Page 52 of Watch Me Burn

CATERINA

T he night hums with violence, thick with the promise of blood.

My father’s estate sits at the top of the hill like a festering wound—gaudy, arrogant, blind to the storm crawling up its spine. Tonight, the walls he’s hid behind for decades will fall, and he’ll know it was his own blood that brought them down.

Aaron, Marco, and Tristan flank me. We don’t speak for a long time. Every oath has already been made, every line drawn. Their silence is a language I know intimately now.

The USB Marco pulled from Frank dangles from a chain around my neck, cold against my skin beneath the weight of my gear. A symbol of betrayal and liberation—a key to dismantling a powerhouse.

His kingdom.

The one he built with violence and endless secrets. With me by his side.

I was the perfect daughter. The blade he sharpened. The monster he forged.

And tonight, I return the favor.

Aaron’s fingers brush my wrist, a comforting reminder in the dark. Our eyes meet. No tenderness, no illusion of safety in his gaze. Just shared purpose. We both know there’s no coming back from this. We wouldn’t want to anyway.

“Seven minutes,” Tristan says, eyes locked on the synchronized timers on our wrists. “Once we breach, make them count.”

Marco leads us down the shadowed hill toward the hidden entrance, his massive silhouette swift and silent despite his size. The way he moves through darkness—a skill honed through years of Giovanni’s dirty work—now turned against its master. Poetic justice, if you ask me.

He taps the security panel hidden behind overgrown ivy, entering the stolen code from Frank. The green light flashes, and with a low beep, the lock disengages.

Movement.

A guard breaks perimeter, patrolling early.

Aaron reacts before I even register the threat. One silenced shot, center mass. The man drops without a sound.

A delay. Barely a second.

But it’s enough to remind us what’s at stake.

One mistake, and this is over for all of us.

My heart pounds, each beat a war drum echoing through my chest.

Adrenaline floods my system, sharp and intoxicating. I glance back at Aaron, his gaze locked on the mansion ahead. His eyes gleam with something feral. A hunger I know too well. Just months ago, this man wore bespoke suits and sold skyline dreams over champagne.

Now he’s ready to bleed for me.

Beside me. With me.

The steel door creaks open with a hiss, and Marco slips through first silently.

We follow, moving fast through the underground tunnel system, the air thick with mold and secrets.

Dim emergency bulbs cast sickly light against the concrete walls, stretching our shadows like monsters slinking through the underworld.

Another checkpoint.

We stop at the second panel, a retinal scanner blinking red.

Aaron pulls the scan device from his jacket—ripped from Frank’s corpse hours ago. He presses it to the panel, unflinching. For a second, nothing. Just silence and the thrum of blood in my ears.

Then a soft chime. Green light.

Access granted.

The next door slides open, and the world shifts.

We emerge into decadence. Marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Gilded moldings curling up the walls. Oil paintings worth more than a dozen lives line the corridor. Chandeliers glitter like ice. Giovanni’s legacy, bought with the currency of corpses.

It disgusts me.

Tristan veers off toward the east wing to disable internal security. Marco fades into the west, planting the final explosives.

Leaving Aaron and me alone.

“Ready?” Aaron asks, voice low, the shadows sharpening his features into something beautifully terrifying. His hands expertly handle the weapon—once familiar with contracts, now steady on a trigger.

I look at him and feel the weight of everything behind us and everything still ahead.

“Always.”

The estate is too quiet, like a breath held before a scream.

Outside Giovanni’s study, the air thickens with tension. That familiar scent wafts from beneath the heavy double doors—Cuban cigars, aged scotch, and something fouler: control. Domination. My childhood, bottled and fermented in mahogany and smoke.

Laughter drifts through the crack in the doors. My father’s voice. Followed by Patrick Doyle’s unmistakable Irish lilt.

My jaw clenches so tightly I taste blood.

They’re all here. Every demon sitting in the same goddamn room.

Aaron lifts three fingers. Then two. Then one.

The doors explode inward, crashing against the walls with thunderous finality.

