This was my eleventh year serving under Cassian Valcourt. Eleven years spent as his private bodyguard, his shadow that never left, the weapon he deployed without hesitation. And tonight, for the first time, I decided I was finished.
I pushed open the door of a small, hidden pharmacy tucked away on the city’s south side. It was the kind of place people only went to when they didn’t want their names remembered or their questions repeated. The fluorescent light above me buzzed and flickered, and the air smelled sharply of cheap disinfectant and dust. I placed a thick bundle of cash on the counter without saying a word.
The elderly pharmacist glanced at the money first, then at me. “What are you looking for?”
“I need something that will make it look like I’m dead,” I replied.
For a moment, he just stared at me as though I had said something absurd, like I might suddenly smile and take it back.
I didn’t.
With a tired exhale, he turned and disappeared into the back room. When he returned, he set a small glass vial in front of me, sliding it across the counter.
“Fake death capsule,” he explained. “It gradually slows your pulse, weakens your breathing. By the fourteenth day, you’ll appear completely lifeless.”
My fingers closed around the vial. “And what happens after that?”
“If you’re not buried,” he said flatly, “you’ll regain consciousness two days later.”
A short, humorless laugh escaped me. “That would be inconvenient.”
His eyes lingered on me for a moment longer than necessary. “Whatever you’re running from… it must be worse than death.”
Outside, the snow struck my face the moment I stepped out, sharp and unforgiving like broken glass. I pulled my coat tighter and began walking back toward Cassian’s estate.
Eleven years.
My thoughts drifted, uninvited, to that winter eleven years ago. I was twelve then, and the world around me had already begun to rot. Hunger had turned people desperate. Families sold whatever they could—homes, belongings, even children.
And I had been one of them.
A slave broker bought me for a thousand dollars. Not because I was valuable, but because my little sister was starving and I thought that if I vanished, at least she might survive a little longer.
Naive. Pathetic, even.
The broker never reached the city. A gang ambushed the convoy in the mountains. Snow turned red. Screams vanished into the wind. When it ended, there was nothing left but silence and bodies scattered across the white.
Everyone was dead.
Everyone except me.
I crawled through the snow with fractured ribs and hands too frozen to feel anything, thinking dimly that this must be how it ends—quiet, cold, and alone.
Then headlights cut through the storm.
A black Rolls-Royce stopped in front of me. The door opened, and a boy stepped out.
Cassian Valcourt.
Fifteen years old, already a name feared across New York’s underworld. He looked at me lying in the snow like I was something discarded.
“Still alive?” he asked, almost casually.
I forced my eyes open.
He crouched down, studying me with mild curiosity. “Do you want to live?”
I nodded violently, desperation spilling out of me. “P-please… I don’t want to die.”
He regarded me for a second longer, then stood. “Put her in the car,” he ordered his driver. Before turning away, he added, voice calm and absolute, “Listen carefully. From this moment on, your life belongs to me. Understand?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Okay.”
That night, he gave me hot porridge, a heavy winter coat, and a knife pressed into my hands.
“You’ll need it,” he said simply.
From then on, he trained me himself. Guns, blades, surveillance, killing without leaving traces. Years passed until people stopped calling me a person at all. In the underworld, I became Cassian Valcourt’s ghost.
And somewhere along the way, something inside me changed—fractured without me noticing.
When did I start loving him?
Maybe it was when I was bleeding out on a mission and he stayed at my hospital bedside for three days without leaving.
Maybe it was the nights he taught me how to write properly, standing behind me, his breath warm near my ear as if I was something worth teaching.
Or maybe it was that charity gala last year, when someone drugged him.
He dragged me into his office afterward and pressed me against the wall.
“Don’t move,” he said, voice rough.
“B-boss… you’re not thinking clearly,” I tried to say.
“Don’t call me that,” he muttered, gripping my waist tighter.
His eyes were dark—too dark. And then he kissed me, like restraint had finally snapped after years of holding back.
After that night, we never spoke of it.
But he still came to my room sometimes. Quietly. Without explanation. Sometimes gentle, sometimes rough, like he was trying to burn something out of himself and I just happened to be there.
He never promised anything.
And I never asked.
Because who was I to him? A girl he found in the snow. A weapon. A secret.
Cassian Valcourt never belonged to anyone.
Until he brought her home.
I was in the hallway when he entered the mansion carrying a girl in his arms. At first, I thought nothing of it. He had saved people before.
But then she lifted her head.
My entire body went cold.
No.
It couldn’t be.
Valeria.
My younger sister. The one I had believed was long dead.
He placed her down gently, and she looked around before her gaze landed on me.
She froze.
“Elira…?”
Before I could even process it, she ran toward me and threw her arms around my neck. “Sister!” she cried, shaking. “It’s really you! I thought you were gone!”
My hands trembled as I held her. “Valeria… you’re alive?”
“I missed you so much,” she sobbed. “I searched everywhere for you.”
I pulled back slightly. “What happened? How did you survive?”
She wiped her face quickly. “After you disappeared, I lived on the streets for a while. Then a wealthy family took me in… they raised me like their own.” Her voice broke. “But a few days ago, a gang attacked the house. Everyone died… except me.”
Her eyes shifted toward Cassian.
“He saved me.”
For a brief moment, warmth rose in my chest—something dangerously close to hope. Maybe life was finally giving something back.
Then I looked at him.
And noticed it.
The way he looked at Valeria.
Soft. Attentive. Different.
My stomach tightened.
No. I told myself I was imagining it.
Wasn’t I?
Cassian never trained Valeria the way he trained me. He never gave her weapons or told her to survive the way I had to learn. Instead, he surrounded her with tutors—piano, painting, languages, chess. Educators from New York and Europe came and went as if she lived in another world entirely.
Valeria feared the dark, so the mansion was filled with warm lighting wherever she went. She once mentioned liking pear blossoms, and within weeks, pear trees were planted outside her windows as if the world bent itself for her comfort.
I watched it all in silence.
Strange, isn’t it? Eleven years of blood earned me obedience. A single smile earned her gentleness.
Then Valeria was poisoned.
It was Cassius Vale who did it—a rival mafia heir known as the Third Prince of the underworld, his family controlling vast criminal networks along the East Coast. And everyone knew what kind of man he was.
Unstable. Dangerous.
He called Cassian directly. I was in the room when the call came through.
“Your princess has been poisoned,” Cassius said lightly, almost amused. “But don’t worry. I have the antidote.”
Cassian’s tone remained even. “State your terms.”
Cassius laughed softly. “Send me Elira. Your prized bodyguard. One month with her, and you get the antidote.”
The room fell into silence.
