Chapter 22 Regina
Regina
“You always did love dramatic settings, Father.”
My voice echoes through the abandoned church, bouncing off vaulted ceilings and broken stained glass that filters dying sunlight into blood-red patterns on the stone floor.
The same church where I propositioned Mauricio weeks ago, where I offered myself as bait to trap a monster.
How fitting that it becomes the place where that monster finally falls.
Sabino Picarelli stands at the altar like some twisted priest preparing for a dark sacrament, surrounded by six armed men whose hands rest too casually on their weapons.
He’s aged a decade since I last saw him—hair disheveled, expensive suit rumpled, eyes carrying the wild desperation of a king watching his kingdom burn.
“Regina.” My name on his lips sounds like ownership, like he still believes I’m property he can reclaim. “You’ve caused me considerable trouble, daughter.”
“I’m not your daughter.” The words taste like freedom. “I never was.”
His laugh is sharp, brittle. “Is that what he told you? Mauricio Barone, the loyal dog who spent his life in a cage? Did he poison you against your family with his lies?”
“No lies needed.” Mauricio’s voice cuts through the tension as he moves to stand beside me, his presence solid and dangerous. “Just truth you thought would stay buried with the people you murdered.”
I watch recognition flicker across Sabino’s face—the understanding that we know everything, that secrets kept for twenty-eight years have finally surfaced.
“So the whore found her parents’ death certificate.” Sabino’s dismissal is casual, practiced. “What does it matter now? They’re dead. I raised you. Fed you. Educated you. Everything you are exists because I allowed it.”
“Everything I am exists despite you.” I step forward, feeling Mauricio’s hand briefly touch the small of my back—support, not control. “And now I’m going to watch everything you built crumble to dust.”
“Bold words from a woman standing in a church surrounded by my men.” Sabino gestures, and the armed guards shift, weapons becoming more visible. “Did you really think I’d come here alone?”
“About as much as we trusted you’d play fair.” Mauricio’s smile is all teeth and promise.
Movement near the confessional catches my attention. Giordano stumbles forward. His hands are bound behind his back. His face is already swelling with bruises that speak of recent violence. Our eyes meet, and I see apology and determination warring in his expression.
“My traitorous enforcer,” Sabino says, shoving Giordano toward us. “The man who’s been protecting you since you were ten years old.”
“He has something you never understood.” I move toward Giordano, seeing past the bindings to the man who’s been my quiet guardian. “A conscience. Loyalty to something beyond power and money.”
“Sentiment.” Sabino spits the word like a curse. “The weakness that destroys empires. I should have killed him years ago, but I thought I could trust my own blood—”
“He’s not your blood.” The correction comes from Giordano, voice rough but steady. “None of us are. We’re just tools you used until we outlived our purpose.”
Sabino’s composure cracks further, rage bleeding through the careful facade. “Then perhaps it’s time to dispose of broken tools.”
He raises his hand, signal clear, and the church explodes into violence.
Mauricio moves before Sabino’s hand fully drops, weapon appearing in his grip with the fluid grace of someone who’s survived by being faster than death. His first shot takes down the guard closest to me, the second catches another reaching for his gun.
Giordano drops and rolls despite bound hands, reaching one of the fallen guards and somehow getting his bindings cut on a blade strapped to the man’s ankle. He comes up armed, his shot taking down a third guard with precision that speaks of decades of practice.
I draw my own weapon and aim for a guard moving to flank Mauricio. My shot goes wide, but close enough that he dives for cover instead of firing.
“Stay behind me,” Mauricio orders, but I’m already moving, using the stone pillars for cover as chaos erupts around us.
Outside, the distinctive sound of automatic weapons fire indicates David’s men engaging Sabino’s reinforcements. The plan is working—contain the threat inside while preventing backup from entering. We just need to survive long enough for it to matter.
A guard appears from behind a pillar, weapon raised, and I don’t think. Just pull the trigger twice. He drops, and I feel nothing. No horror, no guilt. Just cold satisfaction that he’s one less threat between me and freedom.
“Regina, down!” Giordano’s shout makes me drop instinctively as a bullet passes through space I occupied seconds before. He returns fire, protecting me the way he always has.
The firefight lasts maybe two minutes but feels like hours. When the last guard falls—courtesy of Mauricio’s lethal precision—the church goes eerily quiet except for the distant sound of David’s men finishing their work outside.
Sabino stands at the altar alone now, weapon drawn but shaking, faced with three people who want him dead for very different reasons.
“You can’t do this.” His voice carries desperation wrapped in fading authority. “I’m Sabino Picarelli. I control the eastern territories. Kill me, and you’ll have every family from here to Sicily hunting you.”
“Your territories are contested.” Mauricio’s gun never wavers. “Your international connections are severed. Your accounts are frozen. Your organization is being arrested from the bottom up by federal authorities. You’re already dead, Sabino. You just haven’t stopped moving yet.”
