Roman shoved me sideways toward the stone fountain just as the first shot cracked through the garden.
Chaos exploded.
I hit the ground hard enough to skin my palm. Water splashed up over the fountain edge. One guard went down under Nico’s tackle from the side path. The second drew, but Valentina—God help me, Valentina—grabbed his arm just long enough for Roman to drive him into the low garden wall and knock the weapon free.
Dante backed up, stunned.
Sirens rose outside the estate walls.
Roman turned on his father with a look so cold it felt like witnessing judgment made flesh.
“It’s over.”
Dante looked toward the house, toward the gates, toward the sound of federal agents flooding the drive. For the first time all evening, he looked his age.
“You’d hand your own father over to the law?”
Roman’s answer was quiet.
“You buried your own brother for power.”
That was the end of the empire as it had existed.
The arrest itself was almost disappointingly procedural after the violence of the last thirty seconds. Agents poured through the house. Names were read. Rights were spoken. Dante did not go quietly, but he went.
Valentina stood near the terrace steps, pale and shaking, then met my eyes.
“I didn’t know about Luca,” she said.
For the first time, there was no blade inside her voice.
I believed her.
“Then leave before his sins become yours too,” I said.
She nodded once and walked away without another word.
When the garden emptied, silence returned in pieces.
Sirens in the distance. Water falling from the fountain. My own breath, too quick.
Roman crossed to me slowly, as if I were the only dangerous thing left in the world because I was the one thing that could still break him.
He stopped in front of me.
There was blood on his cuff that wasn’t his. A tear in his sleeve. His eyes were wrecked.
“Are you hurt?”
“Only my pride.”
He stared at me one second longer than necessary, then laughed—a real laugh this time, tired and disbelieving and full of relief so fierce it almost looked painful.
Then his hand came up to my face.
