Chapter 22 – Matías
The ache in my knuckles lingers, skin split from the last man I put through a wall.
He begged, whimpered, but it wasn’t enough.
My bones still remember the impact, the way his face crumpled beneath my fist. The violence barely took the edge off.
I should feel something. Relief. Satisfaction.
But there’s only emptiness, stretching wider with each hour that passes.
The door swings open.
Ardi steps in, his movements sharp, urgent. His expression tells me everything before he even speaks.
"She’s gone."
The world narrows. A single breath. A single second of silence, deep and suffocating. My pulse doesn’t change, my body doesn’t flinch, but inside, something snaps.
"Say that again."
Ardi’s jaw tightens. “Noa. The girl. Elias. They’re both gone.”
A slow exhale drags through my teeth. I set the glass down, the sound of it against the desk unnervingly steady.
"How long?"
Ardi hesitates. A mistake.
I lift my eyes to his, sharp as the edge of a blade. "How. Long."
His throat bobs. "A few hours. Maybe more."
The whiskey glass explodes against the wall.
The sharp crash cuts through the room, shards scattering, amber staining the floorboards like blood. The tension shifts. Ardi doesn’t move. He knows better. Knows that right now, anything—any movement, any word—could make him the next target.
I rise slowly, rolling my shoulders, flexing my fists. The skin splits open again, fresh blood seeping through cracked knuckles.
"Find me every fucking man who was supposed to be watching her." My voice is quiet, lethal. "Line them up."
Ardi nods once and turns on his heel.
I stare at the broken glass on the floor, at the way the whiskey seeps into the cracks of the wood. It should be burning in my throat. Instead, it burns in my veins.
The room is silent, save for the slow, methodical rhythm of my own breathing. My pulse beats heavy, measured, a steady war drum echoing through my chest. The rage is there, simmering just beneath my skin, controlled only by the sheer force of my will.
“How?”
Ardi stands near the door, his shoulders rigid, his hands clasped behind his back. He’s smart enough not to speak immediately, to gauge my reaction, but I don’t have the patience for hesitation.
“How?” I repeat, voice quiet but razor-sharp.
Ardi exhales through his nose. “She used her head. Watched our patterns. Knew when we were weak.”
A muscle in my jaw ticks.
Smart, esposa.
I don’t speak for a long time. My heartbeat thrums in my ears, steady, unrelenting. I taste something bitter at the back of my tongue, but it isn’t anger. It isn’t even betrayal.
It’s my own failure.
Ardi shifts slightly, his fingers twitching where they rest against his spine. The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating.
“It’s already reaching the elders,” he says finally. His tone is careful, measured, but there’s an edge to it.
My lip curls. Of course it is.
The vultures never miss an opportunity to circle.
I glance at the shattered glass, the amber liquid seeping into the cracks of the wooden floor. Then, I exhale slowly, rolling my shoulders back, feeling the sharp pull of tension coiled between my muscles.
“Then let them come.”
The elders are gathered, seated like a tribunal, their gazes sharp, waiting.
Assessing. Measuring me against their expectations.
Magdalena is among them. She doesn’t sit.
She stands before the men like a queen surveying her court, her posture poised, regal, unmoving.
Her dark gaze meets mine the moment I enter, and though she sees the fury roiling beneath my skin, she does not fear it. She never has.
Herrera leans forward. He’s old, thick-fingered, his rings catching the dim light as he folds his hands together on the polished table before him. "Your wife has humiliated you."
The words should sting, but they don’t. They only ignite the fire already burning in my veins.
Salas—thinner, sharper, with cold, calculating eyes—tilts his head. "She was never loyal to you, Castillo."
Toribio exhales through his nose, shaking his head as though my failure offends him personally. "She carried another man’s child, and now she runs to him."
"It is already decided," Herrera says, voice thick with finality. "The woman will be dealt with." My fingers twitch. The air in my lungs turns razor-sharp. "Your softness ends here," he continues. "You will do what needs to be done. Or—"
I tip my head slightly. "Or what?" Silence. A hesitation too long, too telling.
