Chapter 87 The Ice Mirror

Chapter 87 The Ice Mirror
The pristine, private ice rink deep inside the Vance Mountain chateau was no longer a sanctuary. It was an absolute, unforgiving forge.

We had returned from the blood-soaked ruins of the Monaco gala with a terrifying new reality, burning right through our veins.

Valerius wasn't a standard mercenary, and he wasn't some brute-force brawler either

He was a dark reflection of my own Olympic legacy, a ghost who had weaponized that same breathtaking kinetic velocity that I possessed, plain and simple

If I fought him with textbook perfection, we would stay entirely deadlocked until my repaired heart finally gave out, and that wasn’t an option.

So I needed to shatter the textbook completely

I was on the freezing ice, breathing hard, entirely stripped of my dark silk suits. I wore fitted black training gear, my skin slick with sweat. For three agonizing, brutal hours, I hadn't done a single graceful routine. I was aggressively, violently unlearning fifteen years of flawless muscle memory, like ripping out old wiring

Julian Vance stood in the center of the rink in his heavy tactical boots and a dark sweat-soaked shirt. He wasn’t coaching me, not even a little. The terrifying dictator of the underworld was actively, ruthlessly sparring with me on the ice, like it was personal

"You are anticipating the block, Kaelen!" Julian roared, his deep voice echoing fiercely through the freezing arena as he swung a heavy, padded training baton in a massive, devastating arc. "Valerius knows the Olympic rotations! He knows exactly where your center of gravity is! Stop skating like a Golden Boy, start fighting like a monster!"

I didn’t try to flawlessly dodge it. I embraced the dark, fully

As Julian’s massive swing came down, I dropped my hips but I didn’t drift away. I channeled the explosive, massive kinetic energy of my legs to launch myself straight into his brute force. I took the punishing hit against my crossed forearms, and a shockwave tore through my bones

Then, using Julian's own massive alpha momentum, I hooked my heavy steel blade viciously behind his tactical boot, completely ripping his footing out from under him, and drove my elbow hard toward his throat

Julian caught my forearm, exactly one millimeter from his windpipe

We froze, like the air itself forgot to move. Our chests heaving, the cold freezing air pluming between our faces. Julian’s pitch-black eyes burned with a deeply unhinged, dark, utterly consuming pride

"Flawless," Julian growled, his dark voice rough as steel, his large hot hand wrapping possessively around the back of my neck, pulling me flush against his solid chest. "You introduced absolute blunt-force trauma into the kinetic flow. He won't be able to calculate that."

"I am going to tear his mirror to pieces, my King," I whispered flawlessly, leaning up to press a hard adrenaline-fueled kiss against his jaw

Right before the Fallen King could pull me into something deeper , heavier , the heavy glass doors of the mountain rink hissed open

Our fifteen-year-old twins walked perfectly onto the ice. They moved with cold absolute authority, like heirs of the underworld never had to ask permission for anything. Our son carried his glowing, highly encrypted tactical tablet. Our daughter casually flipped her heavy custom combat knife between her gloved fingers.

"The deep web is entirely bleeding, Papa," our son reported, his icy-blue eyes tracking the cascading data matrix on his screen. "Valerius's EMP at the gala was a flawless distraction, but it required a massive localized power surge. I tracked the financial footprint of the battery cells he used , it led me straight into the darkest sectors of the global black market."

Julian stepped back, wrapping his massive arm entirely around my waist. "Where is the Shattered Crown getting their gold?"

"Macau," our daughter answered, a cold terrifyingly lethal smile curling her lips. "Valerius isn't only recruiting ancient assassins, Daddy. He is funding his whole army through blood sports."

Our son tapped the screen, and the massive monitors suspended above the rink violently flickered to life.

Hidden grainy deep-web footage played. A massive subterranean neon-lit arena. But the floor wasn’t dirt or concrete.

It was slick blood-stained ice

"It's an illegal underground combat-skating arena," our son explained, his brilliant intellect basically dissecting every frame like it was nothing. "They call it the Neon Ice. The absolute highest tier of the global criminal elite travels to Macau to bet billions on death matches. Valerius is hosting a massive winner-takes-all tournament there tomorrow night. He uses the arena as a brutal forge, to recruit the most lethal, high-speed apex predators on earth into the Shattered Crown."

I stared at the monitors. Two heavily armored skaters were tearing each other apart on the neon ice, moving with terrifying speed, leaving crimson trails behind their blades

Valerius thought he built an untouchable, high-speed empire in the dark.

"He wants to recruit the deadliest skaters on earth?" I whispered smoothly, my repaired heart beating with a cold absolute entirely lethal adrenaline

I looked up at my husband, and the pure dominance of the Mafia Consort radiated out of my soul like heat you can’t put back in the bottle
Julian’s flawless jaw locked into this terrifying, demonic smirk. He just… understood , like it was obvious enough. 

"Pack the stealth fleet," Julian commanded darkly, eyeing our heirs. "We are going to Macau." 

"I am going to enter the tournament," I vowed, flawlessly too, my icy-blue eyes getting swallowed up by the thrill of the ultimate hunt. 

"Valerius thinks he is the absolute perfection of the ice. I’m going to step straight into his underground arena, massacre his champions, and shatter his crown in front of the whole criminal world." 

"And while you take the ice, my Prince," Julian growled, his pitch-black gaze sliding to our son, "you and the little Queen will fully infiltrate his financial servers. I want his entire black-market vault completely emptied , before Kaelen even touches down on his first jump." 

The absolute, global war was violently shifting from the high-society ballrooms to the neon-soaked, blood-drenched underground.

The Vance family geared up, completely unified in their terrifying, unbroken power, ready to beat the ancient leader at his own twisted, high-speed game.