The gunshot's echo spread like lightning that needed no sky.
Smoke still danced over the bodies, and the hall's white marble seemed to absorb the blood with an almost religious calm.
Damián Corvelli stepped between the corpses.
Gun smoke still floated in the air, mixed with the smell of gunpowder and hot blood. One of the men was still breathing with difficulty, a barely human moan escaping his throat.
Damián didn't flinch: he raised the revolver calmly and fired once more.
The body arched, trembled, and fell with a dry thud that seemed to mark the end of a symphony.
John Becker watched without moving.
His face was an imperturbable mask, but inside his mind registered every detail: the shot's angle, the distance, the executor's inhuman serenity, the way smoke danced over the blood as if the air itself refused to breathe.
"How could this happen, Mr. Corvelli?" he finally asked, his voice deep and controlled. "An infiltration like this, in your own home…"
Damián didn't respond.
He still walked among the bodies, examining them as if evaluating his pieces' value. Then, with a movement so quick it seemed natural, he fired again.
The sound was clean, dry, definitive.
"Infiltration?" he repeated with a barely perceptible smile. "No, John. There was no infiltration. I gave them the order."
John didn't blink.
Michelle, from a corner, turned her head sharply toward her father.
"What are you saying?" she whispered, incredulous.
"I wanted to see how you'd react," Damián continued, holstering the weapon with almost ceremonial elegance. "You and Becker. I wanted to see if you were up to par."
The silence grew heavy.
Only the drip of blood marked time, like a death clock.
John clenched his jaw.
"Then why did you kill them?"
Damián bent over a body that was still breathing. Without looking away, he fired one last time.
The echo resonated like a seal.
"Because they didn't even manage to blink," he said, brushing dust from his coat. "On this board, pieces that don't move… cease to exist."
He walked to his desk and poured a glass of cognac.
The amber liquid caught the light, projecting golden flashes over the floor's red.
"Only quality pieces deserve to remain," he added. "The rest is quantity. Noise."
John held his gaze for an instant.
Inside, the idea of crushing this man devoured him, but his face remained stone. Silence was his only defense.
"I understand," he finally said, in a low voice.
Damián smiled, satisfied, and raised another glass.
"Drink. You're going to need it."
John took the glass. The cognac burned his throat, just like the scene he'd just witnessed.
"In two days you'll meet my partner," Damián announced in the tone of one dictating another order.
"Your partner?"
"Hernán Valmont," he responded, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "They call him The Duke."
"His father retired recently," Damián continued. "Left his entire organization in his son's hands. Hernán is young, brilliant, and useful. Besides—" he added, savoring each word.
John looked up.
The name hung suspended between them.
John felt a stab, as if something ancient, sleeping in the deepest part of his soul, had suddenly awakened. He didn't know why, but that name dragged with it a fury and sadness that didn't belong to him.
"I'm considering uniting our families," Damián continued calmly, turning toward Michelle. "A solid alliance. Hernán is a brilliant man with great power. He'd be the perfect husband."
Michelle stood frozen, as if she'd been slapped.
The air left her lungs.
"What are you saying?" her voice trembled, but she didn't retreat. "You want to marry me off to him?"
"I want to secure a future worthy of your name," Damián responded, without emotion. "And consolidate something greater than any of us."
"And my choice?" she replied, raising her voice. "Doesn't that count?"
"Emotions are a luxury you can't afford, daughter," he pronounced. His tone wasn't cruel. It was worse: final.
Michelle looked at him with a mixture of pain and contained fury.
"It's not a marriage," she whispered, "it's a transaction."
John watched her in silence.
His expression didn't change, but in his eyes was a shadow of storm. Hearing Damián speak of her as if she were just another piece on the board wounded him in a way he couldn't allow to show.
And when Michelle looked at him, she understood.
She understood that she knew: that she still loved him. But she also understood that, in her eyes, he was now part of the same hell she was trying to escape.
Michelle lowered her gaze.
Seeing him there, beside her father, with the weapon still smoking in memory, was like contemplating a distorted portrait of the man she had loved before time.
A criminal.
An enemy.
And yet… her soul still beat in rhythm with his.
"Clean this up," Damián suddenly ordered.
The doors opened.
Servants entered silently, carrying buckets, rags, bags. The sound of bodies dragging across the marble was so wet and muffled that Michelle felt nauseous.
The metallic smell in the air burned her eyes.
John remained still, watching as the crimson was erased from the floor.
He knew those stains would never really leave. Not from the marble… nor from him.
Damián adjusted his coat.
"I want the hall cleaned in ten minutes." And he left.
The door's slam was the period at the end of that dark mass.
Michelle was alone for a few seconds, staring at the floor's reflection.
The world became blurred.
And suddenly, something inside her broke.
The marble, the blood, the noise… everything dissolved.
The air changed.
The smell of death was replaced by incense, flowers, and sea.
Bells.
A stone church.
Lit torches.
Jon Malverne and Elena de Trastámara before the altar.
The priest raised the cross and light filtered in golden beams upon them.
Elena wore an ivory cloak that seemed woven from dawn.
Jon, in ceremonial armor, looked at her with a devotion that disarmed the soul.
"Elena de Trastámara," said the priest's voice, "do you accept Jon Malverne as your husband, to love him beyond death and kingdoms?"
"I do," she whispered.
The priest smiled.
"Then, by the power granted to me, I declare you husband and wife before God and before men. May your union not be broken by death, nor by time."
Elena and Jon looked at each other.
The world stopped.
And when they kissed, the world became fire and eternity.
The bells rang out, flowers fell like sacred rain, and Michelle—because it was her, and it wasn't her—felt that love resurrect within her chest.
The same love that now, in the present, hurt her for existing where it shouldn't.
Michelle remained trapped in the echo of that impossible love, lost between the perfume of ancient flowers and the altar's radiance. She felt the sweet and devastating weight of a love that had crossed centuries, and her chest burned with the anguish of knowing she still carried it within.
Suddenly, a warm pressure on her shoulder—firm, real—tore her from that dream.
The world returned with a blow: the marble, the smell of gunpowder, the dried blood. Everything was sharper, crueler.
Still with her gaze lost, she slowly raised her eyes, like someone emerging from an abyss of thoughts they don't want to leave.
John stood before her.
His voice reached her, deep, close, with a concern that pierced her soul.
"Hey, are you okay?"
Her heart struck her chest with excessive force. She felt a knot rise in her throat, a tremor run through her hands. Every fiber of her being screamed to throw herself toward him, to wrap her arms around him and confess that she had missed him, that she had loved him even when she shouldn't.
But she couldn't.
She only looked at him, with eyes full of everything she didn't dare say, while the silence between them became so intense it seemed to have a life of its own.