Christian's POV
The confession felt like amputating a limb. It should have hurt less than the guilt but it burned.
I found Anthony on the rooftop at dawn, while the city still smoked its night away. Bella slept back home, probably dreaming of revenge. Crystal was god-knows-where, soaking his anger in liquor. I needed to set something right, or at least try.
"Tell me," I told him, voice low. "Tell me everything."
Anthony's laugh was a dry rasp. "You finally came to bargain with the devil, little saint?"
"No." I leaned over the ledge and let the chill morning air bite at my face. "I came to tell you that I lied to her. I told her things that would keep her safe but only made the wound deeper. I covered for you, Crystal. I thought I could control it. I thought I could stop it."
Anthony watched me with those dark, cold eyes. "Control is an illusion, Christian. You've been playing king while the real game was elsewhere."
I swallowed. "Who set her up at the mall? Who paid those men? Who made sure she didn't have a single witness?"
Anthony's silence cut deeper than any blade. When he finally spoke it was slow, careful.
"You want to know who profited from Bella disappearing?" he asked. "Follow the paper trail. Find the shipments that never reached port. Find the men who suddenly had new houses and fake marriages. It isn't one man. It's a syndicate. And the head of that syndicate has a stake in seeing the Abaddons fail."
My blood ran cold. Opponents. Backers. A conspiracy large enough to swallow the family whole.
"And you?" I whispered. "Were you part of it?"
His smile was a knife. "I played them until they chose to bind me. But binding me didn't stop me. It just changed the way I moved."
The sun rose on my confession, and when I left the rooftop my hands were empty and dangerous.
Crystal's POV
I hated being told what to do. But the numbers came and the men reported with the cold efficiency of assassins.
Warehouses burned near the port. A courier, fat with new cash, was found face-down in a back alley. A favored lieutenant chain-smoked himself to death in a car with a message carved into his palm: STAY OUT.
Someone was hitting our interests, not just our face. Not quietly. Loud, bloody, and public.
"Who's doing this?" I demanded.
"Anthony Santa's old contacts," Vernon said, throat tight. "And someone else a foreign partner, a man named Russo. He's been buying silence with blood."
I tasted the word Russo like iron — an outside hand with money, with muscle, with appetite. If they were targeting our revenue, they wanted us weak. If we were weak, they wanted the throne.
I called a meeting. The brothers came: Christian, wounded and quiet; myself, wired on rage; a council of men who looked at me like they wanted orders or a reason to die.
We decided on strikes surgical, brutal, three nights that would show our reach. We would smoke out Russo's men and cut their supply. We would make them bleed for every ship burned.
And then I made the call I had resisted: put a hit on the courier who had the photos from the mall. The one who could tie Anthony's name to the syndicate.
"No," Christian said, voice raw. "We can use him alive. We can talk to him. We can—"
"We need to send a message," I snapped. "You want to protect her? Prove it. Let me handle the violence."
He wanted to split us down the middle. He wanted careful answers while I wanted blood. The choice already told me who I was.
Bella's POV
War smelled like gasoline and fear. I learned that in the streets we came from; that same scent followed me into the Abaddon museum of power.
Anthony's whispering hadn't stopped. If anything, it became more refined. He gave me facts that fit together like the edges of a knife. He named names, routes, invoices. He told me whose loyalty could be bought and whose couldn't; which lie made which man sleep more easily.
I used the money they had given me to hire my own eyes — hackers, data people, a quiet ex-detective who drank too much but loved the smell of a solved puzzle. I played them like a chessboard. While they argued above, I picked at the map of their empire.
When Crystal's strike blew up an empty warehouse and a dozen of Russo's men died, it made the feeds. Soldiers killed soldiers, profit killed profit. Russo answered with rockets at an unattended dock. The tit-for-tat became a public show of power.
I sat in a small room with screens and names and waited for the moment to use the one thing that could cut all of them open: proof. The courier who'd been killed had pictures — pictures with a tattooed supplier, a payment slip signed with a code Russo used, and a ledger that linked a shell company to a man far higher than we'd expected: a politician with interests in both port development and private security.
If I released the ledger, it would blow Russo's cover. It would give us a blade to tear the coalition apart. But releasing it would also mean murder contracts would rip into the open and people I cared about would die.
I set the file to upload anyway.
Third-Person POV - The War Begins
At 02:14 the city woke to the sound of gunfire.
