Chapter 72
ADELINA
Cezar was gone.
That should have been impossible. He had been with me, inside the one place no enemy was supposed to be able to reach him. Then he left anyway, chasing a monster who stole everything from me.
I couldn’t fall apart again.
Time was up.
I stood from the chair with Dorin beside me, my body moving before my mind could crawl back to that night. Trying not to break, I prepared for the final battle that would end this war. “It’s time to take back everything that has always been mine.”
The room went quiet.
My people watched me with the kind of loyalty men killed for. Some of them had been with me since the beginning. Some joined after Viktor’s corruption spread too far to ignore. All of them knew what tonight meant.
“Not all of us will make it out alive,” I said. “If anyone wants to walk away, do it now. No shame. No punishment.”
No one moved.
Dorin’s shoulder grazed mine. “You ready?”
I looked at him. He wasn’t asking about the throne. “No,” I admitted.
“Good, means you’re not being stupid.”
“Debatable.”
That almost got a smile out of him, but the humor didn’t last. Not with Viktor waiting. Not with Cezar somewhere in that darkness, possibly already dead because he loved me too much to stay away from hell.
I shoved that thought down hard enough to taste iron.
The Crimson Roses once inspired fear for the right reasons, before Viktor ripped the roots out and poisoned what my parents built. Quiet alliances. Silent loyalties. Power buried deep within the system. I’d staged the perfect coup over years of bloodshed and secrets.
Tonight, the syndicate would return to the blood it belonged to.
Mine.
The drive stretched endlessly through the storm. No one spoke. Weapons were checked, routes reviewed, commands passed in low voices. My people knew the plan. Subdue who we could. Kill who we had to. Viktor was mine. But every few seconds, my thoughts drifted.
Cezar. Please be alive.
When we arrived, rain poured in sheets, washing the world clean. Fitting, considering how much blood would be shed before sunrise. The estate loomed ahead of us, beautiful in the cruelest way, perfect for the massacre about to unfold.
I stepped out of the car and looked up at the dark windows.
Where are you, Cezar?
Dorin came up beside me, weapon in hand. “We’ll find him.”
I hated how easily he read me. “I know.” A lie, maybe. I didn’t care.
We had every piece of this place memorized. We entered through the side entrance, exactly where my informant promised it would be unlocked. My people dispersed through the building while Dorin and I pushed deeper inside. The first shot rang out before we made it halfway down the corridor.
Screams followed.
For one sickening second, I was back at the party where my parents lost their lives at the hands of someone who did not deserve to take.
Dorin’s hand touched my elbow. “Adelina.”
I blinked.
Right.
Not then.
Now.
Room by room, we moved through the estate. Some surrendered fast. Some fought and died for Viktor, loyal to a bastard who would have fed them to wolves if it bought him another minute of power. I was about to face the person who ended my world, and then we reached the main hall.
It was beautiful, annoyingly so. There were high ceilings lined with gold trim and covered in velvet drapes.
A place dressed for royalty and occupied by a coward.
My people filtered in behind me, sealing the exits, guns raised in perfect unison.
Viktor stood at the head of the room with Darius and Codrin at his sides. A fucking imposter with nowhere to go.
No Cezar.
The fear gnawed at me, but I didn’t let it show.
Viktor lowered his weapon slowly, forcing his sons to do the same. Darius looked like he wanted to fight anyway. Codrin stared at me with confusion, already turning into something different.
Recognition, perhaps.
“Kneel,” Dorin ordered.
Most of Viktor’s men were already on the ground, guns pressed to their skulls. Darius hesitated before one of my men forced him down beside his father. Codrin lowered himself on his own, his eyes lingering on me for too long, like he was seeing something he hadn’t before.
The takeover had begun.
Viktor chuckled like we hadn’t already won.
“I knew I shouldn’t have sent so many men away.
” He tried for amusement, though the strain gave him away in the way his jaw flexed.
The way his gaze kept darting toward the armed bodies surrounding him.
A man who had spent too long perched on a throne built from the bones of better people was finally realizing it was collapsing. He shifted on his knees.
“All right,” he went on. “You have me here. What exactly do you want? Money? An alliance? You’ve proved yourself worthy of joining my Crimson Roses.”
What the fuck?
He talked to Dorin the entire time, his attention never reaching me—like I wasn’t even in the room. Like Dorin was the one who took apart his empire piece by piece.
“Nycto Reaper,” Dorin said, gesturing me forward.
