little glass of vodka, and thought what? That he was haunting me?
Adorable.
If Jeremy Volkov insists on weaving himself into every corner of my existence, then fine—I’ll give him something to choke on. He wanted to sit in the shadows and watch? Then he would watch everything. The debasement. The spectacle. The crown I wear even when I’m wrist-deep in someone else’s ruin.
He could have left. He could have stormed the glass, made a scene, pulled me off like the brute he is. But no. He sat. He watched. And in watching, he surrendered.
That’s the joke he’ll never quite understand: his presence doesn’t disrupt me. It completes me. He thinks he’s sending messages—I’m watching, I’m angry, I know it was you. How tedious. I already knew he was watching. I already knew he was angry. He is forever angry, a great sulking shadow looking for a wall to punch.
And yes, of course he knows it was me. Who else would it be? Does he imagine he has other enemies clever enough to peel away his life in such delicate strips? Please.
He thinks he’s warning me. But all I see is a man shackled by his own obsession. A man who cannot help but find me, even here, even now, in this private cathedral of flesh and glass.
So I gave him a show.
I curled a fist in the older man’s hair, yanking his head back until his throat strained, his gasp slicing through the thick velvet air. “You like being seen, don’t you?” I murmured, voice pitched for the glass. The whimper I got in return was incoherent, needy.
“Answer me.”
“Yes, sir,” he sobbed.
A ripple passed through the watchers behind their panels, audible even through the thick glass. Fingers clawing at skirts, belts tugged loose. I tightened my grip, drove into him harder, my pace brutal, deliberate. Each movement was a sentence, each sound wrung from him a punctuation mark.
But my eyes? My eyes never left Jeremy.
He shifted in his seat, the barest twitch, but I caught it. His jaw tight, his knuckles whitening around the glass. Oh, he despised this. Not just me, not just the act—the fact that he couldn’t stop watching.
“You’re pathetic,” I hissed into my partner’s ear, loud, unkind, dragging him down into the mattress. “Beg louder. Let them know what you are.”
He keened, the sound ugly, broken. Perfect.
Jeremy didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. He drank. Slow. Deliberate. Rage simmering under that frozen calm.
I bore down harder, until the man beneath me was babbling incoherently, until the sound of his humiliation filled the room like incense. My lips parted, a smile carved sharp and cruel, aimed directly at the glass.
Do you see, Volkov?
Every thrust was a dagger, every moan a blade I twisted just for him. I wanted him to sit there, chained to his own fury, forced to witness the spectacle of me. To know that his presence didn’t rattle me—it fed me.
My partner broke first, spilling with a cry that rattled the panes. I didn’t stop. I didn’t slow. I wanted Jeremy’s eyes on me when I came, wanted his frozen rage to crown me as I finished.
And so I held his gaze, unblinking, unyielding. I let the tension coil tight, let the heat burn sharp in my veins. The man beneath me was irrelevant now, just a vessel, a stage prop in my opera.
It was Jeremy I was fucking. Jeremy I was performing for. Jeremy I was conquering with every savage, unrelenting stroke.
And when I finally came, it was with a guttural sound torn from my chest, my body bowing with the force of it—my eyes locked, unbroken, on his.
I saw the flare of fury in his gaze. The unspoken promise. The storm barely contained.
I smiled, slow and cruel, still buried in my whimpering partner.
I had taken his rage, his silence, his watchfulness… and made it mine.
I had come, and Jeremy Volkov had been forced to watch me do it.
Jeremy Volkov is everywhere in my life now. Locker rooms. Studios. Galleries. Sex Clubs. It’s almost impressive, really. Almost.
But let’s be clear: this isn’t my problem. This is his. His obsession, his fixation, his endless, childish need to circle me like a moth burning itself to ash.
And I? I will ensure he sees every last thing.
Especially the things that burn him most.
Notes:
Landon you ho
Chapter 12
Notes:
Guys i've had a shit couple days, my flight landed friday and i've been running all over the place. sorry if it's not good.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Twelve
Jeremy
He thinks I stopped watching.
