38

Louis’s POV

The study door clicked shut, sealing me in a tomb of my own making. The address for the Villa delle Rose lay on my desk like an indictment. Sierra’s words echoed in the silent room. *We are the monsters here.*

She was right. But monsters survived. Monsters protected their own.

My phone felt heavy as a gun in my hand. I opened the encrypted channel. The message window was blank, a void waiting to be filled with a sentence of death. My thumb hovered over the keys.

A memory flashed, unbidden. Sierra last night, on the chaise, her back to me. The curve of her shoulder in the moonlight. The absolute trust she had placed in me when I promised not to cross this line. I was about to incinerate that trust. If she ever found out, what remained of us would turn to ash.

But if I didn’t do this, and Claudia Rossi spoke—to Finch, to anyone—the life Sierra loved, the future I’d built for Katie, would crumble anyway. It was a choice between destroying her faith in me or destroying her world. I chose the former. A selfish, loving, monstrous choice.

I began to type, my movements precise, mechanical.

**A. Ford. Contingency activated. Target: Claudia Rossi. Location: en route to Los Angeles International Airport, likely tomorrow. Method: traffic accident. Non-survivable. Make it clean. Priority: absolute discretion. Confirm.**

I stared at the words. *Non-survivable.* A clinical term for murder. I had given the order. There was no taking it back.

The response came within sixty seconds.

**Confirmed. Parameters received. Asset in motion. Will advise on completion.**

It was done. I had just hired a man to kill a grieving woman for the crime of wanting better sheets for her brain-damaged sister.

A wave of nausea, sharp and acrid, rose in my throat. I swallowed it down, forcing my body into a state of calm. This was the burden of the crown. The silent, bloody arithmetic of the throne.

I stood and walked to the window, looking out at the grounds. Katie was on a swing, pushed by a security guard who made her laugh. Her joy was a clean, bright sound that couldn’t penetrate the stained glass of my study. I was doing this for that sound. To keep it safe. To keep it innocent.

The door opened softly. I didn’t turn. I knew it was her by the hesitation in the silence.

“Louis?”

Her voice was small, wrecked. I couldn’t face her. If I looked at her now, I would break. I would call it off. And I couldn’t afford to break.

“I’ve handled it,” I said, my voice betraying nothing. It was the voice I used for boardroom coups. Flat. Final.

“Handled it how?” She came further into the room. I could feel her presence at my back, a warmth I was no longer worthy of.

“She’ll be taken care of. She won’t bother us again.” A technically true statement. A vile, cowardly lie of omission.

“You didn’t… you didn’t call him, did you?” The fear in her voice was a physical touch.

I turned then. She stood in the middle of the room, looking young and lost, her arms wrapped around herself. Her eyes searched mine, begging for a denial.

I gave her nothing. Just the implacable mask of the man who got things done. “It’s handled, Sierra. You don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

Her face crumpled. She understood. She saw right through the mask to the rot beneath. A sob escaped her, choked and despairing. “You promised me.”

“I promised to keep you safe!” The words erupted, harsh and raw. “That is the only promise that matters! Everything else is just noise!”

“You’re killing her,” she whispered, the words a horrified realization. “Right now. You’re having her killed.”

I didn’t confirm it. I didn’t deny it. My silence was the confession.

She took a step back, then another, as if I were contagious. The love in her eyes was still there, but it was now tangled with a revulsion so profound it seemed to physically pain her. “I don’t know you,” she breathed.

“You do,” I said, the words a desperate plea. “You know the part of me that loves you. That would do anything for you. Even this.”

“This isn’t for me!” she cried, her voice breaking. “This is for you! So you don’t have to face what you did! So you can keep playing the king in your spotless castle! You’re not protecting us, Louis. You’re entombing us. With her.”

She turned and fled the room. The sound of her retreating footsteps was the sound of my heart being ripped out.

I was alone. The order was given. The machinery of death was in motion. I had sacrificed my soul and my wife’s love on the altar of our security.

I spent the next hours in a state of suspended animation. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t think. I sat at my desk, watching the clock, waiting for the confirmation that would seal my damnation.

A part of me, the old, reckless part I thought I’d buried, hoped Crowe would fail. Hoped Claudia Rossi would have a flat tire, miss her flight, survive. But I knew Crowe didn’t fail. That’s why I’d hired him.

The sun began to set, painting the sky in bloody streaks of orange and purple. The confirmation came just as the last light died.

A single word on the screen.

***Complete.***

Followed by a data packet: a news link from a local traffic feed. A two-vehicle collision on the highway leading to LAX. One driver, a female tourist, pronounced dead at the scene. The other driver, a delivery van operator, was hospitalized with minor injuries. Photos showed a small, common sedan crushed against a center divider.

Clean. Discreet. Tragic.

I closed the window. I deleted the entire encrypted thread. I erased the digital evidence.

But I couldn’t erase the knowledge. Claudia Rossi was dead because I had willed it. I had looked at a woman’s love for her sister and seen a threat to be eliminated. Sierra was right. I was the monster.

And now, I had to live with it. I had to go upstairs, to a wife who now looked at me with horror, and a daughter who still looked at me with adoration. I had to bridge that impossible chasm.

I stood. My legs were steady. My hands were calm. The part of me that could feel was buried so deep it might never surface again. That was the price.

As I walked out of the study to perform the final, hardest role of my life—that of a loving husband and father—I understood one thing with perfect, chilling clarity.

I had won.

And I had lost everything that made winning matter.