Chapter 194: ~ The Reverse

{Daisy's POV}

Men waited everywhere. I just couldn't see any of them, which was apparently the entire point.

DeLuca had spent the last several minutes turning this half-finished, rusted-out building into the world's least convincing empty target.

Once he'd confirmed Nico, Lillian, and their forces intended to hit this place expecting hostages and an easy win, he'd cleared every visible space and folded every single man out of sight — behind scrap metal, inside gutted machinery, tucked into shadows the building's own decay had thoughtfully provided free of charge.

There was enough rust and ruin lying around to hide an entire army, which felt like an oddly specific compliment to pay a building that had clearly given up on itself years ago.

Let Nico believe he still held the advantage. Let him believe it right up until the exact second it stopped being true.

I crouched beneath a slab of corroded industrial metal, my mother, Tessa, and Mabel pressed in close beside me. DeLuca had put us here specifically so we'd watch and do absolutely nothing else, a boundary I intended to respect for once in my life.

It should have felt like relief, knowing the tables had already turned before the fight even started.

It didn't, not entirely. Blood was coming either way. Guns don't really care who technically has the advantage going in.

The air had gone thin and quiet, stretched tight enough that I could feel everyone around me breathing in sync, like the whole building had collectively agreed to hold its breath at once. I swallowed hard. This was it. Whatever came next, it was the last of it.

Then I heard engines.

Vehicles rolled in fast, parking in a rough, careless sprawl around the building. DeLuca had made sure our own cars were long gone from sight, nothing left behind to hint that anything about this situation had already changed.

Nico climbed out first, moving with the kind of confidence that only made sense if you had absolutely no idea what was about to happen to you.

Lillian followed a moment later, gun already in hand, and something in my chest twisted painfully at the sight of her. I'd once lived beside this person. Traded stories with her at two in the morning, laughed over nothing, let her see every unguarded version of me that existed.

And now she stood there armed, chasing an empire, willing to hurt anyone standing between her and whatever she'd decided she deserved.

Their men spread out, surrounding the building, and the quiet stretched even tighter.

Then I froze completely.

Because I'd genuinely forgotten, somehow, that this building had a second floor.

DeLuca stood on the ruined balcony above them, alone, visible, leaning against the rail with the casual posture of a man who had never once in his life considered the concept of danger. He picked up a stone and threw it, idly, against the burnt husk of a car below. The sound rang out sharp against the metal, again, and again, until heads finally started turning toward the source.

They found him.

Every gun on the ground swung upward at once. Someone barked an order, and more men poured out from inside the building, Nico among them, weapon raised, confusion and aggression tangled together across his face.

"Shoot him! Get him down!"

DeLuca kept throwing the stone. Genuinely, actually kept throwing it, like the fifty-plus guns now aimed at him were a mildly interesting weather pattern.

Nico and Lillian both looked increasingly disturbed by the sheer casualness of it, the realization creeping in but not yet fully landing — because DeLuca had appeared completely alone, and nothing about that should have felt calm.

He finished the last stone, tossed it aside, and vaulted over the balcony rail, sliding down some length of exposed piping before landing cleanly on the ground below. He raised both hands the second the guns found him again, unbothered, and Nico crossed toward him with a pistol raised, glaring, saying something I couldn't hear from this distance.

DeLuca lowered his hands anyway.

He ignored every weapon pointed at him, walked to a battered chair sitting off to the side like he was choosing a seat at a restaurant, sat down, and raised one hand in a simple, deliberate gesture.

Men erupted from every hiding spot at once.

I watched them pour out — from behind scrap, from inside gutted machinery, from shadows I hadn't even clocked as places a person could physically fit — and did some extremely fast, extremely alarmed math. Double Nico's numbers. Maybe closer to triple. So this was why DeLuca had strolled in there looking like he owned the weather too. It wasn't just his usual arrogance wearing a nicer outfit. He'd already known the answer before anyone asked the question.

Nico's men scattered in every direction, panicked, guns raised but stretched too thin to actually cover anything. Hands started going up. Nico screamed something at them, furious, demanding resistance that clearly wasn't coming, because apparently his own men could also do math.

Our men moved in and stripped them of their weapons within minutes, forcing them down onto their knees, rough and efficient. The same treatment came for Nico and Lillian — searched, disarmed, pushed down to kneel at a distance from the chair DeLuca still occupied, legs crossed, watching the whole thing unfold like it barely required his attention span.

Something ached in my chest at the sight of Lillian on the ground like that.

My mother's hand settled gently on my arm.

"We can go closer now," she said. "They're disarmed. It's safe."

I nodded, and together we all rose and made our way toward the building.

Nico was already talking by the time we got close enough to hear him.

"I don't regret any of this," he said, loud, unbothered by the men surrounding him. "You always saw me as insignificant. Like I had no purpose at all. And then you neglect the biggest treasure you were ever handed— did you expect me to just sit there and watch it waste? Watch you rot on your own throne while I did nothing?" His voice climbed. "Hell no. I did what I had to do, and I will never regret it."

Nathan was dragged out next, thrown down onto his knees beside the rest, hands bound.

I barely looked at him. Whatever role he'd played, it had failed completely, and there wasn't room left in me right now to spend on someone who'd already become irrelevant.

DeLuca rose from the chair, pistol in hand, his expression unreadable, calm in a way that felt heavier than anger would have.

"I don't have anything left to say to you," he told Nico. "Not even now. That should tell you exactly how little you matter to me anymore."

He let that sit.

"But that doesn't mean I'll stay blind to warning signs a second time."

He said and raised the pistol at him…