Greyson struggled harder against the hands that held him, desperate to reach her, to help her, but they forced him down, a knee pressing between his shoulder blades until he could barely breathe. He watched as they dragged Lira away, her bare feet leaving bloody smears across the platform, her screams growing fainter as they pulled her down the stairs and out of the plaza.

Shadera snarled at the three officers holding her down, rage twisting onto her face as she thrashed against them.

Mikel stood still, arms pinioned behind his back, but he did not struggle at their hold.

Maximus approached Greyson slowly, drawing a sleek pistol from inside his jacket. He stood over him, the golden mask betraying nothing of the expression beneath, but Greyson could feel the triumph radiating from him like heat.

“Put him on his knees,” Maximus ordered, and Greyson could feel the air rush back to his lungs as they pulled him upright.

“You might as well kill me now,” Greyson spat, tasting blood where his lip had split against the platform. His eyes fell to Callum’s body only feet from him and his heart convulsed. His voice hardened into something sharper than any blade. “Because I will never stop fighting you. I will never stop coming for you until you are fucking dead.”

Maximus tilted his head, considering him for a long moment. “You have served your purpose. I have no use for you now. No reason to keep the captain’s bastard alive.”

He raised the gun, aiming it at Greyson’s head. “You should have stayed in line, Greyson. Should have accepted your place, and you could have stood tall beside your brother and me.” His finger tightened on the trigger. “But you chose the wrong side. This rebellion was doomed from the start.”

Greyson didn’t close his eyes. Didn’t flinch. Instead he drifted out of his body. If this was his end, he would face it with the same defiance that had defined his life.

He would die as himself, not as Maximus’s creation.

Shadera’s guttural scream came only a breath before the shot rang out.

Chapter fortyJust Not For You

Elara watched as Mikel moved, jumping in front of Greyson. His body hit the platform, Maximus’s bullet finding his heart. He’d sworn to her when she became pregnant with Greyson that he would protect him with his life.

Today, she’d let him fulfill that promise so she could complete what she’d come here to do.

There was guilt packed into that truth, but he’d known she had a job to do. A mission to fulfill, and he’d accepted that in the end this would be his fate.

She felt her heart convulse as she stared into open, empty eyes. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading in a dark stain that seemed to reach for her across the polished surface of the platform. But she couldn’t truly feel the pain of his loss. She had lost so much over the years that death felt like a relief, a blessing for those who were called away from their bodies.

Elara knew she would feel the grief later, knew it would rise up as it always did and she would mourn in silence.

She looked past Mikel to Callum’s body, to the space where Lira had knelt before they dragged her away. Elara had failed Lira in too many ways to count, had stood by while Maximus corrupted Brooker, had watched in silence as her family fractured and broke beneath the weight of power and cruelty.

The only pain she could still feel after all these years living with the devil was her children’s.

Her fingers slipped around the grip of a dead man’s gun. The weight in her hand was familiar, comforting. No one looked at her.

No one ever looked at her.

In thirty-five years of marriage to Maximus Serel, she had perfected the art of invisibility—the silent wife, the submissive mother, the ornamental fixture.

But today, that invisibility became her weapon.

Elara moved.

She was on her feet in one breath, in the next, the three Veyra securing Shadera were crumpling to the platform, crimson lakes pooling under their bodies from the perfectly placed bullets.

The rest of the Veyra looked at her as if time had slowed.

Their hesitation was their undoing—they still saw the President’s wife, not the predator beneath.

Years of rage coursed through her veins. It was sharper than any drug, clearer than any purpose she’d ever known as she placed bullets in the heads of the remaining officers then spun toward her husband.

Maximus stood utterly still, the mask concealing his shock. But she knew his body, knew the subtle signs of his surprise—the slight shift in his posture, the way his right hand twitched at his side. For the first time in their marriage, she had truly surprised him.

“Elara,” he said, her name a question and a command all at once.

She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she reached up with her free hand and removed her mask, letting it fall to the platform with a clatter that echoed across the plaza.

“Kneel,” she said, pointing the gun at his head.

Maximus didn’t move. “Have you lost your mind? I am the President of—”

“I said kneel.” The words were quiet, but they carried a weight that seemed to press him downward.

To her right, Greyson rose to his feet. His face—his beautiful, bare face—was streaked with blood and grime, his eyes wide with disbelief as he looked at her. Across the platform, Shadera stood slowly, limping from the bullet wound in her thigh, but her gun was raised and steady.

Her children. Standing tall. Standing free.

Reluctantly, with a deliberation that suggested he was still in control, Maximus lowered himself to one knee. He kept his head high, his golden face gleaming in the sunlight that bathed the platform, as if this were some sort of ceremony rather than his downfall.

Elara stepped closer, close enough that she could see her own reflection distorted in his mask, then pulled it from his face and tossed it onto the ground below the platform.

“You were never the strong one,” she said, her voice carrying to every corner of the silent plaza. “You think strength is about dominance, about control, about making others fear you. But true strength?” She shook her head. “True strength is patience. It’s endurance. It’s waiting for the right moment when every instinct screams for immediate action.”

She took another step closer, the gun never wavering.

“You never broke me, Maximus. You never took my strength from me. You never stripped me of my fight.” Each word had been collected over the years, strung together for this moment. “While you were reveling in your power, in your illusion of control, I was watching. Learning. Planning.”

Maximus’s lip curled. “Planning what, exactly? This pathetic display? You’ve killed a few Veyra. The Heart still stands. My son—my true son—still lives to carry on my legacy.”

Elara laughed, the sound genuine despite everything. “Men never truly understand the meaning of patience. You see, men like you can’t comprehend even the concept of suffering, the lesson to be learned in it. Especially not in silence.” Her eyes never left his. “But women? That is all we do. We endure. We wait. We survive.”

Still she moved closer.

“I have watched you destroy everything I love. I have seen you corrupt our son, torture our daughter, break countless lives across all three rings of this city.” Her voice hardened. “I watched you bathe in your power like it somehow made you a great man, a great leader.”

She reached out to him, pulling his chin up toward her.

“But here I am, the weaker sex, holding all the power. Holding the gun. Getting the last word.”

A flicker of something—fear, perhaps, or maybe just annoyance—crossed Maximus’s face. “And what word is that, my dear? Some grand proclamation about justice? About a new order?”

“No,” she stated simply. “Do you know who I am?”

His brow furrowed. “What?”