CHAPTER 101: THE DEVIL BLEEDS.

CHAPTER 101: THE DEVIL BLEEDS.
(Dual POV: Serena - Adrian)
SERENA POV
The bullet doesn’t hit Adrian. It hits the world around him. A crack, like the sky splitting open, shreds the balcony silence, and stone dust explodes behind his head. The pillar beside him disintegrates into a brutal spray of white shards. I hear myself scream his name, the sound torn, feral, and unrecognizable. Adrian doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t duck. He doesn’t even breathe.
Instead, he just turns. Slow, controlled, lethal. Like the bullet, it only confirmed what he already knew. Like he expected betrayal to approach him with a kiss.
The courtyard erupts. Disciples scatter, guns drawn, shouts ricocheting against marble. Some rush to Adrian. Some freeze. Some make eye contact with each other, an unspoken question trembling in the air: Is this the moment we choose?
I reach for my gun, already in my hand, trembling, but my eyes stay locked on him. Adrian lifts a hand to stop the guards rushing toward him, a wordless command that freezes half the courtyard. The other half doesn’t obey and that’s when I see it:
The divide isn’t philosophical. It isn’t political. It’s tribal. Some are loyal to the Devil. Some are loyal to the Prophet. Some are loyal to the money. Some are loyal to nothing but themselves.
One bullet didn’t hit Adrian, but it fractured the room. I’m still running toward him when the first fist is thrown. A disciple in black slams another into the railing, shouting, “You brought him here! This was your intel!”
I know what they mean, him, the Prophet’s mole. Intel, the trap we swallowed.
Adrian snaps, “Stand down...” But it's too late. Gunshots rip through the air, one after another like a string of firecrackers.
I drop behind a fallen pedestal, heart slamming, dust burning my throat. Screams mix with battle cries. The luxury of the villa transforms into a battlefield, white stone and blood, marble and gunfire.
I see Adrian moving through the chaos like a storm given a human body. Each movement calculated, each strike deliberate. A man who survived not by chance, never by chance, but by reading the room faster than anyone else.
But I also see the danger. He’s surrounded by men who no longer agree on who their Devil is. A disciple to his left aims a pistol directly at Adrian’s spine.
“ADRIAN!” I scream. He turns, too slow. I fire. The Disciple drops. His eyes flick to me.
For a breath, for one flash of a moment, the world goes silent around us. His expression is strange, torn between fury, possessiveness, and fear he refuses to acknowledge.
Then the moment breaks as a grenade rolls across the marble. “MOVE!” someone shouts. Adrian orders, “Serena, down!” But it’s not a grenade.
It hisses, smokes, and is white, dense and blinding.
The courtyard disappears into a fog. Voices become ghosts. Footsteps multiply. Gunfire becomes muffled. Hands grab me from the mist.
I twist, elbow connecting with ribs. A grunt, a curse and a second shadow join. I strike again. I’m dragged backward into the smoke. Then someone slams into my attacker from behind.
The grip on my arm loosens. Warm arms yank me into a shield that smells like gunpowder, cinder, and Adrian’s fury.
He whispers close to my ear, “You don’t get taken from me. Ever.” But before I can answer, before I can even breathe… A voice cuts through the smoke:
“The Prophet has spoken. Stand down, or die for him.” My blood turns to ice. Adrian hears it too. The schism is no longer hidden. It’s declared.

ADRIAN POV
The bullet missed me. Not because of luck. Luck is for men who pray.
I survive because I expect death to introduce itself behind my left shoulder.
The stone pillar shattering means nothing to me. But Serena’s scream is the sound that hits. Her fear, her desperation and her instinct to run toward me, not away.
It slices deeper than any bullet could and then my disciples, my legacy, prove themselves as fragile as glass struck by a hammer.
All it took was one shot. One shot to reveal every crack they tried to hide.
Some turn to protect me. Some turn to kill each other. Some turn to flee as cowards, believers and traitors.
The Prophet always claimed he could divide my kingdom with words.
I never thought he’d succeed with silence.
With the smoke clouding the courtyard, visibility drops to nothing. I grip Serena’s waist, pulling her tight to me, anchoring her. Her breath is fast and hot on my neck, panic trying to claw out of her chest.
I whisper, “Stay behind me.”
She whispers back, “I don’t need you to shield me.” But she stays close anyway. Her defiance is the warmest thing I feel in this fucking mist.
Shadows move. Footsteps whisper and guns cock. Someone tries to flank us.
I fire twice, silenced, clean. A body drops. Another shadow charges. Serena whips around me and shoots first. Straight through the throat.
My woman, my ruin and my salvation.
But even with her at my side, I feel the shift, the earth tilting beneath my feet.
My men are choosing sides. Not with speeches. Not with votes.
With bullets. A disciple shouts from the fog, “Adrian is compromised! He let her in; this is on him!”
Another voice snaps back, “Lies! You follow the Prophet now? Coward!”
Then the voice that freezes the battlefield:
“The Prophet has spoken. Stand down, or die for him.” No face, no direction, but just the declaration. Serena stiffens beside me. She recognizes it. I do too.
One of my senior disciples. One of the ones I raised from nothing.
Betrayal, given a voice. I shove Serena behind a fallen column, silence her with a look, then step forward into the smoke alone.
“Come out,” I call, voice deadly calm. “You want to choose your god today? Then face him.”
A silhouette steps forward. A man I once trusted and a man I once saved.
He lifts his gun to me, the final and unforgivable choice. Serena whispers behind me, “Adrian… don’t.”
But there’s no stopping what comes next. My disciples are no longer one family. The schism has exploded into war and this time... The Devil bleeds. If you want, I can continue directly into: