LOGINEvery step she took tonight was a gamble, every corner a risk. And Rosa… Rosa finally showed her true hand. She’s not helping Emilia out of love or loyalty, she’s helping because, in her mind, it’s the only way to protect Lucien. That harsh honesty, mixed with her cunning knowledge of the estate, makes her one of the most dangerous allies Emilia could have. Now Emilia has crossed the threshold. She’s outside, armed with keys, money, and secrets. The mansion is behind her, Pier 17 ahead. From here on, every choice she makes carries consequences she cannot take back.
Rain hammered the city that night, a heavy, relentless downpour that turned the streets to black glass and washed the blood off walls that had seen too much.Inside a dimly lit penthouse overlooking the port, the man known only as the Vulture stood by the window, watching the lights shimmer on the water. His reflection stared back at him, a gaunt face, sharp eyes, the kind that had learned to hide rage beneath civility.He had traded his soul for control long ago. Tonight, he was paying for it.A phone buzzed on the glass table behind him. A single word flashed on the screen: Santiago.He answered without turning.“Tell me you have good news,” the Vulture said, his voice low, smooth, and venomous.Silence stretched for a beat before a man’s voice came through, tired, gravel edged, but still carrying that unmistakable weight of pride.“You won’t like what I have to say.”The Vulture turned now, pacing slowly toward the table. “Speak.”Santiago de la Cruz exhaled audibly. In the backgr
The air inside the Moretti estate smelled like smoke and iron.Every corridor bore scars from the war, bullet holes in marble, blood streaks on the walls, the faint echo of chaos that refused to die. But in the days since Lucien’s collapse, the silence had changed. It wasn’t just grief anymore. It is now discipline too. And I was the reason why.Men who once only looked to Lucien now turned to me. They watched me cross the hallways with a quiet kind of reverence, heads lowered, eyes following every step I made. There was no crown on my head, no title before my name, but the weight of command clung to me all the same.Lucien’s empire had not fallen. Not while I could breathe.“Gather the list,” I said to Raul Navarro as I stepped into the strategy room.It was a mess of cracked glass tables, torn maps, bloodstained ledgers. Raul had been trying to rebuild some order, but even he looked exhausted, his arm in a sling, his jaw set in quiet defiance.He turned when he heard me. “List of w
Lucien slept like a ghost refusing to leave the body.The steady rise and fall of his chest was the only proof he was still with me. Every time the candlelight fluttered the shadow on the blankets, I held my breath, waiting for the silence to swallow him whole.But he kept breathing.And I kept watching.Rosa hadn’t left his side all night. She sat in a chair near the bed, head bowed, fingers wrapped around a rosary that was missing two beads. Dried blood streaked her forearms like battle ribbons. She looked exhausted, and yet when she looked up she was all steel.“He’ll live,” she murmured when she felt me watching. “You saved him.”I shook my head. “No. You did.”She looked at me the way a woman who’s buried half her life in other people’s wounds looks at a child she knows better than the child knows herself. “You both did. Each in your own way. But you…” Her voice softened. “You have that look again, ragazza. The one that means you’re about to make a decision that will either ruin y
The fire hadn’t stopped eating the walls.It hissed and screamed and spat, as if the house itself was dying with them.Lucien’s hand slipped from his gun first. Then his knees buckled.“Lucien..."I caught him before he hit the ground, but the weight of him nearly took me down too. His body was solid, heavy with blood and exhaustion. He’d been fighting on nothing but vengeance and adrenaline, but now both were running out.He swayed once, his breath rasping in my ear, and then he fell.“Lucien!”His eyes were half open, glassy, unfocused. Smoke curled through the hall, making the air burn in my lungs. I pressed my hands to his chest, to the place I’d seen bleeding hours ago, the wound that had reopened. Hot, slick blood oozed between my fingers.“No...no, no, stay with me,” I whispered, shaking him. “You hear me? You don’t get to fall now. Not after all this.”Around us, the night was collapsing. The grand hall was nothing but fire and wreckage; the walls that once held paintings and c
The night no longer had a name.Only sound. Fire. Blood.Lucien moved through it like a curse wearing skin.The man who had screamed over Julio’s body was gone, what rose from that floor was something older , a king stripped of mercy. His clothe was torn and soaked through, the left side glistening with another man’s blood. His eyes burned pale, almost colorless, as if grief had burned everything soft inside him and left only ruin.Every step he took was deliberate. Calculated.Every bullet, personal.The first one fell before he knew he had pulled the trigger.Then another.And another.Lucien’s hand was steady now , too steady. He didn’t flinch when the walls exploded beside him, or when a man begged for his life. His mind was a quiet storm. They took my brother. So I’ll take their world.Raul’s voice barked through the radio, rough and breaking. “Boss, we’ve cleared the west wing…”“Level it,” Lucien said. His tone was flat, almost polite. “No house, no ghost, no survivors.”“Lucie
The shot cut through the hall like a verdict.Lucien saw Julio move before he understood what it meant, the arc of him, the full body launch, the shoulder rolling forward like a man answering an old, honed duty. He saw the flash at the muzzle as if the world had sharpened into a single frame. Then the sound came, not a scream but the hollow, final exhale of a man who had given his life to something older than fear.For a moment everything else, the gunfire, the smoke, the running men, dropped away. The colors bled out to ash and red. Julio’s body folded against Lucien’s knees, graceless and immediate.“No.” The word ripped out of him like an animal.He caught Julio because there was no other motion. Hands found shoulders, fabric, bone. Blood hot and metallic soaked through sleeve and palm. Lucien dragged him close as if the proximity might argue death into staying. He pressed his hands at the wound until his fingers trembled with the impossible physics of stopping a man from bleeding







