Chapter 7
I crawled toward her. Not because she was an innocent victim, but because nine years of training as a trauma nurse refused to let me watch someone bleed to death without trying to stop it.
I pressed my hands against her chest, applying pressure to the wound.
Fiona looked up at me, her perfect makeup ruined, her breathing ragged. She coughed, a thin line of blood trickling from her lips.
“You… you ruined it,” she gasped, her fingers weakly grasping at my hands.
“You ruined it the moment you decided my family was acceptable collateral,” I said quietly, keeping the pressure steady, even though I knew the bullet had hit a lung. The frothy blood was a definitive sign. She was drowning internally.
Matthias crawled over, staring at the woman he had thrown our life away for. He didn’t look sad. He looked terrified of what her death meant for him.
“Fiona,” Matthias pleaded. “Tell them it wasn’t my fault. Tell them the syndicate made you do it.”
Fiona’s eyes shifted from me to Matthias. A weak, bloody smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.
“You’re a coward, Matthias,” she whispered. “And you’re going to burn.”
Her eyes rolled back. Her chest stopped moving.
I sat back on my heels, my hands covered in blood. I wiped them on my ruined dress, my breathing heavy.
The silence in the vault was absolute, broken only by the distant, muffled sound of police sirens approaching the estate. The dead-man’s switch I had set up with my attorney had triggered. When the local police didn’t receive my check-in call at midnight, they were dispatched to the house with a full tactical alert.
Elias lowered the shotgun, leaning against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor. He looked exhausted, but for the first time in five years, he looked free.
“You okay, Serena?” he asked, his voice strained.
I placed my bloody hand over my stomach. My daughter gave a soft, gentle kick. A reassurance.
“We’re okay,” I said.
I stood up, wincing at the pain in my back. I looked down at Matthias.
He was staring at me, his eyes pleading. “Serena. Serena, listen to me. I can fix this. We can blame the mercenaries. We can say Elias attacked us. We can say—”
“Stop,” I commanded.
He fell silent.
“I’m not your partner anymore, Matthias,” I said softly. “I’m not your alibi. And I’m certainly not your fool.”
I reached down to Fiona’s body. I unclasped the $180,000 diamond necklace from her throat. The heavy, bloody jewelry felt cold in my hand.
I tossed it onto Matthias’s lap.
“Keep it,” I said. “You’re going to need something to trade when the syndicate comes looking for their money.”
Matthias stared at the necklace in horror, realizing exactly what I was doing. I was leaving him with the very thing he had bought to destroy us. The key. The target.
I turned and walked out of the vault.
Elias struggled to his feet and followed me, leaving Matthias alone in the dark with his dying father, his dead mistress, and the consequences of his own arrogance.
We walked back through the wine cellar, up the service corridor, and back into the main entrance hall.
The police had breached the front doors. Red and blue lights flashed through the shattered windows, casting long, eerie shadows across the marble floors. Tactical officers were swarming the room, securing the remaining mercenaries and treating the terrified guests.
As soon as they saw me—a pregnant woman covered in blood—paramedics rushed forward.
They wrapped a thick, warm blanket around my shoulders and guided me toward the open front doors. Elias was taken by another team, finally receiving medical attention for his shoulder. He gave me one last look before he was loaded into an ambulance. A nod of mutual respect. The ghost was finally putting himself to rest.
I stepped out onto the front porch of the Dre estate.
The cold winter air hit my face, shocking my system, clearing the smell of gunpowder and copper from my lungs.
I looked out at the massive property.
The police cars, the ambulances, the flashing lights.
But beyond the chaos, beyond the yellow caution tape and the shouting officers, the world was completely still.
The snow outside the Dre estate fell silently.
It covered everything.
The driveway.
The gardens.
The footprints of the mercenaries. The blood on the steps. The shattered glass of a broken dynasty.
It covered the secrets, burying them under a blanket of pure, untouched white.
I placed both hands over my stomach, feeling the strong, steady heartbeat of the life inside me.
“We did it,” I whispered into the freezing air.
My daughter moved beneath my hands. A quiet, determined flutter.
May you like
I closed my eyes, letting the snow fall against my skin. For the first time in nine years, I wasn’t carrying someone else’s lies. I was only carrying the future. And as I walked down the steps toward the waiting ambulance, leaving the ruins of Matthias Dre behind me forever, I knew that future was going to be exactly what I made it.
Untouchable. Unbreakable. And entirely mine.
