Chapter 67 Bang

Chapter 67 Bang
I didn't wait for him to move. I closed the distance between us in three predatory strides, the heavy barrel of my pistol shaking only from the sheer force of my adrenaline. 

Elias didn't flinch. Slowly, he stood up and turned to face me. The high-backed chair let out a long, agonizing creak as it swayed behind him.

I shoved the muzzle of the gun into the center of his chest, right over his heart—if he even had one.

"Where the fuck is my son, Elias?" I roared, my voice echoing off the rusted rafters of the warehouse. "Why do you have him? Why did you take him? What is the price this time? Tell me!"

Elias didn't reach for a weapon. He didn't even sneer. Instead, a mask of genuine, irritating confusion settled over his face. He looked at the gun, then back at me, his eyes searching mine as if I were the one speaking a foreign language.

"I already told you, Aurielle," he said, his voice eerily calm. "I don't have your son. I don't have my grandson."

"He is not your grandson!" I barked, the sound tearing through my throat. I pressed the gun harder into his sternum, forcing him back a step. "And I am certainly not your daughter. A father doesn't try to erase his own child simply because she was born a girl. A father doesn't spend decades psychologically dismantling a child's mother until she's a shell of a human being. You aren't a father, Elias. You're a devil."

I leaned in, my face inches from his, "Now, for the last time," I hissed, my thumb pulling back the hammer of the pistol. Click. "Where the hell is Adrien?"

A muffled, scratching sound broke the heavy silence. It came from behind a door at the far end of the warehouse. 

Elias's eyes widened for a fraction of a second. A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, like he'd forgotten he had left a piece of trash in the corner. He had clearly expected her to stay unconscious, to remain the silent victim of his latest fit of rage.

"What was that?" I demanded, not lowering my gun.

I didn't wait for his answer. I backed away from him, my eyes locked on his face as I moved toward the sound. I reached out and kicked the door open.

My heart stopped. 

A woman was slumped on the freezing concrete. She was battered, her face a map of bruises and dried blood, her hands bound tightly behind her back. Her eyes were dull, glazed with exhaustion, but when she looked up and saw me, a spark of pure, agonizing hope flared in them.

I recognized her. I had seen her before, but where?

"What the hell..." I whispered, my voice trembling. "Who is she? Why do you have an innocent woman tied up like an animal, Elias?"

Elias stepped into the doorway, his silhouette blocking the light. He looked down at the woman with a disgust so cold it felt like a blade. "Innocent? Hardly. She's the root of every failure in this family."

He let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "That, Aurielle, is Kieran's mother."

"What?" So Kendella was right?

Elias paced the small room, his ego finally bursting at the seams. "Since I'm going to end your pathetic little life anyway, I might as well let you carry the truth to your grave. I'm tired of the secrets. I'm tired of the disgrace you've all brought to my name."

He looked at me, his lip curling in a sneer.

"Marliese ran away from me like a coward, taking you with her. After that, I tried. I went to woman after woman, desperate for a son. For an heir. But I was... broken. Impotent." He spat the word out as if it were poison. "A punishment from God? Perhaps. But I refused to be the Don who couldn't sire a legacy. I refused to let my brothers laugh at me, to watch the crown pass to them while they called me an impotent  king."

I stared at the woman on the floor. She was crying silently now, her gaze fixed on me, pleading.

"So I took him," Elias continued, his voice rising with a twisted pride. "This woman had a son. A boy with blue eyes that could pass for mine in the right light. I took him from her arms and told the world he was my blood. I gave that maid's child my name, my wealth, and my training. I forced her to stay, to work in my house, and watch her son grow up never knowing her. I told her if she ever whispered the truth to him, I'd bury them both."

"You... you monster," I choked out.

The weight of it hit me like a physical blow. Kieran wasn't my brother. He wasn't my stepbrother. He was a stranger's child, stolen and lied to, used as a pawn in a man's desperate attempt to hide his own infertility.

All the pain, the guilt, the "sin" we thought we committed... it was all a lie created by the man standing in front of me. 

"And for what?" Elias barked, looking at the woman on the floor. "I gave her brat everything, and he turned out to be a weak, sentimental fool just like you. A maid's child playing at being a Prince."

My vision blurred. Tears burned my eyes as I looked at the woman who had spent almost thirty  years watching her son from the shadows, unable to ever hold him or tell him she loved him. My heart broke for her, for Kieran, for the years of torture Elias had inflicted on them just to save his own reputation.

What kind of man was this? Why was he so full of hate?

My legs gave out. I fell to my knees, the weight of my seven-month-old belly making the movement heavy and awkward. I reached out, my fingers trembling as I touched the woman's shoulder, trying to pull her toward me, to offer some kind of comfort I didn't even have for myself.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed, the word meant for her and for Kieran. "I'm so sorry."

"Save your tears, Aurielle," Elias said. 
I heard the unmistakable slide of his gun being cocked. "Now that you've heard the truth, I think it's time for you to die. You were a mistake from the moment you were born. And today, I'm finally going to fix it."

I didn't stay down. Despite the weight of my pregnancy, despite the grief threatening to drown me, I forced myself back up. My knees screamed, and my breath came in ragged hitches, but I didn't let my gun waver.

I leveled my pistol at Elias's head just as he pressed his to mine.

We stood in a deadlock of blood and betrayal. Father and daughter. The man who had spent his life destroying women, and the woman who had spent hers surviving men. 

Elias let out a dry, rattling chuckle. "Look at you," he sneered, the barrel of his weapon cold against my temple. "You're shaking, Aurielle. You can't do it. You have that same pathetic softness in your eyes that Marliese had."

"Don't you dare speak her name," I hissed.

"Women are always the same," Elias continued, his voice dripping with a lifetime of misogyny. "Weak. Cowards. You run when things get difficult. You hide behind emotions and call it strength. You were never fit to rule this empire, Aurielle. You were a mistake I should have erased the moment you took your first breath. You're a weakling."

"Weak?" I repeated the word, and a cold, sharp laugh erupted from my chest. It was a sound born from the dark corners of the bars I'd scrubbed, from the hunger I'd felt, from the screams of the children I'd fought to protect.

"I was an orphan for years while you sat on a throne," I spat, my voice gaining a terrifying steady edge. "I worked as a sex worker in back-alley bars just to put food in my mouth. I gave birth to Adrien in the dark and felt the soul-crushing weight of losing my other child. I was abandoned the day I was born and left to rot, and yet... I am still standing."

I stepped into the pressure of his gun, forcing him to look into my eyes—eyes that had seen more hell than he could ever imagine.

"How dare you call me weak? After everything I've survived, after every time I was beaten down and crawled back up, you think you can break me with a word?" I leaned in, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "You're the weak one, Elias D'Angelo. You're a coward who hid behind a stolen heir because you were too fragile to face the truth of your own body. You're an impotent man who built a kingdom on lies because you couldn't handle the 'shame' of being human."

Elias's face contorted, his skin turning a sickly, mottled red. The "Impotent" jab hit him harder than a bullet ever could. His hand started to tremble—not from fear, but from a blinding, narcissistic rage.

"A man who treats women like shit isn't a Don," I snarled. "He's just a scared little boy who never grew up. You are the real coward here. You are the disgrace to this name."
Elias's finger tightened on the trigger. His eyes turned black with hate. "Enough!" he roared. "Die with your pride, then!"

The world seemed to stop. I saw the muscles in his jaw bunch. I heard the internal mechanism of his gun begin to slide. I closed my eyes for a split second, bracing for the impact, my hand steady on my own trigger.

BANG!