Chapter 6 Chapter 5 – The Price of Loyalty

Elena held the pistol steady, barrel centered on her father’s chest. The black marble floor beneath his knees reflected the overhead lights in cold, fractured shards, making the scene look like a painting someone had slashed with a knife. Her father’s tears fell faster now—silent, fat drops that darkened the cuffs of his cheap button-down shirt. The same shirt he’d worn to every family dinner, every birthday, every lie. “Elena, please,” he whispered. “I didn’t know… I thought they’d just take the money. I thought—” “You thought ten million dollars was worth more than your daughter’s life,” she finished for him. Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears—flat, precise, the way Alessandro spoke when he was deciding someone’s fate.