The hall was cleared - stripped of witnesses, of warmth, of mercy.
Only the distant sound of wind howling through the broken stained glass windows interrupted the silence, like a ghost mourning the fate of the damned.
And then
Click. Click. Click.
Her heels.
Each step on the cold marble was sharp, metallic, like the cocking of a gun.
Click. Click.
The sound sliced through the tension like a knife, and the three men kneeling in the center flinched, though they dared not lift their eyes.
Their hands were bound behind their backs with silver wire, painful, cutting into skin like penance for their arrogance.
Their once-pristine suits were torn, stained with sweat, blood, and something worse, the stench of fear.
Swollen jaws. Split lips. One of them had a gash near his temple, still oozing.
These weren't ordinary men.
They were once kings in their own courts - smug, loud, brutal rulers of their turfs.
Now, before you, they looked like hyenas stripped of their howl.
Silenced. Caged.
Her presence was thunder wrapped in silk.
She walked slowly toward her throne, an obsidian structure shaped like a spider's web, sharp edges gleamed under the dim chandelier, a symbol of how you caught your prey: beautiful, fatal, inevitable.
Bella sat down like a queen painting her own myth - unhurried, back straight, spine like steel.
Crossing one leg over the other, she let the silence smother them.
Then, one of them, the oldest, the boldest - lifted his head.
Blood crusted at the corner of his mouth, but desperation had made him brave.
"Bella... please," he rasped, eyes flicking between fear and awe.
"We were wrong. We were blind. You're the real Queen - we see that now."
Bella's head tilted slightly.
The room seemed to tilt with you.
She ran her finger along the armrest, eyes unreadable.
Then she spoke , her voice was like velvet hiding venom.
"You see now?"
Soft. Barely above a whisper.
"Then you must be blind again."
She stood, the black silk of your dress moving like ink spreading in water.
Every motion was deliberate, controlled. There was no chaos in her wrath - only precision.
Her fan snapped open.
Red silk. Silver cobra embroidered in the center. But tonight, it was more than just a fan.
Click.
Hidden within the folds: blades. Tiny, curved like crescent moons.
They caught the chandelier light like stars caught in a storm.
She walked - not toward them, but through their souls.
They flinched as she passed, her perfume jasmine and steel, lingering like a final warning.
"I don't rule through fear."
She leaned in, close enough for them to feel her breath, but not her mercy.
"I rule through truth. And the truth is..."
"Men like you? You're only loyal when your heads are on the floor."
That sentence didn't cut, it slaughtered.
It was truth turned into execution.
The man in the center, the one who had spoken, crumbled.
Pride gone. Ego shattered.
He collapsed fully, pressing his forehead to the marble.
"Please, Bella Venom," he begged, voice cracking under the weight of his terror.
"I'll serve you, I swear... I'll be your dog, your weapon, your anything, just please.."
Her fan fluttered - once.
Silence.
Even the wind paused.
She knelt slowly, gracefully, until her lips hovered just beside his ear.
"Mercy," she whispered, the word tasting like smoke and frost,
"is expensive."
She let that hang.
He trembled.
Then she leaned closer.
"And you're bankrupt."
She rose, elegance in motion and walked away with her fan resting lightly against her shoulder like a blade cooling after war.
She didn't need to shed blood.
She had left something far worse behind.. humiliation.
A punishment that would stain their pride deeper than death.
If they survived this night, they'd speak her name with reverence and ruin.
And in every dark corner of the underworld, a whisper would rise:
"Bella Venom doesn't kill to rule. She ruins to reign."
---