Xavier sighed and looked down for a second before answering. "Victoria had a best friend—a girl around her age. She used to visit their house a lot. Ethan… raped her. Recorded it. Then used it to blackmail her, forced her into it again and again until she couldn't take it anymore. She ended her own life."

The silence that followed was heavy enough to choke on.

"And that wasn't all," Xavier continued, voice cold and detached now. "She had a close friend—a guy who always looked out for her. Ethan killed him in a fit of jealousy because he thought the guy was her boyfriend. Staged it as a car crash."

Viola's expression hardened, her usual smugness gone. "...That's sick."

Xavier nodded. "He's done worse. Bribed judges to silence assault cases, trafficked people through his company's research branches, experimented on orphans to test the serum formula. Even ordered the hit that wiped out a whole rebel group that tried to expose him."

Viola looked down for a moment, muttering, "And here I thought I'd seen monsters."

Xavier finally turned back to Victoria. "Relax. I'm not gonna hurt you. As long as you don't try anything stupid, you're safe. You have my word."

Victoria looked at him with fear still clinging to her face, but under it, something else was brewing—maybe relief. Or the faintest spark of trust.

Xavier didn't hesitate. "Come on — pack him up. We have to leave in…" He checked his watch, expression flicking from calm to a thin, dangerous grin. "Two minutes."

"Two minutes?" Viola barked, half-laugh, half-curse. "Why the rush?"

"Well… I have set up explosives in the entire area."

The words landed and then everything sped up. The entire 10 kilometer area around them was going to be in flames soon.

Viola swore, fast and sharp, and moved like someone who'd done this kind of ugly business before. She shoved Ethan into the crate with the same blunt efficiency she'd shown all night, straps and ties and a towel around the jaw to keep the blood from leaking where it shouldn't. He sagged like old rope, face slack, unconscious. She slammed the lid and hoisted the crate into her arms as if it were a sack of tools. Xavier snagged a throw — quick knots — and they cinched it down.

They ran.

The elevator doors breathed open and the stairwell spat them out onto the lower floors. Viola tapped at her wrist; a hum answered, fifty tiny rotors whining. A drone pierced the shaft and hovered, cargo bay open. They hooked on, the drone climbed like a thing trying to escape. When it cleared the mouth of the building it flared forward, carrying them over broken rebar and concrete teeth toward Viola's car idling three streets away.

By the time they hit the street, the engine was already warm. Viola didn't get to the driver's side fast enough; Xavier slid in, shoved the crate into the backseat where Viola jammed herself beside it to keep Ethan strapped. Victoria leaned against the seat, face ashen and shaking; she'd finally passed out, eyes fluttering when they hit bumps. Xavier slammed the car into gear.

He didn't need a map. He knew where every charge lived under the city's flesh — a cold puzzle he'd put together months ago. He knew full well what would follow, and he drove like a man with everything to gain from noise.

The first blast hit like a drum. The world jerked sideways and glass came down like rain. Xavier only smiled and kept his hands steady on the wheel. In the rearview, a ribbon of flame licked a tower and then another. One building folded in on itself, concrete sighing and dropping into dust. The next charge answered like a chorus — boom, boom — a string of pyrotechnics mapped out to sing a savage lullaby across the neighborhood.

They weren't after collateral aesthetics. This was a message: towers falling, lights going out, systems frying. But the way the explosions danced was obscene and beautiful in the way only chaos can be — synchronized, bright, final. A dozen flashes, then a hundred, then the sound went from single beats to a rolling thunder that swallowed the city block whole. Smoke rose in a blooming, black flower that ate the moonlight.

Viola screamed — not in fear so much as in the rush of the moment — and she loved and hated that it felt alive under her fingernails. Xavier laughed, loud and clean, like it surprised him too. Victoria's body convulsed once more and then stilled where she'd been cradled; she was out, the terror finally shutting down her system.

Cars elsewhere began to horn and light up. People screamed somewhere down a side street. But they all were in the safe zone and far away from the red zone Xavier had created. The city was waking in fire and shock. But inside the armored shell of that car, the trio were an island: the hum of tires, the thrum of their breathing, the distant pops still echoing.

"Speed up," Viola yelled over the din, voice ragged. Fear made her restless, and she wanted distance like everyone does when the heat is real.

Xavier eased the pedal, grin widening. "This car's rugged, remember? Armored. Bombproof, practically." He teased, half-brag and half-lie — the kind you tell when you want someone to feel both smug and safe. "You want proof, hold on."

"This is my car! I know it better than you do!" Viola hit his shoulder with the flat of her palm, hard enough to sting. "Don't be an idiot. Drive."

He did. The engine bit into the road like it had a grudge. Behind them, the night turned into a smear of sirens and distant flames, a city re-architected by a single winter of anger. Xavier's hands were steady. His grin never left. The ledger had been paid in fire and noise and the kind of finality that echoes.

In the back, Ethan shifted in the crate, a muffled groan leaking out as concrete and flame rewrote the skyline. Victoria slept on, finally safe from the brother she'd followed, and somehow, in the middle of disaster, the car smelled like gasoline and victory.

It was the night of revenge and the explosives were like fireworks as a celebration.

Once they were out of the red zone, Viola looked at Ethan's body in the crate and asked, "What are you going to do with him, seriously? Leaving him there would have been better and safer option."

"I told you I am gonna put up a show."

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