Jason sank to his knees as smoke swallowed the sky, the color of it an angry crimson, like the world itself was bleeding. The house before him, her house, collapsed in slow motion, boards shrieking and crumbling as if mourning their own destruction.

His chest caved with a ragged sob, the kind that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his lungs, deeper even than his body. Everything around him blurred—faces, sirens, flames—until all that remained was the ash.

He should have looked away. Should have closed his eyes.

But he didn't. He couldn't.
The paramedics moved solemnly through the smoke, their silhouettes stark against the firelit haze. The stretchers were draped in white sheets—too still, too final. He counted them without meaning to.
One... two... three.
Jason didn't flinch. His heart was hollowed out, like something had been carved from within him with a hot blade.
It should've been him.
Not Selena.
"No," he whispered hoarsely, his voice splintering. "No, it can't be."
He stumbled backward, eyes wide, brain refusing to bridge the gap between what he saw and what he believed. Reality came in slow waves, each one more unbearable than the last. And then he was moving, sprinting toward the stretchers with a desperate, raw urgency. A rescuer with no one left to save.
"Selena," he choked, reaching trembling hands toward the nearest form.
The heat of the fire still lingered in the air, as if the world itself was scorched. He lifted the sheet with shaking fingers. What stared back at him was no longer her face—just blackened skin, unrecognizable. His mind rejected it. It can't be her. It isn't.

The moment I walked through the blood-stained corridors of Dock 9, I knew Selena had struck first. The scent of gunpowder hung in the air, mingling with smoke and salt, like a storm passed through and didn't care what it left behind. My men lay scattered—some breathing, most not. The Queen Bee had made her move.


I crouched beside the body of Milan, one of my oldest lieutenants. A man I'd once pulled from the gutters of Marseille, broken and angry—like me. Now his eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and still. His blood pooled across the cracked concrete, soaking into the floor like the city itself drank it with hunger.


"Get the survivors to medical," I ordered. "Burn what's left. I don't want the Queen feeding off our dead."


My soldiers moved quickly, trained for chaos. They didn't ask questions when my tone dropped to a whisper. That's when I was most dangerous—quiet, cold, calculated.


Chapter 89 - The Poison That Remains