The truth is… I’m bored now.
There’s no art in it anymore. No thrill.
The fear in their eyes all started to look the same, wide, wet, pathetic. Their legacy, reduced to piss and tears on polished Italian leather.
I light a cigarette.
The flame flicks in the red-dark air. My hands are sticky. My shirt’s soaked at the collar, splattered down the sleeves. There’s blood on my neck, my throat. It smells like iron.
I drag the smoke in slowly.
Exhale even slower.
The nicotine doesn’t calm me. It centers me.
And that’s when I look at the only thing still squirming in the room.
Lorenzo.
He’s still alive.
Curled near the far wall like a half-dead animal, breathing shallow, rocking slightly. His ruined hand is clutched to his chest like a treasure that might save him. His suit, tailored, custom, clean when he walked in, is now soaked and shredded, stained across the front with blood that isn’t all his.
He’s been watching the bodies fall for the last hour.
And now he knows.
He’s next.
I walk toward him slowly. Not because I need to intimidate him, I’m past that.
This is routine now.
This is administration.
He flinches as I near. His legs try to move, but they don’t. His knees slide on the blood-slick floor, trembling.
I crouch in front of him, perfectly calm.
Take one last drag. Drop the cigarette beside him.
He doesn’t look at me.
So I force him to.
My hand grips his chin, rough, hard, and I yank his face upward. His eyes are glassy, dilated, the whites spiderwebbed with broken red.
I stare at him.
And I feel… nothing.
No hatred. No thrill. No closure.
Just inevitability.
“You’re the last,” I murmur. “And I saved the worst for last.”
I turn my head to Isabella.
