Chapter 56
The air didn't just change. It died.
A subtle hiss snaked through the vents, followed by a bitter, metallic scent that clawed at the back of my throat. My blood ran cold. Sarin. Gas.
The oblivious elite were still laughing, swirling gold-flecked champagne in crystal flutes, unaware that the air they were breathing was now a death sentence.
I didn't hesitate. I grabbed Mayami, pulling her toward the shadows of a marble pillar. Her gas mask was already on—a dark, insect-like contrast to her evening gown. I yanked mine from my hidden thigh bag, snapping the seals tight. My lungs burned with the first sharp intake of filtered air.
“Versace,” Asvika’s voice hissed through the comms, distorted and mechanical. “Find Aahil. The perimeter is breached.”
Then, the world exploded.
A scream ripped through the ballroom, followed by the deafening shatter of the grand chandelier as a sniper’s round took out the support chain.
A ton of crystals hit the dance floor, turning the beautiful people into collateral damage.
Red and green tracers streaked through the haze like unholy fireworks.
Chaos was our element.
Aahil’s men flooded through the skylights, black tactical gear clashing with the gold-braided uniforms of Kashani’s guard.
I drew my suppressed pistol, the weight familiar and grounding. I took out a guard rushing toward us—a clean, hollow-point hit to the temple. His blood sprayed across the ivory silk of my sleeves, dark and steaming.
The floor was slick with gore and expensive wine. My heavy gown caught on a jagged piece of crystal. I didn't think twice. I grabbed the blade from my holster and sliced the silk from the thigh down, freeing my legs.
Combat boots gleamed beneath the ruined finery.
A man lunged from the smoke, a combat knife aimed for my throat. I spun, the movement fluid and lethal, and drove my own blade up beneath his jaw. The wet, grating sound of steel hitting bone should have made me sick. Instead, it felt like justice.
Through the shifting green fog of the gas, I looked toward the podium.
Aurelio’s father stood there, a silver-plated revolver raised. And beside him—like a shadow I couldn't cast off—was Dominic.
Behind his mask, his hazel eyes were twin stones of ice. He didn't move toward me. He didn't stop the guards. He just stood there, a prince of the House of Moretti, watching the House of Versace burn. Blood over love. The realization felt like a second bullet to my heart.
“We fight together,” Sanaa’s voice crackled beside me. She was tense, her dress stained, but her eyes were fierce. “Always, Vee.”
I didn't have time to answer. My focus locked onto the older Kashani.
“Oh, Versace,” he taunted, his voice amplified by the ballroom's speakers, dripping with venom. “I knew you lied about the memory loss. You had the guts to break my son’s engagement, but do you have the guts to die?”
“Is that what he told you?” I yelled back, my voice muffled by the mask. “That I broke it? I didn't break it, Kashani. I ended it.”
He raised his gun, a jagged smile twisting his face. “I let you live out of respect for your mother. But now… just as I cut the brakes on your parents’ car, I’ll cut the cord of your life.”
The world tilted. The accident. The rainy night. The twisted metal. It hadn't been an accident. He had killed them.
“Die now, kid. Save us the trouble.”
Bang.
The air in the ballroom was thick with the copper tang of blood and the bitter sting of chemical gas. Through the haze, the world had slowed to a jagged, agonizing crawl.
“Are you going to terminate it?” Sanaa had asked me weeks ago in a moment of fear. Now, she was the one whose life was flickering out.
The shot had been a deafening crack that fractured the universe. I felt the impact of her body hitting mine as she shoved me toward the floor, shielding me with the only thing she had left. We hit the marble together, but only one of us was moving.
The bullet had found Sanaa.
“Sanaa! No, no, no!” I scrambled to my knees, my hands hovering over the dark, spreading stain on her chest.
She coughed, a violent, wet sound that sent a spray of crimson across her lips. Her eyes were wide, darting around as if she were trying to catch the light before it disappeared. She reached out, her fingers trembling as they clawed at the silk of my sleeve.
“Vee…” she stammered, her voice thick with the blood pooling in her mouth. “I… I never got to tell you…”
“Don't speak! Save your energy, the medics are coming!” I pressed my hands against the wound, the heat of her blood soaking through my fingers. My own heart was thundering so loud I could barely hear the gunfire around us.
“I never got to tell you… about that day…” She struggled for air, her chest hitching in a shallow, broken rhythm. She looked at me, a desperate kind of clarity shining through the pain in her eyes. “Before you… were taken… I wanted to say…”
She choked on a breath, more red staining her chin. Whatever secret she had been carrying, whatever words had caused the rift between us since my return, they were trapped behind the weight of the injury.
“It doesn't matter, Sanaa! Nothing matters but you staying awake!” I was sobbing now, the Versace mask completely shattered. “Please, just look at me!”
She smiled, a faint, heart-breaking curve of her lips. “I was scared…but you’ll be a great mother, Vee. I always knew.”
“I won't forgive you for this!” I shrieked, my tears blurring the sight of her fading eyes.
