Semua Bab The Outcast King's Obsession: Bab 1 - Bab 4

AMARA My wrists ached, a dull, throbbing pain that kept time with the neon sign buzzing aggressively outside the window. Clink. Buzz. Clink. Buzz. I dragged the damp, bleach-soaked rag across the laminate counter for what felt like the hundredth time tonight, wiping away the phantom rings of cheap coffee and spilled espresso. My shoulders were so heavy they felt like they were lined with lead. Two jobs. Eighteen hours a day. Six days a week. This was the glamorous life of Amara Zoya Barros. I leaned heavily against the counter, letting my eyes close for just a single, blissful second. But the moment the darkness took over, the numbers started flashing behind my eyelids. The interest rates. The overdue notices. The threats written in elegant, cursive Italian script on heavy parchment paper left under my apartment door. “A debt does not die with the man who made it, Signorina. Pay, or we will find other ways for you to settle the account.” My uncle had been a gambler,

KASIEN The smoke from my cigar curled toward the high, coffered ceilings of the study, a slow-moving ghost in a room built on secrets. From my desk, the entire estate was laid out in a grid of high-definition monitors. The perimeter was tight. The guards were lethal. It was a fortress built to keep the world out—and to keep my secrets in. But tonight, the digital glow of the screens felt less like security and more like a cage of my own making. Before me lay the ledger sheets of the Volkov syndicate’s northern transport lines. Even in exile, cut off from the primary bloodlines of the Bratva infrastructure back home, my hands held the strings. The local syndicates in this city thought they could muscle into my territory while I played the part of the fallen king. They were fools. They mistook my silence for weakness, forgetting that a wolf in exile doesn’t stop hunting; he simply waits for the pack to grow complacent. I dipped my fountain pen into the black ink, signing off