Page 23 of Crystal Veil

“You meanmyfuture,” Bennato sneers, stepping closer to Sergey. “I don't share, and I sure as hell don't partner with Renat’s leftovers. Where is he?”

He pauses, his gray eyes glittering with malicious satisfaction. “You were supposed to bring me Renat's corpse.”

My blood ignites like gasoline touched by flame. The rage I've been suppressing roars through my veins, demanding immediate and violent satisfaction. Bennato has just confirmed what I suspected. He’s not interested in my surrender. He wants my territory, my operations, my life. And Sergey was supposed to deliver my head on a silver platter.

I squeeze the trigger.

The silence shatters with the first shot, the sound echoing through the skeletal building like thunder. Bennato's bodyguard spins and falls, blood spraying across the concrete in a crimson arc. Then, the second shot. The third. My men open fire from their positions, muzzle flashes lighting up the darkness like deadly fireworks.

Chaos erupts across the construction site.

Bullets rain from the scaffolding above, my snipers picking off targets with methodical precision. Roman's rifle barks from the third floor, each shot claiming another life. My men unleash hell from the shadows, their weapons spitting death and destruction.Years of training and countless battles have turned them into a perfectly coordinated killing machine.

Bennato's guards scramble for cover, some returning fire while others fall before they can draw their weapons. The concrete walls explode in showers of dust and debris as automatic weapons tear through the night. Shouts and screams mix with the deafening roar of gunfire, creating a symphony of violence that will haunt this place forever.

Bennato ducks behind a concrete barrier, shouting orders that his surviving men struggle to hear over the chaos. His suit is already stained with dust and someone else's blood. His arrogance has been stripped away, replaced by the desperate survival instincts of predator-turned-prey.

Bianca screams, her voice ripping through the chaos like a siren in the dark. She stumbles backward on her ridiculous heels, her designer dress already torn and dirty. The glamorous facade crumbles as reality crashes down around her. This isn't the romantic violence of movies or books. This is ugly, brutal, and absolutely final.

Sergey disappears into the smoke and shadows, abandoning his allies the moment the shooting started. Coward. He's probably looking for an escape route, some back door that will let him slip away while better men die for his mistakes.

I move quickly. Down the stairs, my shoes pounding against steel steps. Each level echoes with the sound of gunfire and screaming. I don't stop or hesitate. I hunt.

A flash of red silk draws my eye through the smoke and shadows. Bianca.

She runs on broken heels, stumbling over debris and construction materials. Her perfect hair is disheveled, and her makeup is smeared with dust and tears. The transformation is both satisfying and pathetic to witness.

I track her movement, leading the target as my father taught me when I was twelve. Before I can fire, a shot rings out from my left, the bullet tearing through her abdomen in a spray of blood and torn fabric. She spins like a broken doll, crashing into a pile of metal rods.

Blood stains the red silk, spreading across the expensive fabric like spilled wine. Still, she tries to crawl. Her fingernails scrape against concrete as she drags herself toward what she probably thinks is safety.

“Bianca!” Sergey's voice cuts through the smoke like a desperate prayer.

He appears beside her, materializing from the shadows like a ghost. He falls to his knees beside her broken body, his hands slick with her blood as he tries to hold her up, to somehow reverse what can't be undone.

She looks up at him with eyes that are already growing dim, choking on her own breath. Blood bubbles between her lips as she tries to speak, each word a monumental effort.

“You idiot,” she whispers, her voice low over the continuing gunfire. “You always loved me but I never loved you.”

Her lips tremble with the effort of forming words. “And still, you followed me to hell.”

Then, her body goes still. The light fades from her eyes like candles being snuffed out. Bianca Rossi, the woman whothought she could manipulate kings and queens like chess pieces, dies on a pile of construction debris with her blood soaking into the concrete.

Sergey lets out a sound that's somewhere between a sob and a snarl, a noise no human throat should make. His body shakes with grief and rage.

“You were never worth it,” he whispers to her corpse, and there's something broken in his voice that almost makes me feel pity for him.

An explosion shakes the building, but this one isn't from our charges. The blast comes from outside, from the direction of the parking area. Bennato's men must have brought their own surprises to this party.

A load-bearing beam above us groans like a dying animal. The steel twists and buckles under stresses it was never designed to handle. Dust and chunks of concrete rain down from the ceiling as the building's skeleton begins to disintegrate.

I look up just in time to see death falling toward me.

“Move!” I shout, but the warning comes too late.

The steel beam snaps with a sound like thunder cracking open the sky. Twenty feet of reinforced metal crashes down, bringing half the ceiling with it. Concrete splinters explode in every direction like shrapnel. Dust blinds me and fills my lungs, turning the world into a gray nightmare where up and down loses all meaning.

I hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. Pain explodes in my side like white-hot lightning, spreading through my ribs and into my spine. I try to crawl, to drag myself awayfrom the continuing collapse, but something heavy pins my left leg to the concrete.