Her gaze softened, the fire in her eyes turning into a dull ember. “You never forgot… your crown, Habibi…”
Her hand, which had been gripping mine with a fading strength, suddenly went limp. Her head rolled to the side, her eyes staring at a point beyond the smoke and the fire. The silence that followed her last breath was louder than the war raging around us.
“Sanaa?” I whispered, shaking her shoulder. “Sanaa, I won't forgive you for this. Wake up!”
Asvika appeared beside me, her face a mask of cold, hard grief. She reached down and gently closed Sanaa’s eyes. The finality of the movement felt like a blade through my gut.
I looked at my hands—covered in the blood of the woman who had just died for me. Then, I looked at the podium where the Moretti’s and Kashani’s had stood. The grief didn't vanish; it transformed. It became a cold, crystalline rage.
The world didn't just end, it shattered in a hail of lead and heartbreak. I rose on shaking legs, the silk of my gown heavy with Sanaa’s blood—a weight I knew I would carry until my own heart stopped beating.
The roar of the fire and the scream of the gas sirens were nothing compared to the silence of her body at my feet.
My gaze locked on the podium through the shifting green fog. There he was. Dominic Cassian Moretti. The devil in human skin, his hazel eyes wide as his mask slipped.
“You think the devil has horns?” I whispered, the words tasting like ash as I seized Aahil’s rifle. “No. He has eyes like yours.”
I didn't think. I fired.
Bullet after bullet, each one a jagged piece of the soul I was losing in real-time. He staggered, clutching his side, shock etched into his features—the look of a man who couldn't believe I’d finally stopped choosing him.
“I told you I’d shoot you!” I screamed over the thunder of the rifle.
“Ara—” he tried to gasp, reaching out a bloodied hand, but I pulled the trigger again. Cold. Precise. Final.
“Orders?” Aahil’s voice barked through the chaos, pulling me back from the edge of the abyss.
I didn't look at the carnage. I didn't look at the man I had riddled with lead. I looked at the exit where the Kashani’s were retreating.
“Make sure no one survives,” I said, my voice dropping to a terrifying, steady calm. “No survivors! Let it all BURN.”
As the gunfire turned deafening and the ballroom became a slaughterhouse, I watched Kashani drag a bleeding Dominic through the side exit.
I moved through the smoke; part queen, part executioner. Every step was a promise to the child in my womb. I will burn the world so you can walk on the ashes.
DOMINIC
The mansion was screaming. Alarms wailed like a funeral choir as smoke clawed at my lungs. My side was a furnace of agony—her bullets had been clean, merciless, and deserved.
My uncle dragged me toward the west wing, his pride still blinded by the chaos. “Move! We hold this side, we can still win!”
I tore my arm away, tasting copper in my mouth. “We’re walking into a slaughterhouse, and you’re the cattle.”
I could still hear her. Even through the explosions, I heard her screaming Sanaa’s name. That sound gutted me more than the lead in my ribs ever could.
“Go,” I rasped, shoving my uncle toward the inner chamber, the one rigged with the fail-safe. “Lock the door. Stay there.”
“You’re bleeding out, Dominic!”
“Just go!” I snapped, my tone cracking with the weight of what I was about to do. He hesitated, looking at me with a shred of familial concern that had come far too late.
That hesitation was his last.
I slipped the detonator from my pocket. He thought it was the signal to take out her team. He didn't know I’d spent the last hour rewiring the charges to the Moretti foundation.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the ghosts of my family. I pressed the button.
BOOM.
The shockwave launched me into the stone wall.
Fire roared through the corridor, swallowing my uncle’s final cry. I’d killed him. I’d ended the lineage to save the woman who hated me.
I crawled toward a secret alcove, dragging a useless leg, my blood painting a trail of red on the Versace marble. I slammed the door shut, locking myself into the dark.
I slid down the wall, laughing a broken, jagged sound into the quiet.
“You win, Versace,” I whispered into the darkness, my vision blurring. “You always do.”
And maybe one day, you'd forgive this insolent man.
VERSACE
The night tore itself apart, but I moved through the centre of the storm, untouched. The floor was slick, the air thick with the rot of a dying dynasty. By the time the explosions faded into a low, hungry growl of fire, the silence felt like judgment.
I stood in the centre of the ruins, my rifle lowered but my heart armoured in ice. I knew Dominic was somewhere in the rubble. I knew he was cornered, wounded, and damned.
I stepped over the wreckage and found the door he had locked. I didn't open it. I stood on the other side, my voice carrying through the wood with a lethal, haunting clarity.
“Don’t ever put me in a position where I have to show you how heartless I really can be, Dominic,” I said, my hand resting briefly on my stomach before I tightened it into a fist.
There was no sound from inside but the faint, laboured breathing of a dying man.
“I don't mind being the villain in your story,” I continued, my eyes tracking the smoke rising from the ballroom, “just don't erase the chapter where your behaviour handed me the script.”
I turned my back on the door. I didn't stay to hear him beg. I didn't stay to see if he lived. Sanaa was gone. My mercy was dead. The real war wasn't between the houses anymore.
It was between me and the world.
“Burn it down.”