CHAPTER 32| The Wrath of the Empires
The ritual begins with blood.
Dante Benedetti moves toward the dais with the kind of calm, measured steps that tell me he's done this before. In his hand is a silver blade—ornate, ancient-looking, the handle carved with symbols that make my skin crawl even from a distance.
He stops in front of Evander first.
Evander, even heavily sedated and chained to an iron pillar, looks at Dante with eyes that promise death. "Touch me," he says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, "and I will find everyone you've ever loved and make them beg for the mercy of a quick death."
Dante doesn't even blink. "Noted."
He takes Evander's chained hand, forces the palm open, and draws the blade across it in one swift, practiced motion.
The cut is shallow but precise. Blood wells up immediately, dark red in the torchlight.
Evander doesn't make a sound. He just stares at Dante with those steel-blue eyes, and the promise of violence in that gaze is so absolute it makes the air feel heavy.
Dante holds a silver chalice beneath Evander's palm, collecting several drops of blood. Then he moves to Lucius.
"You know what's funny?" Lucius says, and despite the sedatives, his voice carries that edge of chaotic amusement. "You actually think you're gonna survive this."
"Your concern is touching," Dante replies, and cuts Lucius's palm with the same clinical efficiency.
Lucius laughs as his blood drips into the chalice. It's a dark, unhinged sound that echoes off the stone walls. "I'm not concerned. I'm just excited to watch what happens when you realize how badly you've fucked up."
Dante moves to Tristan next.
Tristan doesn't speak. He just watches Dante with those deep hazel eyes, and there's something in his gaze that makes even Dante pause for a fraction of a second. It's not fear. It's not anger.
It's certainty.
The blade cuts across Tristan's palm, and his blood joins the others in the chalice.
Finally, Dante approaches Landon.
Landon's teal eyes are clearer now, fighting through the sedatives with what looks like pure force of will. He doesn't look at Dante. He's looking past him, at me on the stone slab, and the expression on his perfect face is something I've never seen before.
Devastation.
"I'm sorry," Landon says quietly, and it takes me a second to realize he's talking to me. "We should have seen this coming. We should have protected you."
"Touching," Dante says, and cuts Landon's palm.
The blood drips into the chalice, mixing with the others, and Dante steps back, examining the contents with satisfaction.
"The blood of the four ruling heirs," he announces to the hooded crowd. "Weakened by love. Bound by emotion. Perfect."
Giuseppe and Carlo step forward, flanking Dante as he holds the chalice aloft. The hooded figures begin chanting again, that same low, rhythmic sound in a language that feels old and wrong.
Then Dante nods to one of the guards.
The guard approaches my stone slab, and everything in me goes cold with fresh terror.
He's a large man, scarred and rough-looking, and he doesn't hesitate. He grabs me by my hair—my ponytail, yanking hard enough that pain shoots across my scalp—and drags me off the slab.
I cry out, trying to fight, but my hands and feet are still bound and my body is still sluggish from whatever they drugged me with. I can't get purchase. I can't resist.
He drags me across the cold stone floor to the center of the arena, then forces me to my knees.
The position is vulnerable. Exposed. I'm kneeling in the center of a circle of hooded figures, the three Corsican kings standing over me with that chalice of mixed blood, and I can feel every eye in the arena fixed on me.
I close my eyes.
This is it.
This is how I die.
Kneeling on cold stone in an underground arena, sacrificed in some ancient ritual by people who erased my entire bloodline before I was old enough to remember what I'd lost.
Alone.
Forgotten.
Discarded by the one person I thought might actually—
A massive boom echoes through the arena.
My eyes snap open.
The heavy iron doors at the entrance—the ones the princes were dragged through—shudder violently. The sound of impact is so loud it makes my ears ring even through my ears just yesterday started hearing sounds
The chanting stops abruptly.
Everyone turns toward the doors.
Another boom. The iron actually bends inward slightly.
Dante's expression shifts from calm satisfaction to the first hint of uncertainty. "What—"
The doors burst open.
A Corsican guard sprints into the arena, and he's not walking with the disciplined calm of the others. He's running. Full sprint. His face is white, his eyes wide with something that looks like absolute terror.
"Sir!" he shouts, breathless, stumbling to a stop in front of Dante. "Sir, we have a massive problem—"
"Calm yourself," Dante snaps. "What is it?"
"The New York throne," the guard gasps out. "The central armory. It's—it's gone. Completely destroyed. A coordinated explosive strike hit twenty minutes ago. The entire complex is just—it's rubble. We've lost everything—"
The arena goes dead silent.
Dante's face goes absolutely still. "What did you just say?"
"Multiple explosions," the guard continues, his words tumbling over each other. "Military-grade. Simultaneous detonations across every critical point. The building collapsed in under three minutes. We've lost the throne, the armory, the command center—"
"Who," Giuseppe says, and his cultured voice has gone ice-cold. "Who did this?"
Before the guard can answer, another guard runs into the arena. This one looks even more terrified than the first.
"Sirs!" he shouts. "Our radar systems just lit up—we have thirty military-grade helicopters and twenty private cargo planes that just crossed into American airspace from Europe. They're not responding to any air traffic control. They're just—they're coming straight for us—"
Carlo's face drains of color. "From Europe? What markings?"
A third guard sprints in, and this one is actually shaking.
"Sirs, we just intercepted delayed intelligence—over one hundred armored vehicles were secretly shipped into New York ports over the last twenty-four hours.
