2026-08-01 19:59:48Chapter 74
[Cassian]
The glass didn't shatter from an explosion. It shattered because Viper Nine had just thrown a Vanguard mercenary completely through it.
The string quartet abruptly stopped playing. The billionaires and socialites erupted into panicked screams, scattering like terrified livestock as the bleeding mercenary rolled across the polished marble floor.
Sterling stumbled backward, dropping his bourbon. "Kill them!" he shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at us.
The twelve Vanguard guards in the ballroom drew their concealed weapons in unison.
They were fast, but they were trained for corporate security. They had never fought the King and Queen of Rome.
I didn't reach for my gun. I grabbed the heavy, six-foot-tall ice sculpture of a swan resting on the table beside me. With a guttural roar, I heaved the massive block of ice directly into the nearest cluster of guards. The sheer weight crushed two mercenaries to the floor, their weapons clattering uselessly away.
Beside me, Elara was already moving.
The crimson silk of her gown fluttered as she lunged forward, drawing the ceramic blades from her thighs. The closest guard raised his pistol, but Elara dropped into a slide, severing the tendons behind his knee. As he collapsed, she spun flawlessly, driving the hilt of her dagger into his temple, silencing him instantly.
"Secure the target!" the Vanguard captain yelled, grabbing Sterling by the arm and dragging him toward the private elevator bank.
"Nine!" I barked over the screaming crowd.
The ghost materialized from the shadows near the shattered entrance. Nine didn't use a gun. He carried a heavy, suppressed tactical shotgun. He fired a three-round burst into the electronic control panel of the VIP elevator. The console exploded in a shower of sparks, permanently sealing the doors.
Sterling was trapped.
I drew my suppressed sidearm, moving methodically through the panicked crowd. I didn't shoot wildly. I placed two precise, lethal shots into the chests of the Vanguard guards attempting to flank Elara.
"Rossi!" Sterling screamed, his back pressed against the jammed elevator doors. His polished, arrogant facade had completely dissolved into sheer, unadulterated terror. He pulled a gold-plated revolver from his jacket, his hands shaking violently. "You think you can come into my city?! I own the police! I own the mayor!"
I walked slowly toward him. The remaining Vanguard guards were either dead on the marble or bleeding out under Nine's relentless assault.
"You own paper, Sterling," I stated, my boots crunching over shattered crystal glasses. "Paper burns."
Sterling raised his gold revolver, aiming it directly at my face. He pulled the trigger.
Click.
Nothing happened. He pulled it again. Click. Click.
Sterling stared at his gun in absolute horror.
Elara stepped up beside me, casually wiping a streak of mercenary blood from her cheek. She held up her left hand. Pinched between her delicate fingers was the firing pin to Sterling’s revolver.
"You shouldn't leave your coat unchecked in the cloakroom, Jonathan," Elara murmured, dropping the firing pin onto the floor. "The Viper network has been inside your building all day."
Sterling dropped the useless gun, falling to his knees. The billionaire pillar of the Pantheon looked up at us, tears of genuine panic streaming down his tanned face.
"Please," Sterling begged, holding his hands up in surrender. "Whatever you want. The European ports. They're yours. I'll call off the armada. Just let me live."
I stopped right in front of him. I looked down at the man who had authorized a sniper to fire a bullet at my wife.
"You don't have the authority to call off the armada," I said coldly. "You are just one of four gods. I need to send a message to the other three."
"I'll give you their names!" Sterling bargained frantically, sweat pouring down his face. "I'll give you their locations! You don't know who you are fighting, Rossi! The Pantheon is everywhere!"
"I don't need your intel," Elara whispered, crouching down so she was eye-level with the trembling billionaire. The absolute, unfeeling apathy of the assassin radiated from her stormy gray eyes. "My son is currently downloading your entire mainframe from your private servers."
Sterling’s face went entirely slack. He realized, with crushing finality, that he had nothing left to trade.
I raised my suppressed pistol, aiming it directly at the center of his forehead.
"Tell the devil Rome sends its regards," I rumbled.
Sterling didn't beg again. Instead, a bizarre, bloodless smile slowly crept across his terrified face. He looked past the barrel of my gun, staring directly into my obsidian eyes.
"You think you cornered me, Rossi?" Sterling laughed, a wet, hysterical sound. "The Pantheon knew you would come for me. You didn't breach my fortress. I lured you into a tomb."