Giovanni’s face twists mid-laugh, his eyes going wide, the color draining as he stares at us like ghosts come to collect. Patrick bolts instantly, shoving his chair backward and lunging for the hidden passage behind the antique bookcase.

Aaron fires—once, twice.

Blood spatters across polished wood, but Patrick slips through the gap before the third shot can land. The hidden door groans shut behind him, sealing his escape.

Tristan and Marco are off clearing the upper wings. We won’t catch Patrick—not yet.

This moment needs to be mine.

“Hello, Papà.” The word tastes like venom.

Giovanni lurches up from his chair, reaching instinctively for the pistol beneath his desk.

He never gets the chance.

Marco appears from the dark like a storm, his fist crashing down on my father’s wrist with brutal precision. The gun clatters across the floor, vanishing beneath a sideboard.

Giovanni staggers back, holding his shattered hand to his chest, his eyes wild and glassy with disbelief.

“You?” he rasps. “You betrayed your own blood?”

His voice cracks, rage and fear caught in his throat. “After everything I gave you?—”

“You didn’t give me anything,” I say, stepping closer, boots clicking like a countdown to his end. “You trained me only to use me.”

Aaron moves to my side, his gun already raised.

Giovanni’s gaze shifts between us. He sees it now—what I became, and what I claimed. The man he tried to destroy has become my greatest asset.

His final mistake.

“You made me a weapon, Papà. You just never thought I’d turn it on you.”

Giovanni backs against the desk, breathing hard, his empire collapsing around him brick by bloody brick.

And I haven’t even touched him yet.

“ Tesoro —” Giovanni pleads, voice trembling. His eyes flick between me and Aaron, frantic, hunting for a crack in the armor. A daughter’s mercy. A man’s hesitation. Some shred of leverage he can still manipulate.

“You’re my child. This is business, not family. We can negotiate.”

I press the blade to his throat, enough to break the skin. A thin line of red beads at the edge of the steel, catching the light like a promise.

“Your daughter died the night you let your men touch innocent children.”

The color drains from his face, horror washing over him in waves. He lifts his trembling hands, palms open in surrender, desperation leaking from every breath.

“Please, Caterina,” he whispers. “Whatever you want—money, power, the empire. It’s yours. Just…don’t do this.”

Behind me, Aaron’s voice cuts through the tension. “You’re wasting your breath, Giovanni. She decided your ending long ago.”

Marco slips silently out of the room, the click of the door closing behind him the only sound that marks his exit. He’s done planting the charges. There’s no one left. Just Aaron. Me. And the man who made me into this.

The air is heavy with history. With all the pain he handed me and called protection. With every scar he helped carve into my soul.

I lean closer, blade tracing the hollow of his throat. I feel his pulse—erratic, frantic, terrified.

“All your lies, your violence, your empire built on suffering. Did you really think you’d never pay? That I’d never remember what happened that night?” I whisper, dragging the knife slowly, letting him feel each millimeter of fear.

His eyes glass over, sweat pouring down his temple, his voice reduced to stuttering silence.

“This is for my mother. For the nights she cried behind locked doors. For the bruises she hid. For the silence she kept to protect me.”

The knife sinks deeper.

Blood wells, warm and immediate, painting his neck in brilliant crimson.

Giovanni makes a pathetic, choked sound—part sob, part gurgle—as his hand fumbles weakly toward the wound, too late to stop anything.

“And this…” I lean in until our foreheads almost touch. “This is for me. For the life you stole. For making me what I am. For wanting to kill us.”

With a vicious flick of my wrist, I open his throat. Deep, clean, merciless. Just as he taught me.

Giovanni drops to his knees with a heavy thud, eyes wide with disbelief as his life pours hot and red across marble floors.

He gurgles weakly, one hand pressed futilely against the gaping wound, the other reaching for me as if I might still save him.

As if there was ever a world where that would happen.

Even in death, he underestimates me.

I step back, watching with cold detachment as he bleeds out onto his expensive Persian rugs.

