thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
14
Chapters
126
Words
171.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
14 h, 17 m
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Roya — Ninety Seconds Before the Auction Kian fastens the poisoned hairpin into my hair as if crowning a bride. “Do not touch the hollow end,” he says. His reflection stands behind mine in the dressing-room mirror, gray suit immaculate, hands covered in thin black gloves. Between his fingers, the gold pin looks delicate enough to belong in a museum case. A carved spider grips a sapphire no larger than a tear. Inside the pin rests enough cardiotoxin to stop Shirin Farahani’s heart before anyone…-
11.4 K • Completed
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Roya The gavel’s sharp crack shattered the ambient hum of the underground auction house. It was a heavy, definitive sound, wood striking brass, sealing the fate of a stolen Renaissance oil painting for a price that could buy a small country. I kept my breathing shallow. The air in the grand ballroom was suffocating, thick with the scent of expensive ambergris, sweat masked by Tom Ford cologne, and the metallic undertone of pure, unadulterated greed. I gripped the stem of my champagne flute until my…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Roya The ascent was silent, save for the low, predatory hum of the private elevator pulling us up into the stratosphere of the city. My reflection in the polished steel doors looked pale, a fragile porcelain doll trapped in a steel box with a wolf. Leila stood three feet away, her arms crossed over her tactical vest. She hadn’t spoken a word since she stepped out of the shadows in the auction hall and ordered me into the lift, but the violence rolling off her was a physical pressure in the confined…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Shirin The descent into the subterranean vault was accompanied by the low, industrial hum of heavy machinery keeping the climate in a state of absolute, sterile perfection. The elevator did not have buttons, only a solid state panel that required a sequence of biometric confirmations. I watched Roya in the polished steel reflection. She was hugging her arms, shivering in the sudden sixty-degree chill, her sapphire dress entirely inadequate for the underground bunker. She was trying to memorize the…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Roya Sunlight did not warm the penthouse. It only sharpened the brutalist edges of the steel and glass, illuminating the dust motes dancing over the massive obsidian dining table. I sat at the edge of a leather chair, scrolling through the encrypted tablet Shirin had left for me. The digital ledger contained the inventory of the subterranean vault. But as my eyes tracked the routing numbers and shipping manifests, a cold, cognitive dissonance began to fracture the narrative Kian had hammered into my…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Roya The grand ballroom of the Farahani estate was a cavern of gold leaf and velvet, packed with the city’s elite—parasites in tailored suits and silk gowns. I stood by the champagne tower, my fingers grazing the cold glass, feeling the heavy, suffocating weight of the pistol concealed in my holster. Every laugh sounded like a jagged edge. Every shadow felt like an ambush. I was officially "Roya Tabrizi," Shirin’s new protégé, but beneath the sapphire gown, my skin felt like it was…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Roya The estate’s emergency lighting bathed the study in a sickening, rhythmic pulse of crimson. Outside, the distant thrum of heavy machinery signaled the systematic sabotage of the power grid. Kian was no longer hiding in the shadows; he was tearing down the doors. I gripped the edge of the desk, the digital drive Shirin had given me digging into my palm. My breath came in shallow, jagged hitches. The reality of the situation—of my entire life—was disintegrating. Shirin stood by the window, her…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Roya The man stepping out of the suffocating shadows of the corridor was a ghost I had buried four years ago. His name was Tariq. He had been my father’s closest confidant, the man who used to slip me stolen candies from the Macau markets, and the very man the coroner’s report claimed had perished in the blaze alongside my family. Yet here he stood, entirely solid, holding a suppressed submachine gun and wearing the tactical insignia of Kian’s elite extraction unit. A jagged, pale burn scar…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Roya I knelt in the spreading pool of Kian’s blood, the heavy silk of my sapphire gown drinking in the crimson. My hands, once trained to tremble on command, were entirely steady as I retrieved the digital drive from the floor. The master biometric terminal on the wall was still flashing its violent, red lockdown warning. I stood, bypassing the security interface and plugging the drive directly into the console’s auxiliary port. I didn't search for answers in Kian's files. I didn't look for…
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11.4 K • Completed
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Anand — Admission Night The ambulance reached Blackwood at 2:13 in the morning, forty-seven minutes later than the driver had promised me. I stood beneath the portico while monsoon rain erased the mountain road behind it. Water sheeted from the stone gargoyles and hammered the roof hard enough to drown the engine. The orderlies beside me shifted beneath their oilskins. I did not. Waiting is tolerable when one knows the desired thing has nowhere else to go. The rear doors opened. Vikram Sen came out…-
12.0 K • Completed
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