Blood.
The first thing Selene saw when the video cut out was Gio’s body, twisted on the marble, blood spreading like spilled ink across a story that shouldn’t have ended. The silence that followed didn’t feel like peace, it felt like the world had stopped breathing. It was suffocating. Like the walls themselves held their breath.
Darius stood across from her, chest rising hard, face unreadable, but his eyes told a different story. Grief. Guilt. Rage. All of it knotted up behind his stare, a storm barely contained.
Selene dropped the drive on the floor, her hands shaking. “He was just a kid,” she whispered. “He wasn’t built for this.”
“He wanted to be,” Darius said hoarsely.
She turned on him. “Don’t you dare try to justify this. Lazarus sent me that video to make a point. “It’s a remi
