Chapter Twenty-Four: The King’s Wraith

The gates stood wide open.

Not broken. Opened.

Lucien ran out of the SUV, but he was too late. He knew the moments he left the Alvaro estate, the wind whipping at his coat as he stared up at the once, impenetrable estate that now looked like a wounded beast. Smoke curled from the shattered windows of the west wing. The sky, heavy with dusk, cast a sickly orange hue over the courtyard, as if the world itself sensed the blood spilled here.

He moved forward without a word, his men following behind him, weapons drawn, eyes sharp.

He didn’t need a war cry.

His silence said everything.

Inside, the main hallway was chaos frozen in time. Bullet holes riddled the walls. Furniture lay overturned. A chandelier, once grand, hung at a crooked angle, shards glittering like cruel diamonds across the marble floor. Blood painted the tiles, dragged, smeared, fresh.

The stench of gunpowder still lingered.

Lucien’s fists clenched.

“Check every room,” he ordered. “Alive, dead, I want a count.”

He knew what