Chapter 9 - REVENGE SERVED COLD"Guards! Kill her!" Victor shrieked, scrambling backward against the mahogany podium, his hands trembling as he reached into his jacket for a hidden revolver.
Before he could clear leather, a second gunshot echoed from the stairwell entrance.
Bang.
Adrian Valenti stepped into the ballroom, holding his smoking pistol with his good hand, having broken protocol to cover my six. A mercenary creeping up behind me dropped instantly, clutching a wounded shoulder.
"Nice shot for a dying man," I called out without turning around.
"I told you," Adrian panted, stepping up beside me, "we finish this together."
Victor Vance stared at us, trapped between his terrified associates and two people he had tried to erase from existence. He raised his hands slowly, a desperate, oily smile twisting his lips.
"Elena... wait," Victor pleaded, his voice dripping with false warmth. "We're family. We can share this. The empire, the money, the power—it belongs to the Vance name. You can have half of everything."
I stopped five feet from the podium. I lowered the Walther just enough to meet his terrified eyes.
"Fourteen years ago, you told me that mercy is a luxury dead people can't afford," I said softly, echoing his own favorite lesson back to him. "You were right, Uncle."
"Elena, please—"
"I don't want the empire, Victor," I interrupted, my finger tightening on the trigger. "I just want my peace back."
Bang.
The shot echoed through the silent penthouse, swallowed instantly by the roaring wind outside the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows.
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Victor Vance collapsed behind the podium, his reign of terror ending on the very floor where he thought he was untouchable.
Around the room, the elite executives, corrupt politicians, and syndicate bosses sat paralyzed in terror, realizing in that single moment that their empires of glass and blood had just collapsed.
