Chapter 57
The Kashani mansion smelled of smoke and something worse, blood that had dried into the marble and refused to leave. The chandeliers sagged, dimmed by soot. The air was still, thick, metallic. Crystal shards scattered across the floor like broken teeth.
Silence pressed in; heavy, suffocating, the kind that came only after explosions and last words.
The war was over.
And no one could tell who had truly won.
I sat beside Sanaa’s body. Her skin had already cooled, her lashes dusted with ash. My rifle laid inches from my hand. I didn’t move. The floor was cold, and I wanted it to swallow me.
“Miss Versace.”
A soldier’s voice, distant and tinny. I didn't look up. I didn't have the strength to see another face. He held out an envelope. The Moretti seal—a splash of crimson wax—looked too bright, too loud against the grey ruin. My hands began to shake before the paper even touched my skin.
I wanted to burn it. I wanted to cast it into the smouldering remains of the ballroom and watch the lies turn to ash. But my fingers moved with a mind of their own. The knife sliced through the wax with a sound like a quiet gasp.
Ara,
If you’re reading this, it means I couldn’t say it out loud. I had to act. I couldn’t stand by while my blood dragged your name into ruin.
It had to look real. It had to look like betrayal. It broke me to see that look in your eyes when I said no. But I needed that pain—yours and mine. It was the only way to fool him. I needed him to believe I had finally chosen the side of the devil.
I’m sorry for what you lost. For Sanaa. For the hurt. For the mess that will always lead back to me. You deserved better than my half-truths and my timing.
Know this—even if you never forgive me, even if you put a bullet through me again… I love you, Arabella Versace. I always will.
—Dominic
The ink bled into the fibres of the paper as if it couldn't bear to exist.
My throat seized. A sound left me—something between a laugh and a choke, a jagged piece of glass catching in my windpipe. I gripped the letter so hard the paper groaned.
He didn't betray me. He was playing the villain so I could be the survivor.
I stood and walked. Or maybe I staggered.
The floor cracked under my boots, the sound of breaking glass and bone echoing through the silent halls. I pushed past Mayami, who was pale and trembling near the remains of the ballroom.
“Did you find him?” I asked. My voice cracked on the word him. It felt like a physical weight, a stone in my mouth.
Mayami swallowed hard, her eyes darting to the letter in my hand. “No. Not yet. We found... pieces of Mr. Kashani. But no sign of Dominic.”
I didn't stop. I ran toward the east corridor, toward the secret passage where the explosion had been the loudest.
The door was gone—blown clean off its hinges, the metal curled like charred ribs.
I crawled through the debris, the dust filling my mouth, my palms slicing open on the jagged edges of what used to be my home.
I didn't feel the pain. I didn't feel anything but the frantic, screaming need to find a heartbeat.
Something hard pressed against my palm.
I pulled it from the soot. A watch. His Cartier watch. The one he had worn that night by the pool, the night he told me to trust him and I almost did. The face was shattered. The leather was scorched. And the hands were frozen—locked at the exact minute the bombs went off.
My knees gave out.
I hit the floor, the watch pressed so hard against my chest I felt the glass bite into my skin.
A sound ripped out of me—raw, ugly, and guttural. It wasn't a sob. It was a breaking. The sound of a woman being dismantled from the inside out.
“Versace.”
My mother stood in the doorway. Always her. Always arriving after the ruin was complete.
“He didn't—” My throat seized, a sob finally breaking through the ice. “He didn't betray me. I shot him, Mama. I killed him while he was trying to save me.”
She didn't flinch. She walked over and knelt in the soot, her hand landing on my shoulder like a lead weight. “You did what you thought was right. You couldn't have known.”
“I should have known!” I shrieked, looking up at her with eyes that felt like they were bleeding. “I should have felt it! He was bleeding already, and I put more bullets in him. I hunted him like an animal while he was killing his own blood for me!”
“You survived,” she said, her voice a low, steady anchor.
“I didn't just lose him.” My voice dropped to a whisper, small and terrified. “I lost what we could have been. And he’ll never know about the child. He died thinking I hated him. He died never knowing he was a father.”
The silence that followed was as thick as the smoke in the air.
“You cannot tell a dead man what he didn’t live to hear,” she said quietly.
“Bring him back,” I pleaded, clutching her coat, my face smeared with ash and tears. “I don't care how. Please, Mama. Use the money, use the name—just bring him back to me.”
“There is no body, Arabella,” she said, her voice finally breaking. “The blast left nothing but the watch. He's gone. Sanaa is gone. The war is over.”
I looked down at the shattered clock-face in my hand. Time had stopped for Dominic Cassian Moretti at the peak of his sacrifice. And now, time was stopping for me too.
I looked toward the horizon. The sun was fully up now, shining over the graves of the people I loved, pretending the world was new. I pressed my forehead to the cold, soot-covered marble, wishing the floor would simply open up and swallow the Queen of Versace whole.
“Rise,” my mother whispered. “Cry, and then rise.”
But I couldn't move.
The weight of the watch, the scent of Sanaa’s perfume lingering on my skin, and the crushing realization of my own hand in the carnage were too much.
The world tilted. The black smoke seemed to rush inward, filling my vision.
“Versace!”
The last thing I felt was the cold glass of the watch biting into my palm as I fell into the silence.