The night howled around them.
Nathaniel stood on the cliff's edge, the burning ruins of the opera house painting the black sky with hellish light behind him.
The wind tore at his coat, at his hair, but he stood unmoving—stone forged by rage.
Alfreda watched him from a few paces back, blood still wet on her throat.
She knew better than to speak.
Tonight wasn't about comfort.
It was about crowning a king with blood.
And burying an empire.
"Tell me," he said finally, voice dead-flat, "how deep it goes."
Alfreda's heart twisted.
She stepped closer, knowing there was no easy way to say it.
"Benedict built the Widowmakers," she said. "But Lorena…" She swallowed. "Lorena owns what's left."
Nathaniel didn't flinch.
"She has a child," Alfreda added, her voice breaking the silence like a dagger to glass. "Your child."
For the first time, Nathaniel moved.
A twitch of the jaw.
A flare of something cold and savage in his eyes.
"Mine?" he rasped.
Alfreda nodded.
"He's about six. Trained since birth. Taught to hate you."
Nathaniel laughed once, a low ugly sound.
"Typical."
He turned to her fully now—and the look in his eyes was not human.
It was something older.
Something that remembered fire and war and blood oaths made on broken bones.
"Then we burn her next," he said.
"And the boy?" Alfreda asked, softly.
Nathaniel's lips curled into a feral smile.
"We'll see."
—
Meanwhile, Celeste was bleeding out on the backseat of Ezra's car.
"You're getting blood on my seats," Ezra muttered, but his hands were already pressing a torn scarf against the wound in her side.
"You're such an asshole," Celeste hissed.
"And you're bleeding out. So maybe don't get witty."
She bared her teeth at him in a grin.
"Wasn't wit. It was fact."
Ezra rolled his eyes, but the fear in them was real.
He wrapped her tighter, knuckles white.
He wasn't ready to lose her.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
"Stay awake," he said, voice low.
Celeste winked.
"Only if you keep talking dirty."
He laughed—short, bitter.
"Jesus. You're dying, and you're still the worst."
But he squeezed her hand like he meant something else.
Like maybe, after all this blood and betrayal, they still had a chance.
Maybe.
If they lived.
—
Across the sea, in a private fortress stitched into the cliffs of Montenegro, Lorena Black was already moving her pieces.
"Deploy the blood contracts," she ordered her men.
She signed three death warrants with Nathaniel's name. One for Celeste. One for Alfreda. One for Ezra.
Three signatures. Three bullets.
She would end this the same way it had started—
with fire and betrayal.
And the boy would be her heir.
Nathaniel Black would be nothing but a bloody memory.
Two days later.
The Widowmakers' funeral wasn't a ceremony.
It was a declaration of war.
Nathaniel stood before the scattered survivors of the Widowmaker clans—the few who hadn't turned on each other like rabid dogs.
Scarred men.
Broken women.
Orphans.
Traitors.
Killers.
He stood over them all, bloody knuckles and a voice like thunder.
"Benedict is dead," he roared. "Lorena is a liar."
Murmurs.
Fear.
Hope.
"And I—" he said, voice cracking the silence, "am the only one who can save you."
Somewhere in the crowd, a gun cocked.
But no one fired.
Because they all knew.
Nathaniel Black wasn't asking for loyalty.
He was demanding it.
Later that night, Alfreda found him alone in the ruins of the Widowmakers' last safehouse.
She saw it in his eyes—the madness threading itself into his soul.
He wasn't just fighting to survive anymore.
He was fighting to erase the past.
And maybe himself.
"You can't kill your way out of this," she said quietly.
Nathaniel didn't look at her.
"I can try."
Alfreda crossed to him, touching his scarred jaw with fingers that didn't tremble.
"I'm not afraid of who you are," she said.
"You should be," he whispered.
But he leaned into her touch anyway.
And when their mouths crashed together, it wasn't sweet or slow.
It was war.
It was blood.
It was the last sane thing either of them had left.
The next morning, Nathaniel called his council.
Alfreda at his right hand.
Ezra flanking Celeste at his left.
Three people who should have been enemies.
Three people who had survived everything meant to kill them.
Nathaniel unrolled a map on the bloodstained table.
Montenegro.
The fortress.
The child.
"Tonight," he said, voice a death knell, "we end it."
"And if we die?" Ezra asked, cool as ice.
Nathaniel smiled.
"Then we take them with us."
Across the water, Lorena dressed the boy in black.
"Your father is coming," she whispered to him.
The boy—sharp, cold, beautiful—nodded solemnly.
"And I will kill him."
Lorena kissed his forehead.
"Yes, my little king. You will."
But in her eyes… there was fear.
Because even Lorena Black knew:
No one survived Nathaniel Black's wrath.
Not even blood.