I stepped into the center of the room. The burning desire to slit his throat right then and there was almost more than I could handle.
Viktor’s attention landed on me. His eyes narrowed as he studied me.
“So,” he said slowly. “The Nycto Reaper is you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Disappointing, isn’t it?”
His mouth curled. “You’re going to die here, girl. Who do you think you are, walking into this world like you can take what belongs to me?” He laughed.
I smiled.
That pissed him off more than any answer could have.
“You won’t be the end of me, Viktor,” I said, stepping back and spreading my arms. “You don’t have that kind of power. This”—I gestured around the hall, to my men, to the new hierarchy he wasn’t prepared for—“is real power.”
Movement stirred along the walls. More of my people emerged from hidden positions, one after another, until the room seemed to breathe with them. Then they bowed.
This was fucking power. And Cezar should have been here to see it.
Viktor’s composure wavered. Not much, but enough. His eyes hardened, and his fingers twitched against his thigh like he wanted to lunge for me. He stayed exactly where he belonged.
On his knees.
His voice strained. “Who the fuck are you?”
I lifted my chin.
“Members of the Crimson Rose Syndicate,” I called, letting my voice carry. “I stand before you not as a stranger, but as the blood Viktor tried to bury.” Silence settled.
“My name is Adelina V?lean. Daughter of the rightful leaders of the Crimson Roses. The time has come for a reckoning.”
The reaction moved through the room like fire through dry grass. Small gasps. Stiffened shoulders. Faces going pale. Men who had worked for Viktor for years were quiet as the weight of my name swept over them.
I am alive.
“The current leadership has poisoned our great organization from the inside,” I said. “In Viktor’s hunt for power, he abandoned everything the Crimson Roses were built on. Loyalty to each other. Honor. The understanding that we were supposed to stand beside our own, not destroy them.”
Viktor’s face contorted.
“This was my parents’ legacy. Their blood built this empire, and I have carried that weight every day since the night it was stolen from me. I never forgot who I am or what was taken from my family. And I sure as hell never forgot what the Crimson Roses were meant to be.”
I paced slowly, my eyes moving over the crowd.
“I know the sacrifices our elders made, and I know what Viktor destroyed when he twisted this syndicate into something unrecognizable. Stand with me. Not as traitors or rebels, but as the rightful heirs to our identity. Together, we will return the Crimson Roses to what it was always meant to be.”
For a moment, no one breathed.
Then a voice rose somewhere behind the others.
“We are glad you are back.” An older man stood despite the gun near his head. Emotion pulled hard across his face as he looked at me. “You are so much like them. The best of both. We need a leader who commands loyalty, not fear.”
The atmosphere changed after that. The fear that had kept everyone rigid under Viktor’s rule no longer felt as absolute. People who had endured him because survival required it now looked at me with hope.
It should have felt like victory. Maybe it would have, before Cezar. Instead, I felt empty. The throne was finally mine again, yet all I could think about was him.
I turned back to Viktor. “Any final attempt at dignity, or are you going to keep embarrassing yourself?”
He gave me a thin smile. “Smart girl. You infiltrated just enough to get to me. Let’s make a deal.”
“A deal with a corpse means nothing.”
“I’m sure you’re angry about your parents,” he said casually. “It’s in my nature, dear. But I didn’t kill your father. He did.”
Are you fucking kidding me—Wait, what?
Dorin shot me a look. Even he didn’t understand where this was going. Viktor was pointing to what looked like a box draped in a heavy tablecloth.
Dread hit before I understood why.
“Stop dragging shit out,” I demanded.
Viktor’s eyes gleamed. “You came looking for someone, didn’t you?”
No.
I gestured to the closest man. He stripped the cloth away in one clean motion.
A steel cage sat beneath it, wheels locked, frame reinforced. In the center was Cezar, trapped in a medieval pillory, wrists and neck secured inside the wooden stocks. Tape hung loose at one corner of his mouth, evidence of a failed attempt to work it free.
My Zar.
I had to look away as the hall recoiled. Gasps rippled through Viktor’s own men. Codrin went white so fast I thought he might pass out. Darius didn’t move at all, his stare fixed on his brother like his brain refused to understand what his eyes were showing him.
Now they could see how much of a monster he truly is.
Cezar looked ruined.
My body wanted to run to him. Every instinct screamed for it. Instead, I forced myself to look at Viktor because as soon as I let myself touch Cezar, I knew nothing else in that room would matter.
My pulse was so loud I couldn’t think. “What do you mean he killed my father?”