Frankie goes still for half a second, his grin fading into something colder.
Mikhail’s eyes narrow, satisfied.
Grayson doesn’t blink.
Nobody speaks.
Because this…
This is the message.
Reggie slings the chain over the iron bars with brutal efficiency.
Rowan climbs, hauling her up, boots planted on the metal like he’s scaling a throne.
Bullets crack in the distance, but the cult soldiers hesitate now, because they finally see what’s hanging in front of them.
Their salvation.
Their preacher.
Dead.
Their sacrifices are for nothing. No one is immortal. Not even her.
Reggie yanks hard, lifting the body higher as Rowan secures the chain with a final jerk.
And then Maria is strung up on the gates of Decadence like a warning to the world.
Like an execution. Like proof.
I step forward, breathing hard, smoke burning my lungs.
I lift my voice so it carries over the gunfire, over the sirens, over the chaos. “THE PREACHER IS DEAD!” I roar. “LOOK AT HER!”
The cult soldiers freeze.
Declan watches them, his face unreadable. Then he murmurs, almost bored, “Pathetic.”
The remaining men retreat, scrambling back into the trees, abandoning the bodies, abandoning the drive, abandoning the lie they were ready to die for.
And Frankie and Mikhail’s men…
They don’t let them go. They peel off in silent pursuit, disappearing into the smoke and the woods like wolves—picking them off one by one, not in a rush.
Not in rage. In certainty. Because no one leaves this place to come back again.
Declan turns his head slowly, gaze landing on Inferno—the sex club the Quinns built for Enzo.
Declan’s mouth curves into a smile. To many, you’d think the world was caving in around us. But, to us? It’s the opposite.
Because it’s finally over.
Inferno did what it was created to do. It dragged evil out into the open. It forced the truth into daylight. It burned the rot from the world. And now it’s burning too—symbolic as hell, the last thing we need to leave behind.
Declan looks at the flames. At Decadence. At the dead body hanging from the gates.
Then he exhales, and so do I. My debt to the Quinns, even if it was never in blood, is over. I delivered what I promised. The end of the Preacher.
