Chapter 68
Aurelia
The drive from the city is a blur. I don’t remember the lights, the turns, or the way the heater blasted useless warmth at my shaking hands. I only remember the hollow, suffocating ache of one thought repeating, bruising deeper each time:
How did Nikolai take me leaving?
How did he look when the car pulled away?
Forty minutes later, the tires grind over gravel and the car rolls to a stop in front of a squat, unmarked garage. The air here tastes metallic—rain striking a blood-soaked knife. A bad omen I can feel behind my teeth.
We get out.
The world is already worse now that it’s not just us three.
Dante stands in front of a black SUV, a silhouette carved out of shadow and old sin. He doesn’t walk toward me. He makes me walk to him. He always did prefer this—making my legs do the work, making me prove my fear or my obedience or my worth.
The bulbs overhead buzz and flicker, casting a pallor on his coat that turns the fabric sharp-edged.
The shadows cut across his face in ways that make old memories claw their way back up my throat—his hand on my shoulder when I was little…
then his hand on my wrist when I was older…
then nothing but distance, lies, and disappointment.
Enzo’s expression is rigid. Elijah’s fingers drum the car like he’s counting down to a funeral.
My legs wobble but I walk.
The garage is full of small, vicious sounds—the hum of an idling engine, the scrape of gravel under boots, a soft metallic clink from Dante shifting his weight. No music. No bodies. No witnesses.
He planned it that way.
When he finally steps forward, his scent hits me—old money, cold cologne, cigarette ash, and the faint, stubborn echo of something I once loved. The memory is worse than the man.
He tilts his head, sizing me up as if deciding if I’m worth the bullet.
His eyes catch mine, and the look is a slow, precise knife.
“You made it,” he says, short and bored. No warmth. No courtesy. “Ace, I’m so glad you are unharmed.”
“Yeah, I don’t need that. Let’s just cut to it.” My words are flat. I don’t want the false pity.
A corner of his mouth lifts. “You’re very enjoyable, you know.”
The compliment is varnished cruelty.
I keep my eyes on him.
Enzo and Elijah move closer behind me, a wall of muscle and loyalty trying to be brave.
“Where is everyone?” Enzo asks, scanning the shadows.
“I wanted to keep this moment for family.” Dante rests his hands on the SUV, claiming it. Claiming us.
“Family, and… Elijah, apparently?”
He says it like a question directed toward Enzo.
Elijah steps forward. “I was at the meeting with Nikolai, it only made sense to collect her”
Dante’s gaze flicks to Enzo, then back to Elijah.
“I’m old, not stupid. I know Nikolai had to think you too were both working for him.”
He begins to circle them, a butcher appraising meat, his fingers brushing the pistol grips. With a casual, planned motion, he strips the guns from their waistbands, the metal clicking loud in the quiet. “What I don’t understand is why you came here.”
Elijah opens his mouth but Enzo clamps a hand on his arm, hard enough to hurt.
Dante stops in front of me.
His hands lift, and for one sickening second, I think he’s going to hug me.
Instead, his palms cradle my face—big, warm, familiar, monstrous. His thumbs stroke my cheek gently, tenderly, like the father I used to believe he was.
“My girl must die to keep the peace,” he says, the words sounding practiced.
“You’ve already lived too long, my girl.”
A tear streaks down my cheek. “I haven’t lived at all.”
“You would have made your mother proud.”
I look at him, feeling nothing in my chest. “You wouldn’t have.”
Something in him flashes—anger, grief, the splinter of who he once was—and it’s enough.
Before I can think, the knife is in my hand.
And then it’s in him.
I stab him in the abdomen.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each strike a white-hot answer to every lie, every manipulation, every childhood hug that turned into a cage.
His breath chokes out wet and thick. He grabs my shoulders like he’s steadying me, not himself, and the move is so familiar it makes bile rise in my throat.
I keep going.
The blade hits cartilage.
A warm spray hits my arm—arterial blood.
The sound is wet, animal, and obscene.
Dante’s knees buckle. He sinks against me, heavy as history, heavy as guilt.
His blood runs down my wrists, hot and sticky, dripping onto my shoes in thick taps.
He tries to speak and a thread of red spills from the corner of his mouth.
“A—lia…” he rasps.
I twist the knife.
His eyes fade before he folds completely, collapsing onto the concrete in a pool of his own blood—dark and spreading.
For a moment, he looks fragile. Human.
A man instead of a monster.
Enzo and Elijah don’t move.
They just watch.
Probably shocked I could actually pull this off.
Something unwinds in my chest as my hands start to shake.
The SUV, the humming engine, the cold air… all of it becomes meaningless background noise around the simple, terrible truth:
I killed my father with my own hands.