Chapter 31
“My name is Aria Velenza now,” I said, voice steady, “and love isn’t what you do to someone you
envy.”
“Please!” she wailed, trying to reach for me between the bars. “You don’t understand! I just wanted to be seen! To be chosen! I was nothing and he made me feel like everything!”
I smiled, cold and final.
“And that’s the difference between you and me. I never needed to be chosen. I already owned the
room.”
She sobbed, dropped to her knees, and kissed the floor, begging.
“I’ll do anything,” she whispered. “Just don’t leave me here. Don’t let them break me.”
I leaned in just enough so she could hear me breathe. “They’re not breaking you, Elodie. They’re showing you what your soul always looked like.”
Then I turned away as she screamed again. Guards locked the door, and the sound of her wails echoed through the halls like a dying siren. But I didn’t look back.
I walked out with Jeremiah beside me, the sun already bleeding into the horizon, and the silence between us calm for once.
He lit a cigarette and handed it to me.
took a drag and looked out over the hills.
“You once said you’d haunt anyone who touched me,” I murmured.
He nodded, his voice low and clear. “And I’ll keep haunting them until they all burn.”
And they will.
One by one.
–
After everything, we returned to ash.
That’s what it felt like, stepping back into a city rebuilt on fire and graves and betrayal. The ai didn’t smell of gunpowder anymore, but of dust settling on old warzones. Quiet. Too quiet.
But we were still standing.
Jeremiah and I worked day and night, weaving what was left of the Velenza network into something stronger. We didn’t chase power. We took it back. Brick by bloody brick. Contact by contact. Territory by territory. Some knelt. Some died. No mercy, no apologies. Only survival.
But even as the empire came back to life under our hands, a part of me stayed buried with Peter.
So I visited him.
It was early morning. No guards. No noise. Just me, the headstone, and the black opal ring burning in my palm.
I crouched down beside his grave, fingers trembling as I placed the ring beside his name.
“You told me to never let anyone silence me again,” I whispered. “I kept that promise.”
I bit the inside of my cheek because it hurt more to cry now than to bleed.
“They tried to bury me twice,” I said, brushing dirt off the stone. “But I came back louder. And fo you, I didn’t stop.”
The wind moved. Just slightly. Just enough.
I didn’t stay long.
But that night… the past came back.
It always did.
I couldn’t sleep. The nightmares returned. Harvick’s voice, his face twisted in guilt and anger calling my name in the dark. His touch crawling down my spine. My own scream echoing through dreams I couldn’t wake up from.
I sat up in bed, sweating and shaking, chest tight.
Jeremiah stirred beside me and reached for me without opening his eyes. His arms pulled me into his chest like he already knew what I needed before I said it.
“You’re safe,” he said, voice groggy but solid. “He can’t touch you anymore.”
“I know,” I whispered, curling into his warmth. “But sometimes I still feel him. Not his body. His choices. His lies. The version of me that begged.”
Jeremiah sat up, pressed his forehead to mine.
“You buried that version. You lit her on fire. Now she’s smoke. You’re what came after.”
I nodded slowly, tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I don’t want revenge anymore, J,” I said, voice barely holding. “I just want peace. The kind that doesn’t bleed. The kind that lets me breathe without a knife in my chest.”
He kissed my forehead and whispered, “Then we make that kind. And this time, no one’s going to take it from you.”
And maybe, just maybe, I started to believe him.
Jeremiah slid the last folder across the glass table, his knuckles still bruised from the last fight we didn’t speak of. His eyes locked on mine, steady and unreadable. But I already knew what it
was.
The loose ends. The ones who whispered. The ones who helped Elodie move in shadows while pretending to mind their business. Cowards with expensive suits and dirt behind their teeth.
I opened the folder slowly and flipped through each profile. Names. Faces. Weak little resumes of betrayal. I could end them all with a single nod.
But I didn’t.
I stood, took a cigarette from the crystal tray, and walked to the window. The sky was dark, city lights blinking below me like they were begging for second chances.
I lit the cigarette, took one breath, then said over my shoulder, “Send them letters.”
Jeremiah tilted his head, confused. “Letters?”
“Yeah,” I said calmly. “Each one. A warning.”
I turned and faced him fully. “They get one life. Just one. And if they fuck it up again, I’ll bury
4:57 pm
them slow enough to let them regret every breath.”
He nodded once. No argument. No smirk. Just respect.
The message was sent. By morning, the black market purged itself. Rats scrambled. Allies re–signed. And those who dared doubt me remembered why fear was just a bonus. Control was always the currency.
A week later, we signed the final terms. The network was whole. And Jeremiah–he offered me what no man ever had.
His throne.
“I want you beside me, Aria,” he said, voice steady and rough in the quiet. “Not as my shadow Not as my lover. But as my equal. Co–leader of Velenza. Take it. It’s already yours.”
I stared at him for a long moment, heart quiet, spine straight.
Then I nodded once. “Not beside you,” I whispered. “With you. Always.”
And so the final gathering was called.
No blood. No fire. No screams in the hall this time.
Just power.
I stepped into the room in black silk from throat to heel, no jewelry, no mask–just a smile carve from steel. The room was packed with dons and heirs and legacy monsters who had onc overlooked me.
They stood when I walked in.
I didn’t blink. I didn’t bow.
I sat at the head of the table, legs crossed, voice calm.
“Welcome,” I said. “Let’s rewrite the rules.”
And as the doors closed behind me and silence rippled through the air like worship, I felt it.
Not vengeance.
Not grief.
Just truth.
I didn’t rise to be queen. I burned the kingdom and built my own.
