Chapter 10 - The Sovereign's Choice
The rotor wash tore at their clothes, whipping the cold air into a frenzy as the engines began to spool up for departure.
Evelyn looked at the helicopter, then back at Matteo Duca.
For fourteen months, she had lived inside the quietest, most peaceful lie of her life. In this tower, surrounded by spreadsheets and calendar alerts, she had found an escape from the bloody legacy of her birthright. But more than that, she had found a man whose strength matched her own—a man who had stood between her and an executioner's bullet without knowing she was capable of conquering the world.
"A sovereign does not share a throne, Matteo," she said, her voice trembling slightly before she locked it down into cold iron.
"Then we build a bigger one," he answered without hesitation.
Evelyn stared at him. A slow, breathtaking smile—genuine, fierce, and entirely devoid of her old masks—spread across her face.
She turned to Helena.
"Take the Vanguard," Evelyn commanded, her voice ringing out with supreme, unchallengeable authority over the screaming engines. "Fly to Vienna. Summon the heads of the seven families to the Grand Hall. Tell them the Arbiter lives. Tell them the Compact is rewritten."
Helena blinked in shock. "And you, my Lady?"
Evelyn reached into her pocket. She pulled out the cracked plastic employee badge—the one that read *Evelyn Hart, Executive Assistant*—and tossed it into the open cabin of the helicopter.
"Tell them I am currently indisposed," she said. "I have a merger to close."
Helena stared at the badge, then looked at Evelyn, recognizing the unyielding steel in her sovereign’s eyes. With a slow, deep bow, Helena stepped back into the cabin and pulled the heavy door shut.
The helicopter lifted off into the pre-dawn sky, its searchlights cutting through the mist before it vanished into the grey clouds rolling out toward the Atlantic.
Matteo stood alone on the helipad with her as the silence of the dawn settled over the city.
The eastern horizon was beginning to fracture into pale slivers of gold and rose, painting the glass of Duca Tower in brilliant, burning light.
Evelyn turned to face him, the morning light catching the amber in her eyes, turning them to liquid fire.
"You realize what this means," she said softly, crossing her arms against the morning chill. "By sunrise, every syndicate from here to Tokyo will know we are aligned. They will send armies. They will send assassins. They will try to tear this tower down stone by stone."
Matteo looked down at her, the corners of his mouth curving into a slow, lethal smile that matched her own.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out his three remaining colored pens—black, blue, and red—which he had retrieved from her desk before chasing her to the roof, and held them out to her.
"Let them try," Matteo said.
Evelyn looked at the pens, then took the blue one, clicking the mechanism once.
*Click.*
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Far below them, the streets of Manhattan began to wake, entirely unaware that the world had changed overnight.
And as the first rays of the sun hit the forty-ninth floor, the private elevators at the base of the tower chimed once more, heralding the arrival of an enemy they had yet to name—and the beginning of a war that would decide the fate of them all.
