PROLOGUE
242 Words
She knew three things to be true.
One: silence was safer than truth. Two: the Syndicate never gave without taking and three: no one ever came back from the dead.
So when Zevandra Gleoviska saw him standing across the blood-soaked floor tall, alive, and unbothered by the wreckage, her first instinct wasn’t shock.
It was instinctive. Cold. Lethal.
Kill him before the memory could breathe, but he moved like a shadow she used to know wore the same smirk. Held the same storm behind his eyes.
The man they called Arzhel Keiran Arsenio wasn’t a ghost; ghosts didn’t bleed; he wasn't an illusion. Illusions didn’t whisper her name like that half a dare, half a promise.
And he sure as hell wasn’t dead, because dead men didn’t smile like they were glad to see you again.
Even if they were pointing a gun at your heart.
❝ In this game, mercy is a weakness. ❞ Blood is currency. Betrayal is strategy. Only the ruthless survive.
“She doesn’t play to win. She plays to end the game.”
“He came back from the dead. She came to finish what death couldn’t.”
“He smiled like a man with nothing to lose. And everything to remember.”
“He knew the game. But she was the wildcard.”
“She was the right choice. He was the wrong consequence.”
“If timing was a weapon, it killed them both.”
- Writer
