Chapter 12 - The Labyrinth of Steel and Truth
The damp, salty air of the private pier whipped through Madame Vance’s blonde hair as she found herself cornered against the rusted iron railing overlooking the black ocean. Her sophisticated facade had completely shattered, leaving behind a desperate, cornered woman whose manicured hands shook as she clutched a silenced pistol. "You're too late, Dante! The Moretti syndicate already has copies of the shipping codes; killing me won't stop the war!" Vance shrieked, her voice cracking with hysteria as the heavy boots of Dante's enforcers echoed across the wooden planks behind her. Dante stepped forward out of the shadows, his expression carved from pure ice, the moonlight catching the jagged scar on his cheek and the intricate crimson scales of his dragon tattoo. "You didn't just sell shipping codes, Catherine. Twenty-five years ago, you whispered the lie that made my father burn the Valdez estate to the ground, and you spent two decades feeding false intelligence to keep the blood feud alive," Dante stated, his deep baritone cutting through the sound of the crashing waves like a razor. From behind Dante, Alina stepped out onto the pier, her brown eyes blazing with a fierce, righteous fire that left no room for doubt. "My mother survived that fire because she knew the truth, and now I have the ledger that proves every single crime you committed," Alina said, pulling the silver journal from her pocket and holding it up under the pale moonlight. Madame Vance’s eyes widened in sheer horror at the sight of the book; with a desperate scream of rage, she raised her pistol and aimed it straight at Alina's chest. But before Vance could pull the trigger, Viktor lunged forward with blinding speed, striking her wrist with a heavy metal flashlight. The gun clattered uselessly onto the wooden boards and tumbled over the edge into the dark abyss below. Vance collapsed to her knees, sobbing in total defeat as Dante’s men moved in with heavy zip-ties, securing the architect of decades of bloodshed once and for all.
