Page 63

“Well,” he says, glancing around the room, his voice almost amused. “Four men in under thirty seconds. That was… almost art.”

I stop three feet from him.

“Not art,” I finally speak. Low, even. “It's the end.”

That’s it.

I stop three feet from him.

“You came yourself,” he adds, voice calm. “That surprised me.”

I don’t answer.

There’s nothing here worth conversation.

Nothing left to name.

He exhales. Eyes me like he’s taking stock. Like I’m still something he can weigh.

“You could’ve sent a message,” he says. “You didn’t have to burn it down.”

“I didn’t burn it down. Well, not yet.”

Lucian arches one brow.

I take one step closer.

“I erased it.”

He studies me.

Then nods.

Like he understands. Like he’s known, deep down, from the moment he anchored here, that this was how it would end.

He swirls the last of his drink in the glass.

Doesn’t sip it.

“She changed you,” he says.

It’s not a question.

And I don’t answer anyway.

Because he’s wrong.

She didn’t change me.

She just reminded me who I could’ve been, before him. Before blood and missions and the weight of names I was never meant to carry.

Lucian leans back in his chair. Sighs through his nose.

“So this is how it ends,” he murmurs. “One man burns a kingdom because he fell in love.”

I meet his eyes.

Flat. Calm.

“No.”

My voice is quiet.

Solid.

“It ends because you thought she was leverage.”

A pause.

I see it land.

“And she’s not.”

One more step forward.

“She’s everything.”

Lucian doesn’t move.

Doesn’t resist.

He just closes his eyes.

And nods once.

Like a man admitting gravity.

I draw the knife.

Not for vengeance.

Not even for justice.

But for closure. A clean end. A surgical strike meant to sever his influence at the root—because anything messier might echo. And echoes reach too far.

I don’t take pleasure in it.

I don’t need to.

He exhales once—almost peaceful—as if he knew this was the only ending I’d ever give him.

I give it to him quickly.

Quietly.

No spectacle.

Just one breath—his last—and I release it with him. Not revenge. Not fury. Just the quiet end of something long overdue.

When it’s done, I move without pause.

Down the back stairwell. Along the corridor slick with quiet. Past the bodies I’ve already laid down.

To the engine room.

I open the compartment and pull the charges from my belt. Small. Contained. The metal is cold in my fingers, the edges familiar from a hundred quiet missions before this. But this time, it feels heavier. Personal. Exact.

I place them where the steel ribs meet fuel—calculated, timed. There won’t be screams. No evidence. Just absence.

I move through each room with precision, setting the rest. Fuse lines, remote detonation fallback, redundancies. Like always. Because this isn’t about destruction. It’s about removal. About unmaking the roots of everything he built.

This is how it ends: no records, no ledgers, no lieutenants whispering his name in some other port. No leverage. No legacy.

I leave the bodies where they fall, and close the doors behind me.

The bridge is empty. Just as I expected. One of his lieutenants had been up here earlier, logged into the nav systems. I’d watched from the dock. Counted minutes. Timed the loops.

I step to the console and bring up the coordinates—out past the mouth of the bay, thirty nautical miles. International waters. No traffic lanes. No eyes. Nothing but dark.

I engage the auto-nav, set it to slow. Deliberate. No alarms. No changes in course that could be flagged. Just a long, quiet drift into nowhere.

At the end of that drift, I arm the charges—all of them. The engine room. The fuel bay. The central stairwell. The upper suite.

No failsafes. No escape routes. The control room hums faintly around me, stale with heat and the trace of fuel in the vents.

Just enough time to get off the ship. Time enough to vanish without a trace.

I seal the detonator into its case, tuck it against my chest, and leave. I climb down the exterior ladder, rappel once to the aft deck, and dive.

No splash. Just water, breath, and freedom.

From the safety of the harbor’s edge, I watch her go.

The yacht.

The empire.

Every name and secret and strand of power Lucian ever spun.

It floats farther out, slow and solemn, like a funeral procession with no mourners.

And then—I press the trigger, and look up as I let the detonator go, sink to he bottom of the ocean.

The horizon blooms orange in a soft flash. A roar follows, low and distant, barely brushing the shore before the sea swallows it whole. The flames climb fast, lick the sky—then vanish.

Not even embers left behind.

No one sees it. No one traces it. Except the water—cool, still, heavy with silence. It vanishes like a shadow never cast.

And me, surfacing from the black beneath like I was never here at all. No shadow left behind. Just the echo of her name in my chest, steady and low, guiding me back.

I swim back the way I came—beneath the dark, where no light finds me. Where no name has power. Where the fire is only a memory now, sinking with the wreckage.

When I reach the rocks, I pull myself up slow.

Body cold, but clean.

I strip off the suit behind the tree line, bury the gloves and gear in the sand. Everything else can rot. Then I tug on the clothes I left in the dry bag: dark jeans, grey thermal, her flannel.

Mine now, because she gave it back folded, like it meant something. It does.

I tuck the compass into my front pocket and breathe.

It’s quiet here. No sirens. No boats. No echoes of what just burned past the horizon. Just gulls in the dark and home calling through the stillness.

I walk barefoot up the gravel pull-off, slide into the driver’s seat, and start the truck.

She doesn’t know yet—not officially. But I can feel her. I can feel the thread of her worry pulled so tight it’s humming.

I take out my phone. Thumb hovers for a second.

It’s done.

I’m safe.

Coming home.

I don’t wait for a reply.

The road opens in front of me like a promise.

And I drive.