It began with Russo's men trying to take the Abaddon dock. Explosions carved fire into the night — boats burned like black skeletons. A convoy hit the estate from the east road. A dozen men in black surged toward the gate. We were ready.
Crystal's men met them in the dark. Christian coordinated medics and hold lines; I coordinated the flanks with men I barely trusted but who trusted me because I let them be wolves. Bella's file hit the feeds at 02:18 — the ledger and images splashed across shell accounts and private channels. Russo's politicians had no cover. Men who had bought safety contracts found themselves with bounties on their heads.
Chaos loved the Abaddon name. Flames licked the mansion. Helena's private cars were turned into barricades. Dogs barked. Men screamed.
Anthony's timing — whether by design or plan — was perfection. Half his whispers had been lies, half truth. He'd wanted chaos that would turn the family inward and make each brother do what he did best: one to destroy, one to protect. The external army did the rest.
Christian fought like a man who wanted redemption. Crystal fought like a man who would crush anyone who dared reach for the woman he wanted. I shot like a man who'd decided if he were to burn, he'd take the world with him.
Bullets sang past, a sound so close and intimate you could read who would live by the tempo. Men went down. Cars flipped. A helicopter that had looked like insurance dropped heavy men on the north lawn — Russo's private troops.
By dawn, two warehouses in the port were ash, one major shipping line had fled the city with their boss in tow, and three men managing city contracts were missing. The estate smoldered. Men lay in the yard with the mottled dark of their blood cooling. A siren keened.
$$$$$$$$$$
We had won a battle; we had not won the war.
I stood on the estate steps with Christian and Crystal behind me, three silhouettes carved by the first gray light. Men I thought I could trust had left. New mercenaries lurked in the channels. Anthony's eyes watched from the shadows of his cell: satisfied, as if a stage had been set and the actors were finally on cue.
"You did this," Crystal said, voice thick and dangerous. "You released it."
"I gave you a weapon," I said flat. "You used it. We all used it."
Christian looked like he wanted to cry and kill at once. "You put us in the open. They'll come for everything. For you."
"Let them," I answered. "If they want war, they'll get it. But remember this — no one will take me as a piece. I will not be anyone's property."
Crystal's eyes heated, and for a second I saw something like reverence under the anger. "So you'll stand with us?"
"No," I said. "I'll stand where I want. With whoever earns it."
The brothers chewed on that like men tasting iron. Anthony laughed from below, a soft sound that meant anything could be possible.
$$$$$$$$$ Time Flies $$$$$$$$$$$$
I didn't mean to end up outside his door.
Christian's room was dim, lit only by a single lamp. He looked up when I entered, surprise flickering across his face before he masked it with calm.
"Bella," he said quietly. "You shouldn't be here."
"That's what everyone keeps telling me," I replied.
The silence between us was heavier than gunfire.
"I heard what you said to Crystal," he said, not accusing, just wounded.
"And?" I challenged.
"And it sounded like you were daring him to claim you."
I laughed softly. "You think this is about him?"
His eyes darkened. "It's about what he represents. Chaos. Fire. A world that will eat you alive."
"And what do you represent?" I asked. "A cage with soft walls?"
He flinched actually flinched like I'd struck him.
"I would never cage you," he said, voice rough. "I would die before I did that."
"Sometimes," I whispered, stepping closer, "your protection feels like possession in disguise."
His breath hitched.
"Because if I stop protecting you," he said, "I lose the only excuse I have to stay this close to you."
The honesty stole the air from my lungs.
I reached out before I could stop myself, my fingers brushing his wrist. Just skin. Just heat.
Christian sucked in a breath like it hurt.
"Don't," he whispered. "If you touch me like that, I won't be strong enough to let you go. And you deserve someone who doesn't love you like a sin."
"I'm tired of being loved safely," I said softly.
For one dangerous second, his hands rose stopping inches from my waist. Not touching. Choosing not to.
That restraint was more intimate than any kiss.
His forehead dropped to mine, barely brushing.
"If you choose him," Christian whispered, "I will still protect you. But it will destroy me."
"And if I choose myself?" I asked.
His voice was a broken smile. "Then I'll love you from the shadows. Like I always have."
War had broken the family open, exposed bones where hearts had been. Now every player friends, enemies, false allies would choose.
I was done being a victim of their choices. I would choose for myself.
The war was only the beginning.