Avery POV
Hailey’s venomous gaze burned into mine, a mixture of agony and pure, unadulterated spite. She was a trapped animal, and like any cornered beast, she decided to bite the only hand that could potentially offer mercy—or in this case, the hand of the man who held the leash.
"Don't look at me like I'm the villain!" Hailey shrieked, her voice cracking as she twisted her neck to look up at Demetrius. Tears streamed down her face, ruining her perfect makeup, but her eyes were wild. "Ask her, Don Maddox! Ask her what she said about you at the Ricci Gala three years ago! She called you a 'tasteless brute in a stolen suit.' She laughed at you! She despises everything you stand for!"
The air in the room grew heavy, suffocating. My heart hammered against my ribs, not out of fear, but from the sheer adrenaline of the gamble. Hailey was right. I had said those things. I was eighteen, arrogant, and desperate to distance myself from the violent world my father tried to protect me from. I had insulted the rising Wolf of Chicago to his face, thinking my Bolton name was a shield.
I felt Demetrius’s gaze shift. It wasn’t the burning heat of anger I expected; it was a cold, clinical assessment that slid over my skin like ice water. He remembered. Of course he remembered. Men like him didn't forget insults; they collected them like debts.
"She's a liar and a whore!" Hailey continued, her voice rising to a fever pitch as she sensed the shift in the room. "She seduced you to escape her engagement, just like she seduced half of Europe! She's using you!"
I didn't let her finish. I leaned down, my face inches from hers, and twisted my heel. The sharp stiletto dug deeper into the tender flesh between her metacarpals.
Hailey’s scream was a jagged, wet sound that died in her throat as I grabbed her chin with my free hand, forcing her to look at me.
"You talk too much, Hailey," I said, my voice a low, dangerous purr that echoed the silence of the room. "You think digging up the petty insults of a teenage girl will save you? You think the Don cares about high society gossip?"
I let a dark, humorless smile touch my lips. "I am shameless. I admit it. I did what I had to do to survive the poison you put in my veins. I crawled into the devil's bed because I wanted to live."
I leaned closer, my whisper meant only for her and the man watching from his throne. "But you? You poisoned your own blood. You dragged a family war to the doorstep of the most dangerous man in the city because you were jealous. I may be a bitch, cousin, but you are catastrophically stupid."
Hailey’s eyes widened, the realization finally dawning on her. She had tried to make this a moral trial about my virtue, failing to realize that in this room, virtue was dead. Only power and loyalty mattered. And she had just proven she had neither.
I straightened up, releasing her chin but keeping her hand pinned beneath my heel. I turned my gaze slowly, deliberately, toward the two figures standing by the door.
My grandmother, Carmelita, looked as if she had aged ten years in ten minutes. But it was my uncle Christian who held my attention. The Capo who had once terrified me with his booming voice and heavy hand now looked like a ghost. His face was the color of ash, his eyes darting between his weeping daughter and the silent Don.
"The punishment for poisoning a blood relative is death," I announced, my voice ringing with a clarity that surprised even me. "The punishment for bringing false witness before a Don is... well, we all know what that is."
I lifted my foot, releasing Hailey. She didn't scramble away. She simply collapsed, curling into a ball, sobbing into the cold marble floor. She was broken, no longer a threat.
I stepped over her, moving toward Christian. I stopped five feet away, close enough to see the sweat beading on his upper lip.
"Hailey is just the knife, Uncle," I said cold. "But a knife doesn't stab on its own. Someone has to wield it."
Christian opened his mouth, perhaps to deny it, perhaps to beg, but no sound came out. He looked past me, at Demetrius, terrified to speak without permission. But Demetrius remained silent, a dark god watching his coliseum. He was letting me hold the gavel.
"I am declaring a Vendetta," I said, the ancient word heavy on my tongue. "Not against this pathetic girl, but against the hand that guided her. You wanted my father's seat? You wanted to erase my line?"
I tilted my head, my eyes locking with his. "I’m going to start counting, Christian. And when I finish, if you haven't given me a reason to let you walk out of this tower alive, I will ask the Don for a favor. And I promise you, his price will be much higher than mine."
"One."
The silence stretched, taut as a piano wire.
"Two."
Behind me, the sound of Hailey’s sobbing abruptly cut off. The sheer terror of the moment, the weight of the death sentence hanging over her father, was too much for her fragile constitution. She slumped completely flat against the floor, unconscious.
Christian flinched as if he’d been struck. He looked at his fallen daughter, then back at me, his eyes wide with the dawning horror that the niece he had underestimated was about to burn his entire world to the ground.
