Page 38 of Until the Ink runs Crimson

Zayn’s head snaps back violently, the bullet tearing through his skull and splattering the walls with gore. The smell of it—sickening, overwhelming—fills the space.

His body slumps forward, lifeless, the final expression on his face frozen in terror. He never saw it coming. But that doesn’t matter. It’s over.

I turn on my heel and move toward the door. The storm inside me has passed, but an unnerving calmness is there. At the door, I stop and glance over my shoulder. Ethan’s still standing by the far wall, his expression as stoic as ever. The room is soaked in blood, the walls splattered with pieces of Zayn’s skull. The chaos we’ve created is a reminder of what I’m willing to do to protect what’s mine.

“Clean this up,” I say, my voice calm, steady. “I want my office spotless within the hour. I have an important meeting.”

He nods without question, turning to handle the mess.

I step out of the chamber, my footsteps echoing through the halls of the Virelli estate. The pressure of the situation is bearing down on me, but there’s a new clarity in my mind. Zano has made his move. And now, so will I.

As I walk down the corridor, my mind races with the knowledge that Calista is at the center of it all. But he’s not just coming for her. He’s coming for everything I’ve built.

Let him try.

Chapter 17 – Calista

The morning light filters through the curtains, but it does nothing to ease the ache inside me. Nothing to erase the grief that presses down on my chest, suffocating me in its relentless grip. My body feels like it’s been crushed under a heavy weight but I just lie there, staring at the ceiling, wondering if it’s all real. Was yesterday real? The docks, the box, the blood… It all feels like a bad dream.

But it’s not. It’s the kind of nightmare that’s all too real, and it lingers like an open wound that refuses to heal.

I shift beneath the sheets, trying to stretch, to loosen the stiffness that has settled in my muscles. And then I freeze. My breath catches in my throat, and I feel my pulse skip.

There she is.

Lucrezia. Sitting in a velvet chair near the window, legs crossed, a cup of untouched tea in her hands. She’s just sitting there, looking like the world hasn’t come crashing down. Her aura is so calm, so composed, that it makes the ache in my chest feel a little sharper.

“You sleep like someone trying to escape in their dreams,” she says quietly, her voice smooth and soft, like she’s discussing the weather instead of the nightmare I’m living in.

I don’t say anything at first. What’s the point? I already know what she’s here for. It’s always the same. Strategy. As if the pieces on the chessboard matter more than the lives of the people playing the game. As if I’m just another pawn.

I sit up slowly, wiping at my face with the back of my hand, trying to shake off the haze of sleep that still clings to me. My throat is raw, dry from the endless sobbing that I’m too fucking tired to care about anymore. Lucrezia’s face remains the same. It’s still that calm, measured mask of a woman who has seen too much bloodshed to care about anything anymore.

“What do you want?” I croak, my voice cracking from grief and heartache.

Her gaze flicks to me, and there’s a faint sympathy in her expression, but it’s almost imperceptible. The kind of sympathy that makes my skin crawl. I can’t stand it. Pity has no place here—not from her. Not from anyone.

“To tell you that you can’t stay in this room, mourning,” she says, her voice still calm, still too calm. “This isn’t a tomb, Calista. It’s a battleground.”

My chest tightens, and my breath comes in short, ragged bursts. My rage rises quickly, bubbling up from a deep well inside me, and it feels like it might consume me. The thought of them. The De Corsi family. What they did to Noel. To me. To us.

“My brother was butchered and boxed like meat, and you’re here to talk strategy?” I spit, the words coming out rough, jagged.

Lucrezia raises an elegant brow, not at all intimidated by the venom in my voice. “Exactly,” she says, her tone as icy as ever. “Because that’s what the De Corsis want—to rattle you, unbalance you. If you fall apart now, they win.”

I don’t know what I hate more—the words, or the way she says them like they’re some kind of sacred truth. Strategy means nothing to me. Their games mean nothing. I just want them to burn. I want them to feel the fire of my anger, the fire of my grief. I want them to know what it’s like to lose someone, to have their entire world shattered.

I didn’t want calm. I didn’t want focus. But it crawls into me anyway—quiet and unrelenting. Grief doesn’t vanish. It just gets outpaced by fury.

I grab a pillow from the bed and hurl it at the wall with everything I have left. It bounces off and hits the floor with a dull thud, offering no relief. The wrath inside me keeps building. Anger and grief bleed together—rage tangled with helplessness.

“Screw strategy!” I yell, my voice raw, hoarse from the days of mourning and the lack of sleep. “I want them to burn.”

Lucrezia remains still. She doesn’t even blink. She’s just... there, watching me, like she’s waiting for a change. A moment where I finally get it.

“You’ll get your vengeance, Calista. But it won’t come through blind rage. It’ll come through control. Through strategy.”

I want to scream at her. I want to tell her that right now I don’t care about plans or strategies. I just want to make them pay. I want to make them feel what I felt when I saw Noel’s head in that crate. What I felt when I realized that my brother—my only family left—was gone, reduced to a fucking message.

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