Chapter Thirteen:Paris Will Burn
852 Words
The plane touched down on the runway of Charles de Gaulle under a moonless sky, the windows fogged with the breath of a coming war. Paris—golden and grim—had always been a place of memory. For Areniel, it was the first taste of escape. For Renelle, it was once a dream stage. For Kendra, it was only foreign ground—until tonight.
Salvadore’s voice still echoed in their minds: “You’re not here to perform. You’re here to remind them that you survived.”
The girls had arrived under aliases. Not as chart-topping artists, not as the daughters of betrayal, but as ghosts walking the cobbled streets of a city that once felt like salvation. But the city was not sleeping. Not tonight.
From the moment they stepped into the blacked-out SUV waiting by the terminal, the air grew thicker. Areniel sat at the window, silent, her gaze locked on the Seine in the distance. She wasn’t dressed to impress—only to kill. Tight black leather, her boots hollowed for blades. The silver box Salvadore gave her sat unopened in her jacket pocket. She would know when the time was right.
Kendra cracked her knuckles. “So what’s the play?”
Renelle, seated between them, glanced at the tablet screen in her hand. “Riley is hosting a secret gala in Montmartre. All the remnants of the Cartel will be there. And Don Cataldo.”
Areniel’s jaw clenched. “Then we make them bleed.”
“But the media—” Renelle began.
“They’ll be too busy watching the ashes,” Kendra replied.
---
At the summit of Montmartre, the Château du Feu glowed with arrogant opulence. Inside, masked elites danced under chandeliers. Don Cataldo stood like a king in exile—dressed in black silk, surrounded by men who owed him their lives and wives who owed him their silence.
But he wasn’t smiling. He felt something—like the shadows themselves were watching.
At his side, Riley sipped from a gold-plated glass, her gown a venomous red. Her confidence had returned since the last k********g. Kendra and Renelle had been sent back alive but shaken. Areniel had stayed hidden. That unsettled her. But tonight, she would own the stage once again.
“They’ll be here,” she whispered to her father. “They always come when you least want them to.”
Don Cataldo nodded. “Then let them come. We’ll give them the family reunion they crave.”
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They arrived without sound.
Three shadows drifting into a hall of mirrors.
Renelle was the first to be recognized. Someone gasped. Then a hush swept the room like a deadly wind.
“What the hell is this?” Riley snapped, rising from her velvet throne.
Kendra smiled, wicked. “It’s a party, isn’t it? We brought the fireworks.”
Don Cataldo didn’t move. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Areniel stepped forward, pulling the silver box from her jacket.
“We didn’t come to talk.”
The music halted.
Then a scream.
Chaos.
Kendra flung a flashbang into the center of the ballroom. Guests fell. Guards reached for weapons. But Areniel was already moving—like water shaped by violence. She struck, silent and brutal, slicing through a guard’s knee before he could aim. Renelle hacked the lights. Strobe and shadow danced across the walls.
Riley ran—but not fast enough. Kendra caught her by the wrist, slamming her into a column.
“This is for the basement,” Kendra hissed.
“You were always second-rate,” Riley spat. “Daughter of nothing—”
The slap came like a gunshot. But Kendra didn’t kill her. Not yet.
“You’ll live long enough to know what it feels like to lose everything.”
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Don Cataldo fled to the upper chamber, panting, bleeding from a shallow wound on his shoulder. Areniel followed.
“Do you even remember me?” she said, cornering him.
His eyes glinted in the moonlight pouring through stained glass.
“You should have died with your mother.”
“No,” Areniel said, flipping the blade. “I lived to end you.”
She lunged. He parried with a fire poker, desperate and clumsy. But Areniel had been trained by pain. Every move was poetry written in the blood of a thousand nights.
When he collapsed, wheezing on the marble floor, she crouched over him.
“She loved you,” Areniel whispered. “She loved you and you destroyed her.”
“She was a traitor.”
“No. She was your daughter.”
The blade slid between his ribs.
He didn’t scream.
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Outside, Paris burned.
Not in flames, but in truths exposed, secrets spilled. Renelle had sent live footage to every major network. The guests—unmasked, screaming—would be tomorrow’s headlines. Corruption laid bare. The fall of Don Cataldo immortalized in digital ink.
By the time dawn crept over the rooftops, the sisters were gone.
Ghosts once more.
But the world would remember them.
And the Cartel?
It would never rise again.
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To be continued…
- Writer
