Alfreda couldn't sleep. Not after what she saw in the Vault.
She stood on the balcony of the mountain villa, Nathaniel's jacket draped over her bare shoulders, her mind spinning with every name etched into the stone, every recording playing in the back of her head like a nightmare stuck on repeat.
Nathaniel joined her quietly, a glass of whiskey in hand.
"They won't sleep either," he said, his voice gravel. "Once the word gets out."
She turned to him, eyes hard. "You're going to use it."
"I'm going to burn it down."
"But first," she murmured, stepping close, "you want to pull the strings. Like your father."
He looked at her for a long time. "No. Better than him. I won't build another Widowmaker empire."
"Then what will you build, Nathaniel?"
He didn't answer.
But the way he kissed her said enough—for now.
Elsewhere in the city, underground, in a hidden room below a cathedral that hadn't held a sermon in thirty years, a man sat in shadows.
His name was Gaius Valez.
And he wasn't dead.
He had faked it—years ago.
Because to kill the Widowmaker legacy, he first had to become its ghost.
Now, as he watched the Vault footage through a cracked screen, he smiled.
"They opened it," he whispered.
A young man at his side, barely twenty, shifted nervously. "What do we do?"
Gaius grinned, all teeth and malice. "We watch them bury themselves with their own truths."
Back at the villa, Celeste poured over the files Alfreda had sent her—surveillance shots of the Vault, old contracts, coded letters with symbols she hadn't seen since she was a child.
One name came up again and again.
Aurelia Rook.
Her mother.
She stormed into the lounge, where her mother was lighting a cigarette with perfect ease.
"You built it," Celeste accused. "You and Gaius. You were the architects of the Vault."
Her mother blew smoke in her direction. "Correction. We were the architects of a future no one had the guts to create. Until now."
"You created a system that traded children like weapons," Celeste snapped. "You sold bloodlines, you orchestrated murders—"
"We brought order to chaos," Aurelia interrupted. "Before the Vault, the mafia was chaos. After the Vault, they followed rules. Our rules."
Celeste's hands shook. "You let me believe you were dead."
"And you survived. Which is exactly why I did it."
"Celia died."
Aurelia paused. "Celia wasn't supposed to be there."
Celeste stared at her. "You knew she would go. You just didn't care."
Her mother's silence was the only answer she needed.
Meanwhile, in a dim club in the heart of the city, someone was watching Alfreda.
Her name was Lorena Black.
Nathaniel's mother.
And she wasn't buried six feet under like the world believed.
She leaned on the bar, her heels digging into the velvet carpet, watching the screen behind the DJ booth. Footage from the Vault. Footage no one should have had.
But she did.
Because before Nathaniel was born, she had sealed a pact with Aurelia Rook.
A deal that created the Widowmakers.
A deal that required blood.
Now, it was time to collect.
In the villa's lower chamber, Nathaniel found an old drawer locked behind layers of metal.
Inside: one photo.
His mother.
Aurelia.
And… Celeste.
All smiling.
Under the photo, in jagged ink:
"The First Betrayer was never him."
He dropped the frame.
His hands curled into fists.
Because he had just realized something terrifying.
The Vault wasn't built to control enemies.
It was built to control family.
Across the estate, Alfreda stood in the rose garden, phone to her ear.
"She's alive?" she asked, her voice trembling.
On the other end of the line, a voice whispered, "Lorena never died. She disappeared. On purpose."
"And now?"
"She wants the Vault."
"Why?"
A pause. Then:
"Because she knows it holds the truth about your birth."
Inside the study, Celeste found another file—one hidden beneath the floorboards, sealed with red wax.
She broke it open.
A birth certificate.
Not hers.
Not Alfreda's.
But a boy named Eliot Rook.
Her twin.
One she never knew existed.
And at the bottom, a note in Aurelia's handwriting:
"He lives. Under another name. And he's already close to you."
In the quiet hours before dawn, Alfreda and Nathaniel stood at the edge of the cliff behind the villa.
He held out the photo he found.
"I think we were all lied to," he said.
She studied the picture, fingers trembling as she traced the edges.
"You mean… we're all tied to the Widowmakers in ways we don't understand."
"No," he said. "I mean maybe one of us created them."
Alfreda looked up at him. "What if it was me?"
Silence.
Then Nathaniel said what terrified them both.
"What if it was me?"
And in the church cellar, under the flickering light of candles no longer used for prayer, Gaius Valez whispered to the boy beside him:
"Eliot," he said. "Are you ready to meet your sister?"