He deserves to choke on every drop. His eyes never leave mine, even as the light begins to fade from them—betrayal and horror the last emotions he’ll ever know.

For a fleeting moment, unbidden, a memory surfaces—my tenth birthday, the rare occasion he’d seemed proud of me. A pearl necklace in a velvet box, his hand briefly resting on my shoulder. “Beautiful, just like your mother,” he’d said.

I push the memory away.

That child is gone.

The pearls were always payment, never love. The blood pooling at my feet is the only truth that matters now.

Aaron’s arms circle my waist from behind, pulling me firmly against his chest. His breath is warm on my ear, his voice a dangerous rumble. “He doesn’t deserve your pity. Not one second of it.”

Facing him, I notice blood splattered across his cheek. “He’ll never get it.”

The first explosion shakes the estate, windows imploding as flames erupt somewhere in the east wing—right on schedule.

Heat surges through the corridors, thick smoke curling in tendrils that sting our lungs.

The acrid bite of burning fabric and wood floods my senses, alarms wailing uselessly beneath the roar of fire.

Aaron grabs my hand and pulls me forward through the chaos, navigating falling debris and shifting shadows with lethal precision. The firelight carves harsh lines across his face, but there’s no fear in his eyes.

Only the drive to protect.

And maybe satisfaction.

We move like vampires through a dying world—past scrambling guards, shrieking staff, and the crumbling bones of Giovanni’s legacy.

Two men rush us in desperation; Aaron doesn’t even blink.

He lifts his weapon and fires. Two shots, two bodies crumpling to the floor in wet, final silence. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pause.

The transformation is complete.

He’s become someone I always desired, the person I needed him to be—the one who survives in my world.

Outside, Marco and Tristan wait by our escape vehicle, expressions grim. Marco nods once, confirming, “No survivors inside. Doyle escaped, but he’s wounded badly. Bleeding out somewhere.”

“Let him run,” I murmur, adjusting my jacket. My voice is calm, collected, ice over flame. “Wounded animals always return to their den. We’ll be waiting.”

The mansion burns behind us, the flames clawing greedily at Giovanni’s empire, turning it to ash and smoke against the night sky. I turn to Aaron, our fingers entwined, blood staining our skin like war paint.

It’s finally over. The person who destroyed my mother, who created me in his twisted image, is nothing but cooling meat on imported marble.

Aaron pulls me close, the heat of his body fierce, grounding.

His mouth crashes against mine—bloody and possessive.

It tastes of gunpowder and power and something too dark to name.

I melt into it, into him, into the violence we’ve forged between us.

His hand fists in my hair, tugging just enough to make me gasp into his kiss.

When we finally break apart, his gaze blazes brighter than the fire consuming everything we left behind.

Because tonight, we didn’t just end an empire, we crowned our own.

Behind us, the estate goes up in massive flames.

Stone splits. Glass rains down like ash.

A kingdom crumbles while we rise.

We stand together as the last of the Mortelle dynasty dissolves into smoke. My father’s sins scatter everywhere, his name reduced to rubble at my feet.

And in the glow of his destruction, I don’t feel anything.

I don’t mourn it. Don’t ache for him.

I feel reborn.

Marco looks toward the flames. “So what now?”

“Now we rebuild. Our way. Our rules,” I utter.

I remember telling Aaron I didn’t know who I’d be when this ended.

Now I do.

Marco gives one final nod and disappears into the night. Tristan turns toward the car, but not before casting one last glance back at the fire with something that almost looks like guilt.

Aaron and I remain, side by side, watching the inferno swallow the past. My hand slips from his and rises to the USB still heavy around my neck—our proof, our key, our goddamn sword.

The final blow.

The start of everything.

I look over my shoulder, flames painting the sky behind us, and say, “Come on. Let’s celebrate properly.”

We head to the waiting car. The night stretches ahead of us, still blood-wet and smoke-slick. But ours.

Aaron’s hand lands on the small of my back, firm and possessive as he guides me forward.

Toward our new beginning.