That’s his first mistake.
A little performance in a glass box, bodies pressed together, his eyes locked on mine—he thought that was enough to chase me off. A message. A warning. Some kind of victory.
It wasn’t.
I haven’t stopped watching since.
It’s been days. Long enough for him to start doubting himself. Long enough for him to feel me at his back when there’s no one there. Long enough for him to glance at shadows twice. That’s the punishment. He doesn’t get silence. He doesn’t get distance. He gets me—everywhere. In every corner he thinks is private.
Because he was vulgar. Because he thought he could put on a show for me, like I was just another spectator. Like I was everyone else.
I’m not everyone else. I don’t leave when he tells me to. I don’t blink when he bares his teeth. I don’t scare easy. He doesn’t get to parade his filth in front of me and walk away untouched.
So now he looks over his shoulder and finds nothing. He hears my laugh in an empty hall. He feels me behind him in his own bed. He sleeps with the lights on. And still—he doesn’t see me.
Good.
That’s how it should be. He wanted to play? Fine. But he doesn’t get to choose when it stops.
That’s mine. He’s mine.
The texts about Glyndon were his mistake too. He thought he could drag me into a pissing contest over his sister, use her as leverage. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know that when he waves his family in my face, all he’s really doing is tying himself tighter to me.
Because I don’t care about Glyndon. Or Brandon. Or anyone else. I only care about him.
He doesn’t get that yet.
But he will.
Every second of silence is another turn of the screw. Every day he can’t find me is another reminder that I’m always there, whether he wants me or not. He’ll learn. He’ll understand that what he did was disrespect, and disrespect has a cost.
Landon King is a possession that doesn’t know it’s owned. And I’m patient enough to wait while he figures it out.
In the meantime, I’ll keep making him look. Keep making him doubt. Keep making him wonder if the next shadow is me.
Because it is.
It always is.
I tell myself it wasn’t sexual.
That’s the line I repeat. The anchor I hold on to. It wasn’t about the man under him, or the act itself. It was about control. A performance meant for me. He wanted me to see it. He wanted me angry.
And he got what he wanted.
But my body doesn’t listen. My body remembers.
It burned into me. I couldn’t look away. The sweat tracing the line of his spine, the precise angle of his wrist as he pinned the man down, the raw, red mark his grip left on pale skin.
Fuck.
I can’t stop seeing him. His body. That smug, perfect, infuriating body. Pale skin stretched over muscles that move like they’re all calculation and violence. The sound of his breath, a sharp intake before a punishing thrust. The sight of his abdominal muscles clenching. The specific, ragged pitch of the other man's sob. It's a film reel on repeat behind my eyes.. That bastard’s hands clutching another man like he’s squeezing the life out of him—and the way he leans down, smirks, breathes hard, like he knows I’m watching.
I hated it. I hated it. And yet my cock wouldn’t shut the fuck up. Hard, hot, impossible to ignore. I’m disgusted with myself, acting like a virgin. No man—not one—has ever made me feel like this. And he didn’t even touch me. He just… did. Did what he does best: performed. Dominated. Owned the space, the man, the attention—and somehow me too.
The noises. Motherfucker moans like a seasoned whore. The way his voice drops low, rough, teasing the man beneath him. The little sharp laughs when the other whimpers. Every fucking sound like a scalpel cutting through my brain. I wanted to throw something, smash something, punch a wall—but I didn’t. I fucking watched. Like an idiot.
But I wanted to. I wanted to bludgeon something. My fists clenched so tight I thought I’d break my own bones.
And somewhere in the middle of it, I got hard.
He didn’t even fucking touch me.
Now it’s scorched into my brain. His hands gripping too tight, his lips pulled back in that perfect, arrogant smile, his eyes bright with the high of being watched. My cock still twitches when I think of it, like my body is laughing in my face.
I hate that I’ll never forget it. That I’ll see him every time I close my eyes. That I’ll hear his voice in the dark when I’m alone.
And most of all, I hate that when he came, his eyes were locked on mine. Like he knew. Like he owned me in that moment.
