The world shrank to the black eye of the gun barrel. Elara felt time slow, each heartbeat a thunderous echo in the dusty silence. She saw the tremor in Charles’s hand, not from fear, but from pure, incandescent rage. Behind her, she heard Liam’s sharp intake of breath and the subtle shift of Miranda’s security team preparing to move, but they were frozen, hostages to the physics of a trigger pull.
“You,” Charles seethed, the word vibrating with hatred. “A mistake I should have erased years ago. Your mother was a sentimental fool. She thought love was enough. I showed her it wasn’t.”
“Put it down, Father.” The voice came from the stairwell behind Charles. Kaelan stood there, leaning heavily on the doorframe, his face a mask of pain and lethal calm. He held no weapon. He was the weapon. “Y
