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A commotion to my left pulls my attention for a split second—just long enough for Victor to lunge. His hand clamps around my wrist, twisting hard until pain shoots up my arm. The gun jolts in my grip but I manage to hold on as we struggle, locked in a vicious rhythm amid the wreckage of what should have been my wedding.

“Vesper!” Talon's voice cuts through the chaos. He's moving toward me, Alex and Luca close behind, their faces contorted with determination.

“Stay back!” I shout, knowing Victor or my grandfather will not hesitate to kill them.

“You think you're so clever,” Victor snarls. His grip tightens around my wrist as he forces my gun hand toward the ceiling. “But you're just another foolish girl who thinks she can change the world.”

His other hand shoots toward my throat, fingers closing around the diamond collar he gifted me. The pressure cuts offmy air as he uses the necklace like a leash, dragging me closer with vicious intent.

“This is what happens to little girls who bite the hand that feeds them,” he hisses, spittle flying from his lips as madness overtakes calculation.

“I’m not a little girl,” I rasp, voice strained through Victor’s chokehold.

My body shifts—just slightly, just enough. A twist of my hips, a lean into his hold that disguises the motion of my free hand slipping to the torn bodice of my dress. My fingers find the blade Z stashed there when he cut me loose.

In one smooth, desperate motion, I drive the steel between Victor’s ribs. It slides in with sickening ease, the resistance barely a breath.

His gasp catches mid-snarl. The pressure on my throat weakens as a bloom of red spreads like a stain across his immaculate white shirt.

“Impossible,” he breathes, eyes wide as he staggers back a step.

“Very possible.” I twist the blade. “Bleed for me, Victor. Like all the other women your family destroyed.”

The crimson blooms across his chest, staining the silk like a violent flower unfurling. His knees buckle. I catch him as he collapses, lowering him to the marble floor of the chapel.

I kneel beside him. His breaths come in wet, ragged pulls, lungs filling with the price of his legacy. I lean in, my voice a low hiss against the chaos still thundering around us.

“Tell me where my son is,” I demand. “Tell me, and I’ll protect him from my grandfather with my dying breath.”

Victor’s focus shifts to me. For a heartbeat, there’s something almost human behind it. Blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth as he lifts a trembling hand, his fingers brushing my cheek with a gentleness that feels entirely out of place.

“My hunting lodge.”

I press my palm against the wound in his chest, not to save him but to ease his passing. For all his cruelty, for all the lives he's destroyed, in this moment, he's just a dying man trying to save his grandson.

"I'll find him," I promise. "And Mikhail will never touch him."

A ghost of a smile touches Victor's bloodless lips. “You are...stronger than I...gave you credit for,” he manages, each word a struggle.

His hand falls away from my face as the light fades from his eyes. Victor Petrov—the man who built an empire on fear and violence—dies with my name on his lips. With Victor’s death, it only leaves my grandfather and me.

I rise from Victor's lifeless body, picking up my discarded gun near his body. My dress and skin painted like a bloody war bride.

"You worthless, manipulative bastard," I snarl, stepping over Victor's corpse toward Mikhail. "You were going to let him kill me."

Mikhail's thin lips curl into what might pass for a smile on another man's face. “But he didn't. And you proved yourself worthy of your bloodline after all.”

The gun in my hand feels like an extension of my body as I level it at his chest. "Worthy? You think this was about proving myself to you?"

"Lower the weapon, granddaughter." He speaks as if addressing a petulant child.

I keep my gun trained on Mikhail's chest, my finger steady on the trigger. "I'm done taking orders from you."

"Fine, we'll do this the hard way."

He snaps his fingers, and suddenly his men surge forward. Three of them grab Luca, who thrashes wildly, landing a solidpunch before they wrench his arms behind his back. Talon drops two of Mikhail's men with brutal efficiency before someone smashes the butt of a gun against his temple, sending him to his knees. Alex fights like a cornered animal, breaking one man's nose before four others overwhelm him.

"Stop!" I scream as they force my brother and the others to their knees.