No.
He doesn't own me. He belongs to me. I will make sure he learns.
And now I’m planning. Always planning. Watching him without him knowing. Every little habit, every twitch of muscle, every cocky half-smile is a breadcrumb. A clue. I follow them like a predator because I can. Because he doesn’t see me. He never does. And that’s what makes it fun.
He thinks he owns the world. He doesn’t. Not me. Not anymore. I’m the shadow he can’t shake, the irritation he pretends doesn’t exist. Every second of that performance in the club, every thrust, every groan, it’s fucking with my head like nothing before. I’m not jealous. Not exactly. That would be soft. That would be admitting weakness. No. This is control. This is punishment. For being so fucking vulgar, so careless, so… Landon.
I hate that my pulse jumped. Hate that I ached watching him. Hate that I’m still aching.
“What the fuck’s gotten into you, Jer?” Niko asked, eyes sharp, skeptical.
And that’s saying something—considering he’s rage incarnate as a man.
I grunted and kept swinging the bat as we made our way through the warehouse I was burning to the ground.
“Man, talk to me.” His hand grabbed my arm, making me stop.
Blood from his hands smeared over mine. Didn’t care. I was already coated in more than enough.
I wasn’t known for my calm. Everyone knew I didn’t shy away from violence. But even I had to admit—this was overboard.
I shouldn’t have even stepped in myself. Could’ve Sent our men to deal with a small warehouse that had the nerve to undercut us. Just a little scare job. Break some bones. Remind them who ran the streets.
Now? Bodies littered the floor. Skulls caved in. Faces unrecognizable.
I’d lost it. And I knew exactly why.
Niko didn’t judge. He understood. Spoke my language. Maybe I could talk.
“Remember when you asked us if we’d ever been attracted to a guy?” I asked, eyes on the blood at our feet, then lifting to his face.
He blinked, confused. “Yeah… you said you didn’t.”
I said nothing. Lips twitching. He’d connect the dots.
“Fuck me.” His voice dropped, realization setting in. Then a bark of a laugh. “Did you… fuck a guy?”
“No.”
“But you’re thinking about it?” He ran a bloody hand through his hair, looking way too excited. “Fuck me! Jer, straighter than straight Jer, finally curious? About damn time!”
“Tone it down,” I muttered, tired.
“Who?” He stepped into my space, way too close, practically vibrating. “Tell me. Who made you retire from the boring dick alliance?”
I blinked. No way in hell I was telling him.
“No one important,” I said. Then, because I knew he’d push: “You don’t know them.”
“Oh hell no. You’re not keeping me from meeting the guy who got Jeremy fucking Volkov—mafia prince extraordinaire—thinking about dick, seriously. You’re gay?”
“I’m not gay.”
“Bi, then. Who is it?”
He was like a dog with a bone.
“Doesn’t matter.” I turned, walking through the metallic stench of blood, copper thick in the air.
Niko followed, eyes wide. “Okay, I get it. Won’t push. But this is huge. We need a coming-out party—”
His words stopped when he saw my glare. “When you’re ready,” he added quickly.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t care. It’s just…” I inhaled the fresh air outside. “Confusing. I’ve never… gotten hard over a man before.”
My men passed, hauling gallons of gasoline, already cleaning up the mess we’d made.
Tomorrow? Headlines about an “accident.” Five dead.
Niko watched me for a moment, unusually quiet. Then: “So… this guy. The one you’re not naming. Who’s making you lose it. You look at him and…?” He made a bulging gesture with his fist over his crutch.
I didn’t answer. Just glared.
“Walk me through it. Was it a threesome?”
I closed my eyes. “I saw him fucking another man.”
Niko whistled, low and impressed. “Damn. You’re a freak huh? Must be something special. So what’s the plan? Break his legs, or fuck him through a wall?”
“Niko,” I warned, voice low.
“What? Tactics matter!” He bounced, chaotic energy returning. “So? Which is it?”
