Chapter 71
The champagne in my crystal flute was vintage, a 1959 Dom Pérignon, yet tonight, it tasted remarkably like ash.
I sat alone in the center of the expansive hall, the velvet of the high-backed chair cool against my suit jacket.
This room was designed for intimidation—high ceilings, crimson carpets, and shadows that swallowed the corners.
It was a monument to the Muratori legacy.
A legacy of silence and absolute control.
My gaze drifted to the empty space across the room, but my mind was elsewhere. It was pulled back to the damp humidity of the forest, to a conversation that had taken place a week ago while two women made rice balls upstairs.
The silence between us was not empty; it was heavy with years of unspoken resentment.
Elias sat opposite me. My brother. The one who got away. The one who chose a peppermint-scented domestic life over the iron and blood of our birthright.
"Did you come here to fuck up our lives again, Gabriel?" Elias asked. His voice was calm, but his hazel eyes held a razor-sharp edge.
I swirled the bourbon in my glass, feigning disinterest. "I came because my wife required closure. Your location was merely a variable in the equation."
Elias scoffed, a dry, humorless sound. "Closure. Is that what you call it? Dragging that innocent girl into our mess?"
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "Aleesha looks... innocent. Unspoiled. Like Sydney was before the accident."
I felt a muscle in my jaw feather. I did not appreciate the comparison.
"Are you planning to corrupt her too?" Elias asked softly. "Like you did to Liam? To Vanessa? To me?"
I set my glass down with a sharp clink.
"Sydney is alive," I reminded him coldly. "You have your son. You have your peace. Do not lecture me on corruption when I am the one who orchestrated your 'freedom'."
"Freedom?" Elias laughed, shaking his head. "You exiled us. You erased us. You played god with our lives. And for what? For power? For the thrill of moving pieces on a board?"
He stared at me, searching for a soul I had sold long ago.
"Don't tell me," Elias whispered, his eyes narrowing. "You've fallen in love with her."
The air in the room froze.
Love.
The word hung between us like a suspended guillotine blade. It was a concept for poets and fools. It was an inefficiency. A vulnerability.
I looked at my brother, my face a mask of stone.
"I don't love people, brother," I said, my voice devoid of inflection. "I own them."
The words tasted bitter as they left my mouth, acidic and vile. But they were necessary. They were the armor.
Elias didn't flinch. He just looked at me with pity. "What if she finds out? What if your little pink bird realizes she is in a cage?"
I let out a deep, dark chuckle.
"She will never find out."
I took a sip of the champagne, letting the bubbles burn my throat.
I own them.
It was the truth. It had to be the truth.
I did not love Aleesha. Love implies a loss of control. Love implies that my happiness is dependent on another variable. That is poor logistics.
I allowed her to see her cousin not out of kindness, but out of necessity. She was becoming... disruptive. Her begging was illogical, hysterical, and loud. It was affecting my schedule. It was affecting the pilot's focus.
Seeing her on her knees in the helicopter, kissing my knuckles... it did not move me in the way it moves a sadist. It disturbed me. It felt... incorrect.
I am accustomed to supplication. Men beg for their lives in this very basement daily. Rivals beg for mercy. Debtors beg for time. To me, the sound of begging is the sound of victory. It is the sound of the hierarchy asserting itself.
But Aleesha?
I never wished for her to beg.
She is a creature of light, of ridiculous pink yarn and loud laughter. She was designed to stand, to command, to point at something she desires so that I may acquire it for her.
If she desired the moon, I would have calculated the trajectory, commissioned a rocket, and dragged the cratered rock down to her front lawn just to see her clap her hands. If she wanted the stars, I would have bought the sky.
Her role is not to kneel. Her role is to consume the world I build for her.
Seeing her lowered to the carpet, weeping for a crumb of closure... it was an insult to my capability as a provider. It implied that I had withheld something she needed, forcing her to degrade herself to obtain it.
I do not tolerate degradation within my own house.
That is why I turned the helicopter around. Not out of sentimentality—sentiment is a defect—but to restore the natural order. She stands. I provide. She smiles.
It was a transaction to correct an error in the system. Nothing more.
Clang.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck six.
Time to work.
I set the glass down on the mahogany table. I adjusted my cuffs.
