Rain whispered against the roof of the mountain villa, soft and deceptive, like a lullaby for murder. Alfreda stood in front of the Vault's cold stone doors again, her fingers hovering over the biometric scanner. She had questions, and the answers were inside.
But she didn't expect who stood behind her.
"Looking for ghosts?" Celeste's voice cut through the air like a knife.
Alfreda didn't flinch. "I'm looking for the truth."
Celeste stepped beside her, her expression unreadable. "Funny. I came for the same."
They scanned in together.
The Vault hissed open.
The air inside was heavy with memory.
Dust, blood, betrayal.
But something new waited inside today: a name flickering on the monitor—Eliot Rook.
Alfreda turned sharply. "Who the hell is Eliot?"
Celeste didn't answer immediately. She reached into her jacket and pulled out the sealed file.
"My twin," she said. "I found this in my mother's study."
Alfreda scanned the document—names, dates, an old birth record with both Aurelia's and Gaius Valez's signatures. One line stood out:
"He was taken before I could choose."
Alfreda's heart skipped. "Taken?"
Celeste nodded. "Raised by someone else. Given a new name."
Nathaniel's voice rang from the Vault entrance. "That name is Eliot Rook. But the world knows him as… Ezra Valez."
Silence.
The name hit Celeste like a shot to the gut. "Ezra?"
The quiet, intelligent, loyal Ezra who'd worked under Nathaniel for years. Her confidant. Her right hand in the field. Her friend.
Her blood.
Meanwhile, in a dim underground club in Marseille, the man known as Ezra Valez watched the flickering screen of his encrypted phone.
On it: a message from an unknown number.
"They know."
He closed the phone and stared into the glass of bourbon before him, his reflection cracked by the ice.
Behind him, Gaius Valez emerged from the shadows.
"You were never meant to be just another soldier," Gaius said. "You were born to replace me."
Ezra didn't turn around. "You raised me in lies."
"I raised you in purpose."
Ezra's jaw tightened. "And now?"
"Now you take your place. You enter the Vault."
Back in the villa, Alfreda stood before an old cabinet labeled Project Widowmaker: Genesis.
Inside, she found tapes. Dozens of them.
She played the oldest one.
The screen fuzzed, then cleared.
It was Lorena Black. Nathaniel's mother. Sitting beside Aurelia Rook.
"We can't keep doing this," Lorena said, cigarette in hand.
"We're not," Aurelia replied. "We're finishing what we started."
"What if they find out the real reason we created the Vault?"
"They won't. We made sure of that when we buried the first body."
"Whose?"
"Mine."
The screen cut to static.
Alfreda turned to Nathaniel. "Your mother faked her death."
He nodded. "And helped build the Widowmakers from the inside out."
Celeste crossed her arms. "Then what happens when she comes back for her crown?"
Nathaniel looked at them both. "We kill her first."
In another wing of the estate, Aurelia Rook stood at the mirror brushing her hair—an act so mundane it felt almost holy. Behind her, the phone buzzed.
She answered without looking.
"Yes?"
A male voice: "Ezra is on his way to the Vault."
She smiled faintly. "Let him go."
"But—"
She cut him off. "Let the blood recognize itself."
Night fell like a curse.
Ezra arrived at the villa before sunrise. No guards stopped him. The gates opened on their own.
He found Alfreda, Celeste, and Nathaniel waiting by the Vault's door.
He walked toward them slowly, the rain making his coat cling like a second skin.
Celeste stepped forward first. "Ezra."
He didn't speak.
Her voice cracked. "Did you know?"
A pause. Then he said, "I knew I didn't belong to Gaius. But I didn't know I belonged to you."
Celeste swallowed. "We were children."
Ezra smiled bitterly. "And we were separated before we ever had the chance to be anything else."
Nathaniel tensed. "Why are you here?"
"To finish what your father started."
Alfreda's eyes narrowed. "And what exactly is that?"
Ezra raised a small black box and tossed it at Nathaniel's feet. "The true master key to the Vault. Not just the secrets… but the codes. The weapons. The real leverage."
Celeste whispered, "You had it all along."
"I was meant to. I'm the fail-safe."
They stepped into the Vault one last time.
Ezra activated the master key. A hidden panel in the far wall opened—revealing a second chamber.
Inside: blueprints. Medical files. Maps of continents with Widowmaker branches marked like tumors.
At the center: a glass coffin.
Inside it—wasn't a body.
It was a server.
Labeled: Project HADES.
Alfreda whispered, "What the hell is this?"
Ezra answered. "The endgame. AI-assisted warfare. Contracts automated. Bloodlines digitally traced. No need for human assassins anymore."
Nathaniel paled. "It's not just a mafia anymore. It's a goddamn global algorithm."
Ezra nodded. "Built by your father. Completed by Gaius. And activated by me."
"And shut down by us," Alfreda said, reaching for her gun.
But Ezra pulled his first.
Aimed it at Nathaniel.
"No," he said coldly. "It ends with blood. Not files."
Suddenly, the lights cut.
Total blackness.
Then a voice echoed through the Vault.
Lorena Black.
"This empire was never yours to end, Ezra. It was mine."
Gunshots echoed.
Screams.
Then silence.