I come to the masquerade with a name and a gun. I meant to end a debt, to close the wound that losing Lev left in my soul, to make someone pay for what happened.
Then I see her, quiet, sad, the ghost of my brother folded into her heart, and the plan dies at my fingertips. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know what I’ve become.
So I tell myself I’ll be precise: one quick strike, one clean answer. But the moment she looks at me, something I thought was ash catches fire.
Her hands calm the fury in me; her music, her grief, pulls everything dangerous and beautiful into sharp focus. Now every choice is a risk.
I can finish what I started, or I can protect the one thing that might save me from myself. I’m Artem Orlov. I don’t surrender.
But for her, I will learn to keep debts balanced in a different way—by making her mine.
