Chapter 359: Opium
The boardroom was a war chamber dressed in polished wood and glass. Twelve men and women sat along the oval table, their suits pressed, their smiles tight, each one pretending they weren’t already calculating which side to stand on if the empire split between Andrew and I.
I slid into the head seat, my presence enough to silence the room. Niko stood behind me, a quiet shadow, his eyes scanning every movement.
"Mr. Roman," one of the directors began, adjusting his tie nervously. "We’ll open with quarterly performance. As you know, Q2 reported an eight percent dip in the energy subsidiary due to regulatory delays. Investors are restless, especially with the European expansion—"
"Cut them out," I said flatly.
The man blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Energy. Europe. Dead weight. Sell the contracts, pivot the assets into bio-infrastructure. The regulators won’t stop clawing, so stop feeding them."
A murmur rippled down the table. Someone cleared their throat. Another director—older, shrewder—spoke. "That’s... bold. But it could calm the markets. Fast. Especially if we highlight Zephyrcore’s launch as our cornerstone."
The Chief Innovation Officer leaned forward, eyes sparking. "The neuro-interface is weeks from launch. The prototypes have exceeded testing thresholds, the clinical partners are on standby, and the medical sector is already whispering disruption. If we position this right, we’re not just creating revenue—we’re creating monopoly."
I watched their faces light up like addicts sniffing powder. They saw dollar signs, power, global domination.
Inside it all, I saw Aria.
The only person who could cut through all this noise.
Another director chimed in, excitement mounting. "The market is primed for neuro-technology. Investors will rush in once they see stability. Spain was messy, the vultures are circling, but biotech project could drown all of that."
Vultures.
Andrew’s name slithered through my thoughts, and I felt my jaw tighten. My half-brother, making promises he couldn’t keep. Ewan’s shadow crawling across the table.
Next my vision blurred for a second. Sarah’s perfume. Her laugh. That threat. A video.
I pressed my palms against the cool wood of the table, grounding myself. My voice came out even. "Zephyrcore launches when I say it does. Not a day earlier. Not a day later. If the market’s ready, they’ll wait."
The directors nodded quickly, eager, deferential. They always were.
On the surface, I was calm. Commanding.
Inside, I was suffocating. My chest too tight, my pulse erratic. Every word spoken felt like glass grating against bone.
My phone vibrated against the table.
One glance at the screen, and the noise of the room dimmed.
Aria.
How did your visit to the hospital go? Did you see your father? And did you resume work already? Sarah told me she saw you...
Her name in text steadied me—until I saw Sarah’s. My skin crawled, the nausea spiking again.
I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Not with that venom still lingering.
I slipped the phone face-down, forcing my breathing steady. Just a few more hours.
A few more hours, and I’d have her in my arms. My opium. My silence.
Aria.
For the next thirty minutes everyone had acted like actors on a stage... tapping pens, clearing throats, pretending the stakes weren’t personal. Then Mikhail Reznov stood.
Reznov was Andrew’s man by secret and by habit: Senior Director of Strategic Investments, a man with a bank account the size of small countries and the kind of smile you only saw when someone else was about to lose. He rose with the practiced politeness of predators, walked the length of the table, and set his gaze on me like a gauntlet thrown.
"Mr. Roman," he said, slow and oily. "With respect, there are real concerns here. Zephyrcore’s market entry is a high-risk play given our current liquidity position. Launching now could destabilize our balance sheet and give competitors leverage. We should consider a phased roll-out, minimize exposure, secure secondary investors first."
He didn’t even try to mask the insinuation that I was reckless. He didn’t need to. That was a familiar tactic, whispering accusations, then watching them multiply.
Heads nodded. Papers rustled. The room tasted like late-summer thunder.
I let the silence sit, heavy and deliberate, then I answered like I always did: with the thing they feared most—certainty.
"Zephyrcore is our leverage. We don’t roll it out in stages because we don’t play defense. We set the terms. We create the market. A staggered launch gives rivals time to copy, governments time to regulate, and vultures time to position themselves. We either dominate this space or we hand the crown to someone else."
Reznov’s mouth tightened. He had the kind of confidence that comes from being told you’re untouchable your whole life. He kept pushing.
"And your executive assistant..." he said, measuring each word. "Ms. Thorne. She’s been consistently unavailable, and that affects operations. If our staff can’t be relied upon during core rollout weeks, it undermines the team. Perhaps a personnel review is—"
The insinuation landed like mud. A few of them glanced toward the empty chair where Aria’s name had become an unspoken presence in the room. The suggestion was thinly veiled: incompetence, distraction, a scandal. They were fishing for a reason to throw us off course.
