The Bastard's Blade

Chapter 7

My finger tightened on the silver trigger, the metal biting into my skin, ready to finalize the debt. But before the hammer could fall, the heavy steel doors of the penthouse didn't just open—they dissolved in a controlled, surgical explosion.

‎Charlotte stepped through the settling dust, her figure sharp against the firelight. She wasn't wearing her tactical gear anymore; she was back in her tailored silk, looking every bit the ruling queen of a new era.

‎"Enough, Vera," she said, her voice carrying over the roar of the wind. She didn't raise a weapon, but the two snipers flanking her did, their red laser dots dancing across my father’s chest—and my own.

‎"You told me to finish it," I yelled, my pulse pounding against the revolver's grip. "You said I was the blade!"

‎"A blade is a tool, Vera. And a dead man is a useless one," Charlotte countered, walking toward us with a clinical, predatory interest. She looked down at my father, who was gasping for air on the floor. "Your father has the offshore account keys and the names of the three senators who haven't turned yet. If you kill him now, we lose the infrastructure. “We lost the crown."

‎I looked down at the man who had spent twenty years erasing me. He was pathetic, a weary animal, yet Charlotte was right—he was still a valuable asset for intelligence.

‎"He doesn't deserve to breathe," I hissed.

‎Charlotte leaned in, her velvet-over-blade voice chilling my soul. "In this world, we don't do what people deserve. We do what is profitable. Step back. Your training isn't over—it’s just changed."

‎The weight of the gun felt like a lead. I had a choice: pull the trigger and become a ghost in the wind, or lower it and become Charlotte’s right hand in a kingdom built on my father’s bones.

‎I lowered the silver revolver, not out of mercy, rather to the realization of the fact that killing him was an escape for him; keeping him alive, "Powerless", helplessly watching me take his place was an exquisite torture. Charlotte immediately moved her team in to secure the "The Vault." While her technicians bled his accounts dry, she forced me to sign the documents that officially transfer the Salvatore assets into a blind trust controlled by the two women

As I stood on the balcony, Charlotte revealed a chilling detail: she didn't just find me to help her, she engineered the original transport hit that forced me out of hiding and tested my "lethality" before the takeover.

‎By dawn, the city wakes up to a new reality. The "clenched fists" were absorbed, and the name Salvatore is no longer whispered with fear, but with the knowledge that a new shadow was running the heights.

As I stood in my father's office, looking at the city i now partially owned, I realized I'm now tied to Charlotte, a woman far more dangerous and calculating than my father ever was.