Chapter 44 The Execution
Beverley stood beside the Mafia King, her confession hanging in the air like smoke. She looked almost proud of what she had revealed, as if her betrayal of Nora and Noah was proof of her devotion, evidence of her unwavering loyalty to the man she claimed to have feelings for.
“I gave your plan to him the moment you shared it with me,” Beverley repeated, as if Nora hadn’t fully grasped the magnitude of her treachery. “I couldn’t betray him. I wouldn’t.”
The Mafia King turned to look at Beverley, and something in the quality of his attention made the room feel suddenly colder. Everyone seemed to sense the shift. The robed figures standing in their circle became very still, very quiet, as if they were holding their collective breath.
“You’re right, Beverley,” the Mafia King said softly. “You did prove your loyalty that night.”
Beverley smiled, a genuine expression of pleasure at his acknowledgment. “I would do anything for you. You know that.”
“I do know that,” he replied. “And that’s exactly the problem.”
Before anyone could process what he meant, before Beverley’s smile could even begin to fade, the Mafia King reached behind his back and pulled out a gun. The movement was smooth, practiced, almost casual.
Beverley’s eyes widened as she registered the weapon now pointed directly at her face. “What are you—”
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed stone room. The sound echoed off the walls, bouncing back and forth until it seemed to fill every corner of the space. Beverley’s head snapped back from the impact, a spray of blood and brain matter painting the wall behind her in a gruesome arc.
Her body stood upright for one impossible moment, as if unsure that it was supposed to fall. Then her knees buckled and she crumpled to the floor like a puppet with cut strings, landing in a heap of black robes and spreading blood.
Nora screamed, the sound tearing from her throat involuntarily. She strained against her restraints, trying to turn away from the sight, but the metal held her in place, forcing her to witness the aftermath. Beverley’s eyes were open, staring at nothing, a perfect round hole in the center of her forehead still smoking slightly.
The robed figures didn’t move. Didn’t react at all except to collectively take one small step backward, away from the spreading pool of blood.
The Mafia King lowered his gun, looking down at Beverley’s corpse with complete indifference. He might as well have been looking at a piece of furniture for all the emotion he showed.
“Let that be a lesson to all of you,” he said, addressing the room at large, though his eyes remained on Beverley’s body. “Betrayal is betrayal, regardless of who it’s directed at. If she could betray Nora and Noah, people she claimed to consider friends, people she worked alongside for months, then she could just as easily betray me when it suited her purposes.”
He turned slowly, making eye contact with several of the robed figures. “Loyalty that requires betraying others is not loyalty at all. It’s opportunism. And I have no use for opportunists in my organization.”
One of the robed figures, a man near the back, spoke up hesitantly. “But sir, she proved herself to you. She chose you over them.”
“She chose what was convenient,” the Mafia King corrected sharply. “She chose what she thought would benefit her most. Today it was me. Tomorrow it could have been someone else offering her a better deal, a higher position, more power. People who betray once will betray again. It’s in their nature.”
He looked down at Beverley’s body one more time, then stepped over it as if it were merely an inconvenient obstacle in his path. “Besides,” he added almost as an afterthought, “she claimed to have feelings for me. Love, or whatever pathetic emotion she convinced herself she felt. And I can’t have someone making decisions based on feelings. Emotions make people unpredictable. Unreliable.”
Nora stared at the body, her mind struggling to process what had just happened. Beverley was dead. Lying in the pool of her own blood.
“You’re insane,” Nora whispered, her voice hoarse from screaming. “You’re completely insane.”
The Mafia King turned his attention back to her, and even through the mask, she could feel the intensity of his gaze. “Am I? Or am I simply practical? Beverley was a liability. She proved that with her own confession. Better to eliminate the problem now than wait for it to become worse.”
He walked back toward the table where Nora was restrained, his footsteps leaving small prints in Beverley’s blood. “You, on the other hand, are not a liability. You’re an investment. One that I’ve put considerable time and resources into developing.”
“I’m not your investment,” Nora spat, finding some reserve of defiance despite her terror. “I’m not your anything.”
“We’ll see about that,” the Mafia King said. He looked around at the assembled crowd, at the dozens of robed figures still standing in their circle, still watching in silence. “Everyone out,” he ordered suddenly. “I need to speak with Nora alone.”
There was a moment of hesitation, a collective pause as the group processed this unexpected command. Then, without a word, they began to file out of the room. They stepped over and around Beverley’s body without looking at it, moving in an orderly procession toward the door.
Within minutes, the room was empty except for Nora, the Mafia King, and Beverley’s corpse. The door closed with a heavy thud, and the sound of footsteps faded into the distance. The silence that followed was oppressive, broken only by the drip of blood from the table where Nora lay and the quiet hiss of the candles burning around the room.
The Mafia King pulled a chair from somewhere in the shadows and positioned it beside the table where Nora was restrained. He sat down, making himself comfortable, as if they were about to have a casual conversation rather than whatever horror he had planned.
“Now then,” he said, his voice almost conversational. “There are things you need to know, Nora. Important things. Things that will change your understanding of everything that’s happened to you.”
Nora’s heart was racing, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. Her body ached from the beating, blood still seeping from various wounds. And just feet away, Beverley’s body was growing cold, a stark reminder of what this man was capable of.
“I don’t want to know anything from you,” Nora said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“Oh, but you do,” the Mafia King said, leaning forward slightly. “Trust me, Nora. What I’m about to tell you, you definitely want to hear. Because it concerns you. It concerns your family. It concerns everything you thought you knew about your life.”
He paused, letting the words sink in, building the tension. “You see, nothing that’s happened to you has been random. Your kidnapping, your time here, your training, your escape, even your reunion with Ben. None of it was coincidence.”
Nora felt ice forming in her veins. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the truth,” the Mafia King said. “The truth about who you really are, where you really come from, and why you’re really here.”
He reached up toward his mask, his fingers curling around the edge of it. “And I think it’s time you finally learned that truth.”