A laugh, soft and dangerous, escaped me. It surprised half the table because it sounded more animal than amusement. "Reznov," I said, voice low enough to be felt rather than heard, "you want to reduce months of work to rumor and gossip because you’re scared of a little risk?"
He straightened as if ready to argue. I rose, unhurried, and leaned on the table until my palms splayed flat. The room shrank. My height, my proximity, the way my shadow crossed his paperwork... everything became pressure.
"You want to attack my assistant?" I asked, very calmly. "You want to question her availability and her character in a room full of people who ought to know better?" I let the words hang. I didn’t explain. I didn’t have to. The implication was simple: this man was making a move for Andrew. The room shifted.
Reznov’s practiced face cracked for the slightest beat. Guilty.
"You’re smiling too easily, Mikhail," I said. "If my brother put you up to this, it wasn’t subtle. If he thinks he can dislodge me with whispers, tell him he’s miscalculated." My voice had the blade-edge of someone who’d spent years learning how to cut without leaving fingerprints... courtesy of the old bastard of course.
He swallowed. "Mr. Roman—"
"Don’t ’Mr. Roman’ me." I stepped closer, close enough that he smelled his own fear. "Tell Andrew this: if he wants to fight, let him stand in the light like a man. Stop hiding in shadows and sending dogs to bite at my ankles."
Reznov’s eyes flicked to the door, to the projection of safety he’d expected. He froze, not because he believed me, but because everyone in the room did. The challenge stood between us; it was a dare and a warning in one breath.
"Do you understand?" I finished, soft and lethal. "If this is Andrew’s knife, tell him to take it out himself. Otherwise, he keeps his cowardice to himself." I straightened, the motion precise, cold. I squared my jacket over my shoulder like a ritual and slid back into my seat.
For a second the table was all teeth and swallowed curses. Then I dismissed them. "We’re done." My word landed like a decree.
...
The drive blurred past in streaks of city light, every street a mirror I didn’t want to look into. I didn’t need to check in again to know where she was. Aria Thorne didn’t vanish from me.. not really.
Still, when her apartment building rose ahead, modest and unassuming against the skyline, it cut sharper than I’d expected.
It was a cruel reminder of just how far apart our worlds really were. Hers smelled of coffee and children’s laughter, of normal things like neighbors and grocery bags.
Mine reeked of blood and boardrooms. Of names no one said without lowering their voice. I felt it twist a little inside me. Jealousy.
I slowed the car, the wheel slick in my palms. I should turn back. She didn’t need me barging into her life again, clinging to her warmth like some starving animal.
Four weeks or more I’d been breathing her air, crawling under her skin, saturating her days until she couldn’t escape me. Wasn’t that enough?
I told myself to leave. I didn’t.
Somehow, against my own command, I was parked in front of her building.
I stayed behind the glass, engine running, eyes fixed on the brick facade that separated her from me. My phone weighed heavy in my hand. Call her. Don’t call her. Don’t need her. You’ll drown her.
But the weight of the day pressed down like lead. Sarah’s presence still clung to my lungs. Her voice echoed, her threats replaying like a loop I couldn’t switch off.
That fucking video. The image of putting a gun in her mouth, ending the noise with a trigger pull... it carved itself into my skull until I had to grip the wheel tighter to suppress it.
I couldn’t breathe.
And Aria... Aria was the only tether I had left to sanity. But even that tether was fragile, built on lies. If she ever found out... if she saw Sarah’s version first... would she believe me? Or would she look at me with the same disgust I saw in my own mirror?
The panic crawled up without warning, the way I had witnessed it in Ivan’s worst days. A tightening in the chest. A heat behind the eyes. Breath shallow, sharp. I didn’t immediately recognize it until it was already inside me, dragging me under. I remembered the dream too.
My fists clenched on my thighs. Not here. Not now. Get it together.
A sharp rap on the window cut through the spiral.
My head snapped up.
"Kael?" A voice. Soft, familiar.
She stood there, her hair pulled loose, a plastic grocery bag dangling from one hand, the other lifted in a little wave. Aria. Gazing narrowly like she hadn’t just pulled me back from the edge of something lethal.
The window slid down before I thought about it. I unlocked the door and stepped out, the cool night air rushing my face.
And then she was in my arms.
I didn’t give myself time to hesitate, didn’t give her time to question. I just pulled her against me, burying myself in the warmth of her, the scent of her, the only thing in the world that felt like it might keep me from coming apart.