The truth exposed on the giant screens acted like a fast-acting poison in everyone's mind.
The golden idol, the man they had venerated for decades, had just been publicly dissected to reveal the rot inside.
The silence lasted a long while.
Then, the stadium roared.
But this time it wasn't a roar of love. It was the deep and guttural sound of hate.
"Fraud!"
"Murderer!"
"Give him back his life!"
The individual screams were lost in a wave of insults that hit the stage.
Adoration has a hidden face, and Ernesto had just awakened the beast.
Ernesto, under the pale light that before made him shine, was now exposed like a specimen under a microscope.
He could see that in the front rows there were no longer eyes of adoration, only empty sockets filled with contempt and jaws clenched in fury.
Sweat soaked his immaculate white suit.
"It's a setup!" he shrieked, pointing frantically at the screens, "Security! Get them out of there! Arrest them all! Protect your star!"
But the guards remained at their posts.
The security men, loyal to Dorothy or simply disgusted by the revelation, crossed their arms, motionless.
Ernesto was alone.
But not for long.
The first projectile flew from the third row.
A glass bottle crashed at Ernesto's feet.
It was the signal the crowd was waiting for.
"LIAR!"
A femur thrown with baseball force hit Ernesto in the shoulder, making him stagger. A skull hit his chest.
Bottles, shoes, food scraps, and stones flew toward the stage.
Ernesto covered his head with his arms.
"Back! I am Ernesto de la Cruz!" he shouted, but his words were swallowed by the massive booing.
Another hit, this time a stone to the forehead, made him stumble backward.
Pain and humiliation drove him to turn around and flee.
…
Meanwhile, the VIP hallway muffled the chaos outside, reducing the roar of the revolt to a distant vibration.
Lief advanced firmly holding Dorothy by the waist, supporting almost all her weight while she dragged her feet over the carpet.
Her body still burned and with the passing of time her unique scent did nothing but intensify.
"Where?"
Dorothy raised a trembling hand and pointed toward a dark door carved with black roses at the end of the corridor.
Noticing that her pace was unsustainable, Lief, without stopping to ask for permission, leaned down and lifted her up in his arms, passing one arm under her knees and the other behind her back.
Dorothy let out a choked gasp and her muscles tensed by reflex, her nails digging into his shoulders.
"You...!"
"You walk too slow," Lief interrupted her with indifference, picking up the pace.
He reached the door in three long strides and the doors, as if recognizing their owner's aura, slid to the sides.
The interior was a sanctuary faithful to her aesthetic.
The spacious room, shrouded in gloom, was decorated in blood and obsidian tones.
Thick, high-pile carpets covered the floor and dark red velvet furniture was arranged under dim lamps. Meanwhile, an immense floor-to-ceiling window dominated the back wall, offering a panoramic view of the stadium and the eternal night of the Land of the Dead.
Crossing the entrance, Lief dropped Dorothy onto the central sofa.
Upon reaching the refuge of the sofa, Dorothy succumbed to gravity and sank deep into the velvet cushions, releasing her accumulated tension in a long sigh that seemed to drain her completely.
Her stiffness melted into a posture of absolute languor and she let her head fall back against the backrest, exposing her neck, and closed her eyes for an instant.
Stepping away, Lief walked toward the large window.
Below, on the distant stage, a tide of tiny dots surrounded a solitary white figure.
The violence of the crowd was visible even from that height.
"Ernesto is finished," he commented in a flat voice, observing the public execution.
"Regarding the contract..." He turned to look at the woman on the sofa, "do you want me to go down and capture the boy now? He's in the control room."
Dorothy opened her eyes slowly, and slid the tip of her scarlet tongue over the rough surface of her lips, moistening them with a deliberate movement.
"No," she murmured softly. "Let him go."
Seeking to regain her composure, she adjusted herself among the cushions and crossed her legs.
"Tonight's 'surprises' have been enough. So many that... I still feel my bones vibrating." In that instant, she locked her gaze on Lief, looking him up and down with an evident mix of calculating caution and hunger.
"Besides, I vaguely remember that Héctor guy. If De la Cruz built his empire on stolen corpses, he deserves to have it torn down.
It's a poetic ending.
I love Greek tragedies, and this way I save myself the trouble of taking out the trash myself."