The first sign of weakness in the room is not mine—it is his.
He thinks he holds control because he has spent decades ruling through whispers and veiled threats.
But I do not rule with whispers.
I do not need veiled threats.
I move.
The chair scrapes back against the floor, but before the sound can fully register, my gun is in my hand. One moment I am seated—the next, I am standing, weapon leveled. Herrera’s eyes widen, his mouth parting in delayed reaction.
The hesitation costs him.
The shot splits the room in half.
A single bullet. A single decision. A single body collapsing onto the table with a sickening thud. Blood splatters across the polished wood, across the silk fabric of the men seated closest.
Herrera slumps forward, dead before he can finish his sentence.
The room erupts. Chairs scrape against the marble, voices rise in shock, anger, disbelief. Magdalena doesn’t move. Her lips press together, but her expression does not change. She has seen this before. She knows what this means.
I lift my gun slightly, sweeping my gaze across the chaos.
“Enough.”
The single word carves through the noise like a blade, sharp and unrelenting. The room stills. The men before me may be powerful, but they are not brave. Not when their own mortality sits so close to them, bleeding onto their hands.
I step forward, slow, deliberate.
“I say what happens,” I remind them, voice calm, deadly. “Not you. Not the council. Not even my mother.”
I let the words sink in, let them taste the weight of them. The reality that their control over me—over anything—is an illusion.
“If you want to cross me, you will have to kill me.”
Silence. No one moves.
I lean forward slightly, letting my next words settle deep into their bones.
“Only I decide what to do with my wife.”
A slow inhale. My grip on the gun is steady, but my pulse is a thunderstorm beneath my skin.
“And first,” I murmur, voice like steel. “I’m going to find her.”
The silence in the room is thick. Heavy. Suffocating.
No one moves. No one breathes too loud. Herrera’s body still twitches slightly, nerves firing off their final, useless signals. His blood pools, spilling over the polished wood, dripping onto the floor, slow and deliberate.
I exhale through my nose, leveling my gaze at the men before me.
Their shock clings to them like a second skin, disbelief making their movements sluggish.
Fear has begun to bloom behind their eyes, though they try to mask it with clenched jaws and stiff shoulders.
It doesn’t matter. I see it. I taste it.
It’s exactly what I wanted.
I slide my gun back into its holster, slow and controlled, as if daring anyone to make a move. No one does. Of course they don’t. They spoke of power, of control, of weakness—yet it took only a single bullet to unravel them.
Magdalena is the only one who does not flinch. Her dark gaze locks onto mine, searching for something I do not care to give her. Approval. Regret. Some proof that this was a reckless display rather than a calculated lesson.
She will not find it.
She parts her lips slightly, the first flicker of something dangerous passing over her face, but I step forward before she can speak. My boots click against the marble, a sharp contrast to the thick, cloying silence that suffocates the room.
My mother—queen of the empire, the woman who carved this world out of blood and bone—does not step back. She never would. But I see the shift in her stance, the way she steadies herself, the way she prepares for whatever I am about to say next.
I tilt my head, just slightly. "Get the fuck out of my way, mother."
A flicker of amusement—perhaps admiration, perhaps warning—crosses her face, but she does not respond. The weight of the room has shifted, the power settled firmly in my grasp.
The elders remain silent.
No one dares to challenge me now.
I lean in just enough that my voice is only for her. "Before I am forced to choose a fate for you as well."
The tension between us tightens, a wire pulled taut, one that could snap with the barest pressure. My mother has always been unshakable. But she is not untouchable. And she knows it.
I straighten, stepping back, my gaze dragging over the council one last time. They do not look at the body. They do not look at each other. They only look at me.
And I let them.
I pivot on my heel, striding toward the doors without another word. Ardi falls into step beside me, his presence steady, waiting for the command he knows is coming.
I push open the doors, stepping into the cool night air.
The scent of blood lingers. The scent of war follows.
"Prepare the men," I say, voice steady, calm. "We find Noa tonight."