The heavy, reinforced steel shutters hidden in the ceiling of the ballroom suddenly slammed downward, violently sealing the shattered windows and completely locking the room in darkness.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Silent Descent
Chapter 79*[Elara]*An assassin does not travel like a billionaire. We don’t take private jets that broadcast a flight plan, and we don't clear customs in luxury terminals. We move through the fractures in the world’s architecture. I didn't fly out of Italy. I took a heavily armored smuggling sub from a clandestine port in Sicily, riding beneath the radar of European maritime patrols until we reached international waters. From there, I transferred to an unmarked freighter carrying black-market munitions to the port of Baltimore. The journey took four agonizing days. Four days of suffocating silence in a windowless steel cabin, reviewing the encrypted data Leo had squeezed from Vanguard's servers before the connection died. The Pantheon hadn't taken Don Salvatore to a skyscraper in Manhattan. They took him to *The Aegis* a massive, fortified private military compound built into the dense, isolated forests of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. When the freighter finally d
The Rot Within
Chapter 78*[Cassian]*Betrayal is a poison that doesn't just kill the victim; it rots the very foundation of the house they stand in. I stared at the black screen, the silence in the war room stretching so tight it threatened to snap the air in half. The remaining Capos of the Five Families were looking around the room, their eyes wide with sudden, terrifying suspicion. The men they had bled with, drank with, and sworn oaths with could be Pantheon sleepers. The enemy wasn't an armada sailing across the Atlantic. The enemy was standing right next to them, holding an assault rifle. "Clear the room," I growled, my voice a low, vibrating rumble of absolute menace. Nobody moved. The shock had paralyzed them. "I said clear the damn room!" I roared, slamming my fists onto the obsidian table. The impact cracked the glass holographic interface. The Capos didn't hesitate a second time. They scrambled toward the heavy steel doors, desperate to escape the wrath of the King. Matteo hesitate
The Broken Halo
Chapter 77*[Elara]*Silence in the aftermath of violence is the loudest sound on earth. The stealth transport tore through the stormy sky over the Atlantic Ocean, moving at hypersonic speeds back toward Rome. The cargo hold was freezing, vibrating with the sheer power of the engines, but the tension radiating off Cassian generated enough heat to warm the entire cabin. He hadn't sat down since we extracted from the Apex Tower. He stood near the open cockpit door, staring out into the black clouds, his jaw locked so tight I could see the muscles feathering in his cheek. Nine sat perfectly still on the metal bench opposite me, cleaning his weapons with terrifying, robotic efficiency. I leaned my head back against the cold fuselage, closing my eyes. My crimson gown was in tatters, the hem ruined by concrete dust and blood. Every muscle in my body ached, a deep, bone-weary exhaustion that begged me to sleep. But sleep was a vulnerability I couldn't afford. "Sterling was a messenger,"
The Freefall Crucible
Chapter 76*[Cassian]*Falling through a collapsing skyscraper is not a clean drop. It is a violent, chaotic tumble through a blender of jagged steel, exploding concrete, and razor-sharp rebar. I locked my arms around Elara, pulling her flush against my chest, twisting my body in mid-air to ensure my back took the brunt of the impact. The heavy Kevlar plating beneath my tuxedo absorbed a brutal strike from a falling concrete slab. My ribs screamed in protest, but I didn't loosen my grip. We crashed through the ceiling of the seventy-ninth floor. The Vanguard mercenaries waiting below had triggered the charges perfectly, blowing out the structural supports. The ceiling caved in, crushing the staging area they had prepared. We hit the floor hard, sliding across a thick layer of pulverized drywall and shattered glass. The impact knocked the wind out of me, a violent explosion of white light bursting behind my eyes. I rolled onto my back, instinctively shielding Elara as a massive se
The Steel Coffin
Chapter 75[Elara]The heavy steel shutters hit the marble floor with a deafening, earth-shaking slam. The crystal chandeliers flickered and died, plunging the opulent ballroom into total, suffocating blackness."Night vision! Now!" Cassian roared, the sound of his pistol discharging twice echoing through the dark.I didn't need the command. I tapped the microscopic sensor behind my ear, activating the specialized contact lenses resting over my eyes. The pitch-black room instantly flared into a crisp, glowing green.I looked down. Sterling was dead. Cassian had put two bullets through his chest the second the lights cut out. But the billionaire’s final, hysterical laugh still haunted the air."Mamma! Papa!" Leo’s voice screamed through the encrypted comms, completely stripped of his usual calm. "Get out of there! The Vanguard troops in the building weren't the primary security! It was a honeypot!""Calm down, Leo. Talk to me," I ordered, spinning back-to-back with Cassian, my ceramic
The First God Falls
Chapter 74[Cassian]The glass didn't shatter from an explosion. It shattered because Viper Nine had just thrown a Vanguard mercenary completely through it.The string quartet abruptly stopped playing. The billionaires and socialites erupted into panicked screams, scattering like terrified livestock as the bleeding mercenary rolled across the polished marble floor.Sterling stumbled backward, dropping his bourbon. "Kill them!" he shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at us.The twelve Vanguard guards in the ballroom drew their concealed weapons in unison.They were fast, but they were trained for corporate security. They had never fought the King and Queen of Rome.I didn't reach for my gun. I grabbed the heavy, six-foot-tall ice sculpture of a swan resting on the table beside me. With a guttural roar, I heaved the massive block of ice directly into the nearest cluster of guards. The sheer weight crushed two mercenaries to the floor, their weapons clattering uselessly away.Beside me,
You may also like
Revenant Protocol
Eral Annobil1.5K viewsSavage Honor: Blood Oath
Flow1.3K viewsTHE BASTARD THEY FEARED
ADORA481 viewsGHOST OF THE GODFATHER
Chiko ilwa868 viewsThe Return of The Gangster Lord; Mark Smith
Eric731 viewsTHE UNDERESTIMATED UNDERWORLD KING
Mr. Felix1.4K viewsConcrete Thrones: The Making of a Mafia Boss”
dbranch writes1.6K viewsBillionaire Son
Chris herbert4.7K views