Sean had been efficient. The six individuals responsible for the harassment campaign—Natalia's hired hands, the Mosorov spies who dared to send my wife files of my operations—had been located.
Usually, I would delegate this task to Luca. They were low-level vermin, hardly worth the cost of my ammunition.
But they had made a mistake. They had bypassed the firewall. They had sent images of my work to my wife. They had caused her to hyperventilate. They had made her cry.
And while I do not love... I am possessive of my property. No one damages my property but me.
I stood up, moving with the grace of a predator who knows he has no natural enemies. I walked down the red carpet, the heavy oak doors groaning as I pushed them open.
I descended the stone spiral staircase, the air growing cooler with every step. The scent of lavender and beeswax faded, replaced by the metallic tang of rust and the primal odor of fear.
The Basement.
The room was soundproofed concrete. Cold. Industrial.
In the center, six figures knelt on the floor. Their hands were zip-tied behind their backs. Burlap sacks covered their heads.
They were whimpering. Muffled pleas. Sobs.
Pathetic.
I walked toward them, the heels of my shoes clicking rhythmically against the floor. Click. Click. Click.
The sound made them flinch. They knew death had entered the room.
I stopped in front of the line.
Four men. Two women.
I scanned them with a critical eye. Dirt. Sweat. Cheap clothing.
My gaze landed on the last figure at the end of the line.
A woman. Smaller than the others. She was wearing a pink cardigan.
I felt a surge of irrational irritation.
Pink.
She dared to wear pink?
Pink was Aleesha's color. It was the color of innocence, of strawberry milk, of ridiculous plush toys. Seeing this filth draped in that color felt like a mockery. Like a stain on a brand I had monopolized.
Only Aleesha deserves that color.
Luca stepped out of the shadows, holding a suppressed pistol. A Glock 19. Efficient. Reliable.
He handed it to me handle-first.
I took the weapon. I checked the chamber. Loaded.
I did not ask questions. I did not need interrogations. Sean had already verified the data. These were the pests.
I raised the gun.
Target One. A large man. Bang. The body crumpled.
Target Two. Bang. Silence.
I moved down the line. It was not violence; it was sanitation. I was cleaning my house.
Target Three.
Target Four.
Target Five.
The bodies lay in a heap. The smell of copper filled the air. I felt nothing. My pulse remained steady at sixty beats per minute.
I turned to the final target. The sixth one.
The one in pink.
I raised the gun, aiming for the center of the head covered by the coarse sack.
My finger tightened on the trigger.
Huk... huk...
I froze.
The sound was faint. A ragged, desperate intake of breath. A spasm of the diaphragm.
Wheeze.
It wasn't a normal cry of fear. It was a rhythmic, suffocating sound. A hiccup followed by a desperate gasp for oxygen.
My brow furrowed.
I knew that sound.
I had heard that sound in a helicopter. I had heard that sound in a bathroom in Switzerland. I had heard that sound when she saw a picture of intestines.
No.
My brain rejected the data. It was a statistical impossibility.
Aleesha was shopping. She was with Stephie. She was buying yarn. She was safe. I had security details. I had trackers.
Huk... maa...
The voice was muffled, broken, barely a whisper. But the timbre... the pitch...
My hand, usually as steady as a surgeon's, trembled. Just once.
The gun felt suddenly heavy, like a block of lead.
Something cold, far colder than the basement air, gripped my heart. A sensation of absolute, primal terror that I had not felt since I was a child.
Check the target, my instincts screamed. Verify.
I lowered the gun slowly.
"Luca," I said. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. Hoarse. Strained.
"Sir?"
"Remove it."
Luca moved forward. He grabbed the rough fabric.
I held my breath. Time dilated. The seconds stretched into hours.
Please, I thought. Please let it be a stranger.
Luca yanked the sack off.
The fluorescent light hit the figure.
Messy hair. Tear-stained cheeks. A face red from asphyxiation. Big, terrified eyes that were unfocused and blinking rapidly against the sudden brightness.
She looked up.
Her gaze met mine.
She saw the gun in my hand. She saw the blood on my cuff.
And I saw her.
The pink cardigan. The strawberry ice cream stain on her shirt.
The silence that followed was louder than the gunshots. It was the sound of my carefully constructed world imploding.
It was the sound of the end.
It was...
Aleesha.