I stared at the city lights blurring. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You always know. Jeremy Volkov plans. Calculates. So calculate this: you see him with another guy. It pisses you off. Makes you hard. So what does that tell you? You wanna be the one putting him on his knees? Or you wanna be the one he’s looking at like that?”
Punch to the gut. That’s what it was—thinking of him like that.
On his knees. King of the fucking castle, cut down to size.
That smirk gone.
That sharp little pretty mouth stripped of all the venom and lies.
Only need. Pure, filthy need.
Would he cry? He looks like the type.
Tears running down that pretty face while I hold him there.
Might even gag him first—shove something between those lips just to shut him the fuck up for once.
Or better—my cock down his throat. Watch him choke on it. Watch him fight it. Watch him break with it.
Because that’s what it is with him.
Breaking.
Making sure the smug little bastard learns who he belongs to.
And I won’t stop until Landon King is begging for me to ruin him again.
“I don’t bottom.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Niko’s eyebrows shot up. Then a grin. “There you go. One problem solved. Not confused—you’re possessive. Saw someone playing with your toy and it pissed you off. Classic.” He clapped my shoulder, hard.
“Not that simple,” I ground out.
Possessive. I already knew that.
“It is! You see what you want, you take it. That’s what we do.” His grin faded, eyes sharp. “Be careful. Men like us… we don’t do things by halves. This? This will be a mess.”
He wasn’t joking.
“So decide,” he said, voice low. “Is he worth the mess?”
I didn’t hesitate. “He’s already a mess. Defiant. A pain in my ass.” Words gritty, like glass.
Niko laughed. “Yeah, bet he is! Wouldn’t be interesting otherwise. Stop overthinking—like him, want him, go get him. Sexual tension or not, it’s making you crazy.” He muttered more to himself: “Kolya’s made me do worse.”
Kolya. His dick.
Why do I surround myself with these people.
Niko made it sound simple: reduce obsession to power. Problem solved with force.
“And if it doesn’t end there?” I asked, voice low.
“Then you own him.”
“And if he doesn’t break?”
Niko’s smile was dark. “Then you break him harder. So good he thanks you for it. But Jer… don’t play halfway. Want him? Own him. All of him. Or walk away.”
He turned back to the men hauling gasoline. The moment was gone.
I inhaled the metallic tang of blood and fuel.
Niko had cut through the noise. This wasn’t confusion. It was conquest.
Landon King. The ultimate prize. The fortress that wouldn’t fall.
And I was going to tear it down. Stone by stone. Until he had no choice but to surrender.
And when he did? It wouldn’t be soft. It wouldn’t be gentle.
I’d make him cry, beg—for everything he dared to do.
The image alone made me smile.
Niko’s words echoed in my skull. Own him. All of him.
The noise in my head stopped. Planning, watching, wondering—it all collapsed into a single, sharp point of clarity. I didn’t need to track him. I already knew where he was. My men had sent the update an hour ago.
King, L. The Gilded Owl Pub. With sister, brother, and associates.
Why wait? Why strategize from a distance when I could deliver the message in person?
Barging into the Elites uninvited was a political declaration. War. I wasn’t here for war. I was here for him.
I needed a reason that had nothing to do with him—yet put me squarely in his space.
I pulled out my phone, ignoring the blood on my hands. Killian.
Jeremy: Where are you?
Reply came almost instantly. Killian didn’t believe in social niceties either.
Killian: Omw to Gilded Owl. Glyndon’s dragging me through some tedious social ritual with her brothers. Why?
Perfect.
Jeremy: Want some company? I can be there in ten.
His reply was immediate.
Killian: Make it five. I’m dying of boredom.
I slid the phone away, swung my leg over my bike.
The pub was all dark wood and soft golden light—a stage dressed in velvet and smoke. It smelled of ale and old money.
I clocked them immediately: back booth, full house. The King clan and their satellites—Remington smirking like a clown, Creighton brooding like a storm cloud, Ava sharp as glass.
And Landon.
Of course, Landon.
Head of the table, whiskey in hand, smirk polished to perfection. Court jester, prince, executioner—whatever role he wanted tonight.
