Silk & Sabotage

The rain struck the northern border of Rica like bullets from the sky — relentless, stinging, merciless. Mud sucked at every step, swallowing boots, pulling men down with each desperate retreat. The air reeked of blood, metal, and burnt trees. Blackened trunks jutted from the earth like graves, and somewhere in the smoke-drenched distance, screams pierced the air — sharp, human, fleeting.

Explosions cracked overhead, each burst painting the sky in angry, orange fire. Lucas Drax crouched beneath a crumbling ridge just as a mortar hit behind him — the impact nearly lifted him off the ground. His shoulder was already bleeding, soaked deep into the fabric of his uniform. But he didn't stop. He couldn't.

"Clear the ridge!" he shouted into the comms, voice hoarse and unwavering. "We hold this line or the capital falls in five days!"

Static hissed back before a voice finally broke through the chaos. "Copy that, Commander."

Lucas wiped the blood from his brow, the sky above him flickering between pitch black and firelight. The thunder wasn't from weather. There was no lightning. Only shell after shell — shattering the silence peace once promised. This wasn't the war Lucas had trained for. This was the war tucked between treaties and press conferences, the kind buried in footnotes and whispered away in briefings. The real war — quiet, dirty, forgotten.

Flashback: The Night Before Deployment

The embassy had been unnervingly quiet since Mia boarded her flight to Lina Loas. No more polished smiles, no more champagne diplomacy, no scent of her perfume lingering in the halls. Just absence. Just silence.

Lucas had wandered back to the war room out of habit. Maps littered the walls — circled coordinates, intercepted transmissions, satellite data printed in red. No one else was there. Just him, and the ghosts of what was never said.

He didn't want clarity. He wanted blood. He needed the chaos of war to drown the memory of her eyes drifting elsewhere… her lips touching someone else's.

Because something had changed the night before she left.

Mia had looked at him differently — like a door was quietly shutting. Mino hadn't met his gaze once that evening. And Lucas, a soldier trained to read movement before it struck, felt something slip. Something raw. Something irrevocable.

Now, caught between a ghost and a poison, Lucas couldn't tell who he was fighting for anymore — or who he was fighting against.

Underground Intelligence Bunker — Classified Level: Echo Black

Far from the frontlines, beneath layers of steel and silence, a room pulsed with information. Flickering monitors cast pale blue light across concrete walls. The scent of iron, ink, and electric dust hung in the air like breath held too long.

At the center stood Irina Varenskaya Drax.

She was motionless, composed, a phantom in a gray military coat. Her dark hair was pulled into a low knot. Her silver wedding ring still caught the light — worn not out of grief, but purpose.

Three years had passed since Elias Drax, her husband and Lucas's older brother, died on the southern front. She had not taken the ring off since. Losing a loved one can one go totally crazy, and she was the perfect example of it.

With a tap of her finger, a command console bloomed to life.

OPERATION DAHLIA — STATUS: DESTABILIZING

Behind her, a shadow shifted.

"You sent him too deep," said a quiet, controlled voice. "He's getting emotional."

Dimitri Callen stepped forward. Tall. Steady. A presence you didn't notice until you had to. Lucas and Mino had called him brother for years — not by blood, but by bond. But to Irina, he was something else entirely.

She didn't blink.

"They were always too emotional," she murmured. "That's why they needed me."

She tapped again. A new image bloomed across the screen — grainy, captured at a military parade in Lina Loas. Mia, standing tall, decorated . Regal. Unwavering. Unreachable.

"She's no longer a mark," Dimitri said, his voice just above a whisper.

"She never was," Irina replied. "She's the one I underestimated."

Flashback: The Day Elias Died

The crematorium was cold, despite the fire.

Rain soaked Irina's shoulders. She stood alone, staring at the flames as they consumed everything she once loved. There were no tears. Just a single letter inside her coat — signed by Elias only hours before his death.

"Don't let them die in vain. Not Mino. Not Lucas. Not the cause."

She hadn't.

Even when it meant using her half-brother like a scalpel.

Even when it meant turning Lucas into a weapon of attrition.

Even when it meant sending Mia Veyra a man already halfway buried.

Back in the Warzone

Lucas stumbled as a bullet tore through his thigh. But he didn't fall. He fired back into the smoke, vision blurred, rifle slipping in his grip. His voice rang through the comms, ordering medics, marking airstrike zones with bloodied hands.

A continent away, Irina watched his outline glow red on a thermal feed.

"Target bleeding. Still advancing," the intel officer reported.

Dimitri stood beside her now, closer than before. His hand brushed hers — not out of comfort, but connection. The quiet, wordless kind.

"How much longer will you keep breaking them," he asked gently, "before you let them heal?"

Irina stared at the blinking tracker still active in Lina Loas — Mino's tracker. Her half-brother. Her weapon.

Still in the field.

Still watching Mia.

Still tangled in everything he was never meant to feel.

"When the war is done," Irina said quietly, "they'll have the luxury of healing."

Then she turned off the screen.

Leaving Lucas to bleed alone in silence.

Back at Lina Loas Mino haunted Mia's thoughts.

She didn't sleep that night.

Not because of the wedding.

Not because of Lucas.

But because ghosts didn't knock when they returned — they simply stood in doorways, wearing familiar faces and crooked smiles.

And that night, the past came back wearing his voice.

She had kissed him.

Even when she wore another man's ring.

Even when she knew better.

The moment Mia closed her eyes, it began —

the memory of the man who was never supposed to matter.

What is written in their destiny?

And how much more tangled must love, war, and betrayal become… before any of them can be free?