A lazy, cruel smile curved her lips.
"I've always detested hypocrites, and seeing him crawl is much more entertaining."
"..."
Lief looked at her in silence, understanding what she wasn't saying.
'She is really exhausted... she's surely a virgin.'
Thud! Thud! Thud!
But the atmosphere was interrupted by three sharp, authoritative knocks on the door.
Dorothy frowned.
"Come in." She ordered, knowing who it might be.
The panels slid open, and a man dressed in an impeccable butler's tuxedo entered the room.
He bowed deeply toward Dorothy, but upon straightening and noticing the human's presence by the window, his expression changed. It wasn't an exaggerated gesture, but a micro-gesture of repulsion.
"Madam Dorothy," began the butler in an unctuous tone, "My master, the Great Prince Beelzebub, requests your presence in his private box. He wishes to discuss the... peculiar farce of tonight with you."
"I don't have time," Dorothy cut him off, sinking her head deeper into the cushion. "Tell your master I am exhausted."
The rejection was blunt, but the butler's face showed no surprise; he simply turned his neck toward Lief.
"In that case, His Highness insists on an alternative," said the demon, lowering his voice. "The human must accompany me. The Prince is curious to inspect the 'pet' you have brought from the world of the living."
Lief, who was observing the chaos of the plaza leaning against the window frame, curled his lips into an insolent smile at the servant.
"Sorry, but I'm not into men."
!
The butler's servile smile disappeared, replaced by a grimace of pure anger that deformed his human features, and with it, the room temperature dropped abruptly.
"Mortal..." he hissed, taking a step forward, "You are refusing a direct order from a Prince of Hell. Remember that your life is a mistake here and you don't have the privilege of choice."
Swish
With those last words, he disappeared from his position in a burst of speed, crossing the distance like a dark blur in a split second.
His right hand, morphing in mid-air into a black, razor-sharp claw, sought Lief's jugular with lethal precision.
From the sofa, Dorothy tensed instinctively, preparing to intervene in the face of imminent danger, but Lief proved to be incredibly faster.
Barely shifting his stance, he simply raised his left hand while his palm began to shine with an intense golden glow.
Slap!
A sharp, brutal, and deafening impact, similar to a point-blank shot from a heavy caliber, echoed in the room when Lief intercepted the onslaught with a backhand slap that connected squarely on the butler's cheek.
"AAAAHH!!"
The blood-curdling, tearing scream escaped the butler's throat as the force of the blow launched him backward as if he were weightless.
Boom
He crossed the room and crashed violently against the wall, sliding down to the floor where he began to writhe in agony, bringing his hands desperately to his face.
Where Lief's golden hand had struck him, the skin bubbled and melted like wax in a fire, giving off plumes of smoke and an unbearable stench of rot, leaving the perfect handprint of the slap branded onto his disfigured face.
"Y-You..."
Slap!
Without giving the sound time to finish forming in his throat, Lief devoured the distance between them and delivered a second slap, this time against the left side of his face.
But the effect was devastatingly different; the slap acted like a blowtorch, instantly charring the skin upon contact and causing the skull bone beneath the cheek to collapse, crumbling into dust.
Falling to his knees, the butler's body began to convulse violently as the tissue of his face tried to regenerate, only to be consumed again and again by the relentless golden embers that ate away at his flesh without mercy.
"Why... why...?" Absolute terror finally replaced any trace of arrogance in his single remaining eye.
Lief looked down at him, observing his agony with bored indifference.
"I have a flaw," he said with a voice devoid of any human emotion, "I am very particular about my personal space, and I detest men trying to invade it."
Without waiting for an answer, he raised his left hand for a third time, letting the golden light shine with greater intensity.
"Sto–" the butler tried to plead, raising his claws in a pathetic gesture of defense and opening his mouth to scream, but the words died in his throat when Lief brought his hand down.
Slap!
The annihilation was instantaneous.
In a split second, flesh, bones, and the butler's clothes lost their cohesion and disintegrated, turning into a dense cloud of ash that collapsed onto the carpet.
Dusting off his hands, Lief turned toward the sofa, where Dorothy was already sitting completely upright, her eyes fixed on him.
"Sorry, I got carried away."
________
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