He saw me the second I walked in.
The smirk didn’t falter. If anything, it cut sharper, amusement honed to a blade. But I caught it—the half-second stiffening of his shoulders, the pause before another sip.
I ignored him. Walked straight to Killian, who gave me a curt nod.
“Volkov. You made it.”
“I needed a drink.” Flat, blunt. I dragged a chair out with a scrape that split the hush clean open and sat directly opposite Landon. No way out for him now. He had to look.
Silence rippled across the table. Glyndon glanced between me and Killian, polite but tense. “How have you been, Jeremy?”
“Fine, thank you.” Clipped. Controlled. I forced a smile that cracked like glass. Killian kicked me under the table. “And you?”
She barely had her mouth open before Landon cut across her, perfectly on cue.
“I didn’t realize we were entertaining the immigrant brigade tonight.”
Killian snorted into his drink.
Landon’s eyes never left mine. Cold. Glittering. His smile curved, cruel and practiced.
“Hello, Landon.” I sighed, nearly rolling my eyes. Exhausting. Always.
Spoiled little shit never tires of hearing his own voice.
The light caught in his brown hair, his white shirt and black trousers like he’d been painted into the scene. Immaculate. Not a wrinkle, not a mark. No trace of the filth underneath. I hated how he looked in the golden glow—sleek, polished, untouchable.
I hated more that I wanted to touch him. Wanted to do a hell of a lot more than touch him.
Christ. Straight past denial, straight into: I want to fuck Landon King into the nearest surface until he forgets his own name.
“Hello, heathen.” His voice dripped silk, every word a trap. “Wouldn’t the dive bar down the street—full of junkies and lowlifes—be more your scene?”
Brandon shifted, tension bleeding through his frame. “Landon.” Warning.
But Landon only leaned back, eyes glittering mean. “I’m just worried he’s out of his depth.” He even had the nerve to look concerned when he turned to me. “Do you even know how to read cursive? I can translate for you.” He tapped his chin, then snapped his fingers at the nearest waiter. “Actually, no need—he’ll take your cheapest vodka. With ice.”
“Landon, stop,” Brandon bit out, sharper this time.
“Will you stop being such a dick for once in your life?” Glyndon snapped, her eyes blazing. Fire, just like Killian always says. It pulled a brow out of me. “He’s Killian’s best friend. You don’t get to dictate who comes and goes. He’s welcome here.”
Protective little thing.
I leaned forward, slow, deliberate, pressing my bloodied hands flat against the polished wood. My gaze never left him.
“Aw, I’m touched you remember my drink order, King.”
Killian snorted into his glass again, clearly enjoying the spectacle.
Landon tilted his head, lashes lowering in mock thought. “Of course. Stray dogs usually want the same scraps.”
“Landon.” Brandon’s warning came fast, already tired.
But Landon only leaned back, lifting his glass like he had all the time in the world. “What? Am I wrong? He shows up uninvited, bleeds on the furniture, and we’re meant to pretend he belongs here? Whose blood is that by the way?”
Ignoring his last question, I tilted my head, almost teasing. “Funny. You keep calling me a stray, but you’re the one going through hell just to fuck with me.” I leaned in, voice soft, mocking. “Do you want to adopt me, King?”
For half a second—half a fucking second—his smirk twitched. Then it was back, brighter, sharper. “In your fucking dreams, you Neanderthal. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Not flattery. Fact.” My voice stayed flat, low. “You’re more obsessed with me than I am with you. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you fucking with my security? My gym? My fucking tailor?”
The air tightened. Glyndon’s eyes darted between us, suspicion blooming. “What is he talking about?”
No answer from Landon. Of course not.
I leaned back, calm. “Go on. Tell her. Since you love the spotlight so much.”
His jaw ticked, the glass pausing just short of his lips. Then, smooth as ever: “Whatever I’ve done, it’s because this lump of rock started it first.” His voice cut like silk. “Because he doesn’t leave me alone. Always watching. Always lurking. He’s a bloody stalker.” His gaze sliced into me. “Like a dog that doesn’t know when to heel.”
