MAFIA FAKE BRIDE

THE FAKE OF DRAGON PEAK

The mountain didn't just groan; it screamed. Under the weight of my silver-white surge, the ancient tectonic plates beneath the Zhang estate began to slide. The high-frequency lasers trapping Viktor flickered as the power grid was shredded by the shifting earth.

"Rena, get back!" Viktor’s voice strained against the hum of the dying cage.

I didn't listen. I couldn't. The White Wolf was no longer a voice in my head; she was a wildfire in my marrow. I slammed my palms against the cracking jade floor, channeling every watt of the "Blue Serum" energy I had absorbed at the Aerie. I wasn't just a tactical genius anymore I was a conductor of catastrophe.

The floor beneath Don Zhang’s feet vanished first. The jade throne shattered into a million emerald shards as the center of the hall gave way to the black abyss of the sea below. The Ouroboros Dons scrambled like rats, their dignified robes catching on the debris as they plummeted into the darkness.

"Leo!" I screamed.

The Sentinel stood at the edge of the expanding chasm, his serrated blade still raised. His milky-white eyes were fixed on me, but the blood-tear was now a stream. The psychic link Zhang had used to bind him was fraying under the sheer pressure of my aura.

"Fight it!" I roared, my hair whipping around my face in a halo of silver sparks. "Remember the orchid, Leo! Remember the girl you saved!"

With a guttural, animalistic howl, Leo turned. Instead of lunging at me, he drove his blade into the primary control console for the laser cage. The feedback was instantaneous a massive arc of blue electricity surged through his body, tossing him across the room like a rag doll.

The lasers vanished.

Viktor was out of the cage before the light even faded. He moved with the predatory grace of a starving wolf, catching me just as my knees buckled from the drain of the collapse.

"I have you," he growled, his arm hooking around my waist, his other hand gripping his tactical rifle. "We have to move. Now. The whole peak is going down."

"Leo..." I gasped, pointing to the crumpled form near the sparking console.

Viktor didn't hesitate. He grabbed Leo’s tactical vest with one hand, hauling my unconscious friend over his shoulder while keeping me pinned to his side. We ran toward the balcony just as the back half of the pagoda slid into the South China Sea.

"The Shadow-Wing is gone!" I shouted over the roar of the wind. "How do we get off this rock?"

Viktor looked at the churning water three hundred feet below. "We don't go up, Rena. We go down."

He pulled a high-altitude emergency beacon from his belt and smashed it. A second later, a sleek, black shape breached the surface of the water below like a leviathan. It wasn't a plane. It was the Veles Viktor’s personal deep-sea submersible, which had been trailing us in the harbor as a fail-safe I hadn't even known about.

"Jump!" Viktor commanded.

We hit the water with a bone-jarring impact. The cold was absolute, a sudden shock that threatened to steal the air from my lungs. But the White Wolf in my blood flared, keeping my core temperature steady. Viktor’s hand never let go of mine. He kicked toward the open hatch of the Veles, dragging Leo’s dead weight with him.

The hatch slammed shut, sealing out the crushing pressure of the ocean.

The interior of the Veles was bathed in a dim, amber light. I collapsed onto the floor, shivering as the heat systems kicked in. Viktor dropped Leo onto a medical gurney and immediately turned to me, his hands shaking as he checked for injuries.

"The child?" he whispered, his voice cracking with a vulnerability I had never seen in the Great King of the North.

"Safe," I breathed, clutching my stomach. The fluttering had stopped, replaced by a steady, glowing warmth. "He’s a fighter, Viktor. Just like his father."

Viktor closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against mine. For a long moment, the world outside the falling mountain, the dying Dons, the shadow of the Ouroboros didn't exist. There was only us.

"You should have told me," he murmured.

"I couldn't risk the Ouroboros sensing your distraction," I said. "But they know now. Zhang knew before I even stepped into the room."

Viktor stood up, his face hardening into a mask of pure, unadulterated vengeance. He looked over at Leo, who was beginning to stir on the gurney, his eyes slowly fading from milky white back to a bruised, human brown.

"They tried to take my heir," Viktor said, the words falling like lead weights. "They tried to turn your brother against you. The summit is over, Rena. This isn't a shadow war anymore. I’m calling in the full Volkov fleet. We aren't just defending the North. We’re going to hunt every single member of that Society until the dragon is dead."

I looked at Leo, who was staring at his shaking hands in horror as his memories returned. Then I looked at the sonar display, which showed the wreckage of Dragon’s Peak settling on the ocean floor.

"We can't just hunt them, Viktor," I said, standing up with a new, terrifying clarity. My tactical mind had shifted. I wasn't thinking about survival anymore. I was thinking about extinction. "The Ouroboros is a cycle. If you just kill the leaders, new ones will grow from the rot. We have to break the circle."

"How?"

I looked at the Marcello Seal on my finger. "The Blue Serum. It’s not just a drug. It’s a frequency. If I can find the primary broadcast tower the one that controls the Sentinels globally I can reverse the pulse. I can wake up every puppet they’ve ever made. I can give them an army of their own victims."

Viktor looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of genuine fear in his eyes. Not fear of me, but fear for the world I was about to change.

"Rena," he said softly. "If you do that, you’ll be the most powerful person on the planet. The Families will never stop coming for you."

"Let them come," I said, a cold, silver smile touching my lips. "I’m tired of being the prey. It’s time the White Wolf became the God she was always meant to be."

As the Veles dived deeper into the black trenches of the sea, heading toward our secret base in Siberia, I felt the child kick for the first time. It wasn't a soft movement. It was a surge of power that mirrored my own.

The Ouroboros thought they were protecting the balance. They didn't realize they had just invited the end of the world to dinner.