He smiled, slow and wicked. A man who understood vengeance in its purest form.

I looked out the window again, the stars opening wide above us like gates to another world.

“I’ll be back,” I said softly. “Not as his wife. Not as a pawn.”

Salvatore nodded once. “As the queen hunting her king.”

And so the jet flew on.

Carrying the ghost of a woman reborn.

Carrying the reckoning that would shake every throne. They thought they buried me.

They forgot—

I rise.

***

Reagan POV

She’s dead.

Danica fucking De Santis is dead.

The news hit me like a high—pure, intoxicating.

One call, one report, one firestorm.

Burnt body. Ring confirmed. Blood everywhere.

A messy end for a messy bitch.

I poured myself a drink—top shelf, aged in silence like my fury—and sat in my throne of a chair, legs wide, power stretched across every damn inch of this mansion.

“No one crosses me and walks away,” I muttered, tilting the glass.

Dulcie curled up on the couch like the venomous snake she is, laughing in that annoying high-pitched tone she thinks sounds sexy.

“She really thought she could run. Dumb girl. She left looking like a corpse—guess now she is one.”