Oh, so he was going to spill it here. In front of them. Perfect.
Brandon turned to me, eyes narrowing. “You’ve been following him?”
I met his gaze, calm as steel. “He knows why. He knows I didn’t start it. Maybe ask your little friend Cecily why your brother’s on my shit list.”
The silence cracked. Ava straightened, her voice sharp. “What does Cecily have to do with this?”
Still Landon didn’t answer. His smirk was fixed, but his shoulders were tight.
Killian chuckled, low and pleased. “This is better than I hoped. I’m bringing Jeremy every time.”
“Shut up,” Landon and Glyndon snapped in unison.
Brandon pressed harder, voice firm. “What the hell is going on between you two?”
“Nothing,” Landon said quickly. Too quickly. “He’s baiting me.”
“Looks like it’s working,” Killian muttered into his drink.
That earned him a glare sharp enough to cut glass, but Landon was already finished. I saw it in the shift of his posture, the mask slamming back into place. He stood, glass in hand.
“Well,” he said, tone smooth as marble, “this has been ghastly. Let’s not do it again, yeah?”
He turned to leave. But not before his eyes flicked back to mine—fast, sharp, promising this wasn’t over.
The door clicked shut behind him. The booth was still buzzing—Killian laughing into his drink, Glyndon glaring daggers at her brother’s absence, Brandon trying to puzzle me out like I was some kind of equation.
I didn’t move. I sat there, black leather creaking when I leaned back, blood drying on my knuckles, the taste of smoke and whiskey thick in the air.
My phone vibrated.
Of course.
Landon: This isn’t your stage, Volkov. Don’t ever pull that shit in front of them again.
I smiled, sharp and quiet, thumb already moving.
Jeremy: You didn’t mind. You liked it.
Three dots. Gone. Three dots again. Then:
Landon: You’re delusional.
Jeremy: Delusional enough to notice you couldn’t stop looking at me?
I imagined him somewhere outside, jaw tight, glass probably shattered if he’d had one in his hand. The thought almost made me laugh.
Landon: You’re a fucking pest.
Jeremy: And yet. You texted me first.
The typing bubble flickered, vanished. Long pause. My smile widened.
Jeremy: So, your place or mine? Jeremy: No, scratch that. Studio. I like watching you crack in the middle of your own fucked up monsters.
Landon: Have you gone fucking mad?
Jeremy: Afraid I’ll ruin your pretty little nightmares?
Jeremy: Or that I’ll find out what you really sculpt when no one’s watching?
Jeremy: Started sculpting me yet?
Too long. Too telling.
Landon: You don’t get to invade every part of my life. Fuck off.
I leaned back, tapping the phone against my knuckles, enjoying the crack in his armor.
Jeremy: That’s the thing about me, King. I don’t fuck off.
Jeremy: I fuck with.
Jeremy: Or just fuck. Which one do you prefer?
No reply. Just the silence of the screen, heavy, loaded.
He wanted me gone. He told me to fuck off.
Which only meant one thing.
He’s already picturing me there. In his studio. In his space. In his head.
I wonder—is he a screamer? A moaner? Or more of a whimperer?
Do those pretty blue eyes beg?
Does he break loud, or does he shatter quiet?
Doesn’t matter.
I’ll find out soon enough.
I’ll keep him on his knees until his voice cracks, until he can’t fucking speak without my name breaking through his teeth.
Tie his wrists, pin him down, bruise that porcelain skin until it’s mine.
Every mark, every gasp, every goddamn moan—a reminder he isn’t untouchable. Not with me. Never with me.
And when I finally fuck him, it won’t be soft. It won’t be sweet. It’ll be raw. Brutal. The kind of fuck that brands him from the inside out.
By the time I’m done, Landon King won’t just be broken. He’ll be ruined.
Ruined by me.
Notes:
I think subconsciously i'm dragging this out even more cuz i'm afraid to get to the sex scenes cuz i have such a hard time writing them lol but angst is life and i feed of tension so, enjoy.
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