They cleared customs under false documentation.
We didn't catch it until now because the paperwork was perfect, but—" He stops, swallowing hard.
"Every single vehicle bears the de Rivel and Valentini crests. "
The world stops.
De Rivel.
Valentini.
Nikolai.
My breath catches in my throat so hard it physically hurts.
Up on the dais, still chained to their pillars, still fighting through the sedatives—the four American princes start laughing.
It starts with Tristan. A low chuckle, quiet and dark. Then Lucius joins in, his laughter louder, more manic. Evander's follows, deep and genuinely amused. And finally Landon, his refined composure cracking into something wild and delighted.
They're laughing like demons.
Like they know something the Corsican kings don't.
Like they've been waiting for exactly this moment.
Dante whips around to face them. "What is so funny?"
Evander grins, and even with his steel-blue eyes still glazed from the drugs, the expression is absolutely feral. "You really thought—" He starts laughing again, harder this time. "You really thought she was just a meaningless project to him?"
"Dante," Lucius adds, still laughing, pulling against his chains just to make the metal rattle. "You brilliant fucking idiot. You thought you outsmarted the Reaper?"
"Do you have any idea," Tristan says, his voice soft and cutting through the chaos, "what you just did?"
Landon is grinning now too, and it's the furthest thing from his usual perfect composure I've ever seen.
"You took his girl, Dante. You declared war on both the de Rivel Syndicate and the Valentini Empire in one move.
And now—" He starts laughing again. "Now he's bringing the entire European underworld to your doorstep. "
"This is bullshit," Giuseppe snarls. "The Reaper Prince communicated his disinterest himself—"
"You got played," Evander interrupts, and his voice is pure satisfaction. "The whole emotional detachment thing this morning? The cold dismissal? That was theater. He was buying time to mobilize his armies. And you fell for it."
Carlo's hands are shaking. Actually shaking. "That's not possible. We monitored his communications—"
"You monitored what he wanted you to monitor," Tristan says. "The Reaper doesn't make mistakes in information warfare. That's literally what his entire family does. Don't forget He is a antisocial, narsiccist, psychopath. Manipulation is his native language."
A deafening roar shakes the entire arena.
Mechanical. Massive. Growing louder by the second.
The sound is so overwhelming that even through my ears, I have to resist the urge to cover my ears. It's not one engine. It's dozens. Maybe hundreds.
The hooded figures break their formation, scrambling backward in confusion and fear. More guards are running into the arena now, shouting over each other, their discipline completely shattered.
"He's here!"
"Prince de Rivel is here!"
"He brought an army—"
"Get the kings out—"
"It's too late—"
The massive stone gates at the far end of the arena—the ones that have been closed since I woke up—begin to move.
Not open.
Violently pulled apart.
The ancient mechanisms scream in protest as something on the other side forces the gates wide. Stone dust rains down from the arches above. The torchlight flickers wildly.
And then the gates are open, and I can see the courtyard beyond.
The night sky.
The full moon, massive and silver, hanging low over Ardencrest.
And swarming across that sky like a plague of mechanized locusts—thirty or more helicopters.
They're not civilian aircraft. These are military-grade, heavily armed, and they bear crests I recognize even from this distance. The de Rivel serpent and crown. The Valentini symbols.
They hover in perfect formation, their searchlights cutting through the darkness, illuminating the campus grounds in harsh white light.
Down below, in the courtyard, I see movement.
Vehicles.
So many vehicles.
Must be over one hundred armored trucks, jeeps, and transport carriers, all painted in dark colors, all moving with synchronized precision. They're flooding through the Ardencrest entrance, their headlights creating a river of light that cuts through the dark campus like stars falling to earth.
And then—
In perfect, absolutely terrifying unison—
Every single vehicle slams on its brakes.
The sound is like thunder. One hundred vehicles stopping at exactly the same moment, their tires screaming against pavement, their engines still running but completely still.
The precision is inhuman.
The discipline is absolute.
Doors open. Hundreds of them. And soldiers step out—elite forces in tactical gear, all bearing the same crests, all moving with the kind of coordination that comes from years of training under the most demanding conditions imaginable.
They spread out, surrounding the gothic arena in a perfect perimeter. Weapons ready. Eyes forward. Waiting.
I can't breathe.
This isn't a rescue.
This is an invasion.
The sea of soldiers parts down the middle, creating a path from the outer perimeter to the arena entrance.
A sleek, matte-black supercar idles in the center of the formation. Low to the ground, expensive enough that it probably costs more than most people make in a lifetime. The engine purrs like a predator waiting to strike.
The driver's door opens.
And Nikolai de Rivel steps out into the moonlight.
He's not wearing a suit.
He's dressed in a dark, tailored button-up shirt—black or maybe deep charcoal—with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
No tie. The top two buttons undone, revealing the dual family crests tattooed on the both side of his neck.
His jet-black hair is slightly disheveled, like he's been running his hands through it.
He looks like death itself decided to take human form.
He stands there for a moment, perfectly still, taking in the scene with those emerald eyes. The hundreds of soldiers surrounding the arena. The helicopters hovering overhead. The terrified Corsican guards scrambling for defensive positions.
And then he smiles.
It's slow. Dark. Absolutely psychopathic.
The smile of someone who knows he's already won, and is just deciding how much he wants his enemies to suffer before the end.
"Welcome to the real war, Dante," Landon says, echoing his earlier words. His teal eyes are glowing with satisfaction. "The Reaper just brought hell to America."