Time ceased to exist. The world shrank to the four cold, metal walls of the ventilation shaft, the suffocating smell of dust, and the sound of Aria's muffled sobs from the darkness ahead.
I crawled. My knees were raw, my hands scraped, but I didn't feel anything. The only sensation was the hard, rectangular weight of the ledger against my ribs, a constant reminder of what it had cost. With every pull of my body, I whispered his name in my mind. Dante. Dante. Dante. It was not a prayer. It was a vow.
The shaft was a maze, a dark passage leading us out of the beast. Nyx guided us, her voice a steady command from the front.
"Left turn. Pipe junction. Watch your head."
She was the reason we kept moving. Aria, in the middle, was dead weight, overwhelmed by grief. She had stopped climbing, shaking in a state of shock.
"Aria. Move," I said, my voice hoarse, pushing at her feet. She didn't respond.
"Aria, move!" I commanded, my tone sharp and unfamiliar. It was the voice of a queen, not a victim. It echoed Dante's.
It broke through her grief. She whimpered but began to crawl again.
We moved for what felt like an eternity, a grim procession of three broken women, until Nyx finally stopped.
"Light," she whispered.
I looked up. Far ahead, at the end of the shaft, was a faint gray square. The street. An exit.
"Wait," Nyx ordered. She unslung a small pack from her back—a bug-out bag she must have hidden in the war room. She pulled out a small fiber-optic camera, feeding it silently through the grate. She looked at the feed on a cracked smartphone screen.
"It's a service alley," she reported, her voice low and calm. "Three blocks east of the tower. It's... it's quiet. Too quiet. No sirens. No police. Nothing."
The silence was more frightening than the gunfire. The Syndicate was not just a small team; it was an army. They had locked down the city block, silenced alarms, and routed the police. The battle in the penthouse had been a quiet execution, and the world had no idea.
"They know this exit exists," I whispered, the terrible logic forming. "They're waiting for us."
"Maybe," Nyx said. "But we're out of air and out of time. The Halon gas is seeping into the shaft. We need to go now, or we'll suffocate."
She put her shoulder to the grate. It was held by rusted bolts. She kicked it once, twice. On the third kick, the grate burst open, crashing onto the pavement with a sound that echoed like a gunshot in the silent, pre-dawn alley.
Nyx was out in a flash, her pistol raised, scanning the alley. "Clear!" she yelled.
She pulled Aria out of the shaft. I was last, tumbling onto the rain-slicked cobblestones, the cold air shocking against my grime-covered face. I gasped, my lungs burning, taking in the first clean breath I'd had in what felt like a lifetime.
We were free. We were out.
And we were completely exposed.
We were three women, one in a tattered robe, one in tech gear, and one in pajamas, standing in a dark alley in enemy territory. We had no money, no transport, and no allies. The entire Moretti security system—the guards, the cars, the safe houses—was gone, either eliminated or shut down by the Syndicate.
"My brother..." Aria whimpered, looking up at the distant silhouette of the Moretti Tower, a tombstone in the sky. "He's... he's in there..."
"He's gone," Nyx said, the words harsh but necessary. She was already checking her phone. "No signal. They've got a jammer up. We're in a dead zone. We're on our own."
The weight of our situation crashed down on me. Dante was gone. Leo was gone. The fortress was gone. All that remained was the cold, pouring rain, the ledger in my hand, and the two women whose lives depended on me.
I looked at Aria, her face a mask of shattered grief. I looked at Nyx, her expression a mix of terror and determination.
I was the only one left.
I stood up, pushing mud-caked hair out of my face. The cold rain washed away the last remnants of the girl who had been dragged into this. I was no longer Isabella Rossi, the law student. I was the keeper of the ledger. I was the heir to a war. I was the woman for whom Dante Moretti had given his life.
"No," I said, my voice echoing in the narrow alley, cold and hard like the steel of the gun still in my pocket.
Aria and Nyx turned to me, surprised by the certainty in my voice.
"We are not on our own," I said, raising my gaze to the dark tower, a silent vow to the man who had fallen inside it. "He left us with a weapon. He left us with a purpose. And he left us with his name. They've taken the king, but they forgot about the queen."
I turned to them, my eyes burning with a fire they had never seen before.
"We don't run," I commanded. "We don't hide. We fight. Nyx, I need a car and a clean line of communication. Now. Aria, stop crying. You're a Moretti. Get up and be a soldier. We are not just going to survive. We are going to burn them all to the ground."
The first battle was lost. The king was dead.
The war of the queen had just begun.