“Regina.” Sabino turns to me, and for the first time in twenty-eight years, I see fear in his eyes. “Daughter, please. I raised you. Everything I did was to protect you, to give you power—”
“You murdered my parents.” The words come out steady, factual. “Took me as insurance. Raised me as property. Used me as a bargaining chip. That’s not protection, Father. That’s imprisonment and weaponization.”
“I gave you everything!” His composure shatters completely, revealing the monster beneath. “And this is how you repay me? By betraying me? By destroying everything I built?”
“You built your empire on corpses, including that of my parents, and lies.” I raise my weapon and allow myself to feel its weight as it settles in my grip. “I’m just exposing the foundation for what it always was.”
“You won’t pull that trigger.” Sabino’s smile returns, cruel and confident. “You don’t have it in you. You’re soft, weak, too educated and civilized to become a killer—”
“She doesn’t have to.” Mauricio steps forward, his weapon aimed center mass. “I’ll do it. Just say the word, Regina.”
The offer hangs in the air, tempting in its simplicity. Let Mauricio carry this weight. Let him be the one who pulls the trigger, who ends the man who raised me.
But that’s the coward’s way. The victim’s choice.
And I’m done being either.
“No.” I move forward until I’m standing directly in front of Sabino, close enough to see the panic spreading across his features. “This one’s mine.”
“Regina, don’t.” Sabino’s voice cracks. “Please. I’m your father—”
“My father died when I was six months old.” My finger rests on the trigger, steady and sure. “You’re just the man who murdered him.”
“If you do this, you’ll never be free of it.” His last desperate play. “The guilt will haunt you. You’ll see my face every time you close your eyes—”
“I’ve seen your face every time I closed my eyes for twenty-eight years.” I meet his gaze directly, letting him see exactly how much I’m not his frightened daughter anymore. “At least now I’ll know you can’t hurt anyone else.”
“Regina—”
I pull the trigger twice. Center mass, just like I was taught. Clinical. Efficient. Final.
Sabino stumbles backward, shock and rage warring across his features as he realizes I actually did it. That the daughter he thought he controlled just became his executioner.
“You...” Blood bubbles on his lips. “You’ll... rot for this... both of you... cursed... damned...”
“Already was,” I say quietly, watching him collapse against the altar that’s probably seen too much blood to care about a little more. “This just means I’ll rot free instead of in your cage.”
His eyes go glassy, fixed on nothing, and I feel... relief. Pure, crystalline relief that he’s gone. That he can’t hurt me anymore. Can’t use me. Can’t manipulate or control or trap me in gilded cages while calling it love.
The gun falls from my nerveless fingers, clattering on stone that’s probably witnessed a thousand prayers and now holds one more body. Mauricio’s arms wrap around me before I fully process what I’ve done, holding me steady while aftershocks of adrenaline make my hands shake.
“It’s done,” he murmurs against my temple. “It’s over.”
“I killed him.” The words sound distant, like someone else is saying them. “I actually killed him.”
“You freed yourself.” His correction is gentle but firm. “There’s a difference.”
Giordano approaches slowly, his weapon holstered now, expression carrying something that looks like pride. “He would have killed you the moment he had the chance, Regina. You did what needed to be done.”
“I know.” And I do. Logically, rationally, I understand that Sabino would never have stopped. Would never have let me go. This was always going to end in blood—the only question was whose.
I chose mine to stay inside my body instead of painting church floors.
“We need to move.” Mauricio’s tactical mind is already working. “Borghese will be here soon to clean up the scene. David’s men have contained the reinforcements outside. But we should be gone before authorities arrive with questions we don’t want to answer.”
“What about...” I gesture at Sabino’s body, feeling nothing. No grief, no guilt. Just exhaustion that settles into my bones.
“Detective Borghese gets her crime scene.” Mauricio guides me toward the exit with Giordano flanking us. “Sabino Picarelli died in a shootout with parties unknown. His empire collapses under federal investigation. Justice, technically, is served.”
“And we disappear.” I understand the plan now, the brilliance of letting the legal system claim credit while we walk away clean.
“For a while.” His hand finds mine, fingers lacing together with desperate need for connection. “Until the dust settles and bounties expire and we can figure out who we are when we’re not just surviving.”
I take one last look at the church—at Sabino’s body lying in his own blood, at the broken stained glass painting everything red, at the altar where he thought he’d reclaim his property and instead found his end.
“Goodbye, Father,” I whisper, and mean it as the final farewell it is. “Thank you for teaching me exactly what kind of person I never want to become.”
Then I walk out into fading sunlight with Mauricio’s hand in mine and Giordano’s solid presence at my back, leaving behind corpses and curses and twenty-eight years of imprisonment.
Free, finally.
Even if that freedom cost blood.