Then she opened it slowly.Her hand trembled, slick with sweat, and her breath came in shallow gasps. The creak of the door echoed like a scream in the hallway. Time slowed. Kira flinched, heart in her throat.And then—the bang.It wasn’t aimed at her.The bullet hit the doorframe just above her shoulder. Splinters flew, and she ducked instinctively, adrenaline flooding her body. Her eyes widened, locking with Cooper’s across the smoky corridor. He wasn’t holding the gun. His face was pale, furious, shocked. Someone else had fired.A shadow moved behind him—then disappeared.Kira stumbled back a step, voice cracking. “I—I thought you were—”But Cooper was already running toward her, arms wide, panic on his face. “It wasn’t me! Kira—”She stopped him with a raised hand. Her face crumpled with anguish. Her lips quivered, and her eyes glistened, but no tears fell. Not yet.“I can't do this,” she
Cooper’s eyes widened in horror as Jimmy tightened his grip on Kira, the cold muzzle of the pistol pressed against her temple. Her face was streaked with silent tears, and her breathing came in shallow bursts. The room pulsed with danger—every movement, every breath, was loud in the heavy silence.“What the hell are you doing?” Cooper shouted, stepping forward but stopping himself mid-step, seeing the desperation in Jimmy’s trembling hands. “Jimmy—don’t do this. Please. Just put the gun down. Don’t try something you’ll regret.”But Jimmy let out a laugh—a cracked, bitter sound that sent chills down everyone’s spine. His eyes were wild, unblinking. His face was flushed with a mixture of panic and delusion.“I’m the only one armed right now,” he sneered. “And you expect her to leave? No. It’s not going to happen. You think you can just toss me aside like trash? Did you ever stop to think about the price of what you’ve done? Huh?”Kira sobb
Cooper smiled at them—a slow, knowing smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was a glint in them, something steely, something dangerous. “I don’t know why you guys are forgetting something,” he said, his tone deceptively calm, laced with irony. “You should remember—you were trafficking drugs across all ages, across state lines. The FBI has been after you for years. You’ve been on their radar, their list. How do you forget something like that?”Silence fell over the room. A thick, choking kind of silence.“You idiots didn’t even notice the plant,” Cooper went on, letting the accusation hang in the air like smoke. “Right under your noses. All this time. You were too gullible. Too arrogant.”That was when Santiago slammed his palm against the table and stood abruptly, his eyes wide with fury and disbelief. “Wait—what are you saying?” he barked. “You’re trying to say that someone among us is... the plant?” His voice cracked with the weight of
The tension was unbearable.The moment Kira raised the flash drive, everything stopped. Conversations froze mid-sentence. Wine glasses hovered mid-air. Forks paused just inches from mouths.All eyes were on her.Kira's arm, steady as stone, held the drive in front of her like it was a weapon—and in many ways, it was.But then—A voice cut through the charged silence, mocking and sinister.“You haven’t even said what’s on there. You sure you wanna do this, girl?”It was one of Santiago’s bodyguards. A stocky man with a scar across his brow, his eyes gleaming with a threat veiled behind a smirk. He stepped forward slightly, arms crossed, voice low but heard by everyone around him.“You should be very careful,” he added. “Sometimes people open boxes that were never meant to be opened. Sometimes… they don’t live to tell what they found inside.”A murmur of unease passed through the crowd. Kira turned h
Kira carefully rolled the cake in front of the seated grandmother, her every movement precise, steady. Her face carried a smile, warm and genuine on the surface, but deep inside, her emotions were tangled. Her stomach churned with anxiety, her fists trembling beneath the tray. Still, she looked the elder woman straight in the eye and said with a soft, affectionate tone:“Happy birthday, Mama. Wishing you many, many more joyful years.”The old woman’s face lit up like sunlight after a storm. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, glistening with emotion as she placed a wrinkled hand over Kira’s.“Oh, my goodness, Kira,” she gasped, her voice thick with heartfelt gratitude. “You’ve gone so far for me. Look at this masterpiece! Thank you, my dear. You know I love your cakes. You bake from the soul.”Kira’s lips twitched into a real smile, for a brief second.Then the grandmother stood slowly, assisted by a cane and Jimmy’s father at her side
Kira's face was a storm. Not just of annoyance—no, this was deeper, sharper. Her lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line, and her dark eyes narrowed dangerously as Eva’s voice echoed in her ears.“If you let me marry Santiago,” Eva had said with the most smug, saccharine smile, “I might just make you my personal maid. How about that, Kira?”The audacity. The gall.Kira’s fists curled at her sides, her nails digging into her palms. She wasn’t just angry. She was burning. A wildfire of fury roared in her chest, climbing all the way to her throat. She wanted to scream, to throw something, anything. Her breathing grew shallow. She was about to snap.But then—clarity.A sliver of ice cut through the fire. She remembered. *This was a plan. It was just a plan.*She had to play along. For now.Kira took a deep breath and forced the anger down like swallowing fire. Her face shifted—just barely—into a stiff smile, tight and mechanical. Without a word, she turned on her heel and left the r