Elena’s voice didn’t shake anymore. It was quiet, steady, and sharp enough to cut glass.

On screen, Alessandra backed away as Victor and Thomas advanced.

"Don't make this difficult, Alessandra," Victor said in the recording, his voice dripping with chilling corporate calm. "You're young. You don't understand how businesses are run. Sign the release, hand over the flash drive, and you can take your car and go anywhere you want."

"No!" Alessandra screamed on the tape. "You're criminals! Both of you!"

Then, the third figure stepped fully into the frame of the security camera—the blind-spot camera that I had been told was broken the night she died.

It wasn't a stranger.

It was my trusted uncle, Robert Moretti, who had supposedly died of a heart attack six months after Alessandra's funeral.

On the archive floor, Marco dropped to his knees, his hands clutching his head. "We had to do it," he sobbed, the polished corporate shark completely disintegrating into a pathetic coward. "She was going to ruin us. She found out about the offshore accounts. She was going to send us all to prison for twenty years!"

Victor didn't look at Marco. Instead, Victor slowly reached into his tailored suit jacket. His movements were calculated, smooth, and deliberate.

"You always were too observant for your own good, Luca," Victor said softly, a dark smile touching the corners of his mouth.

I didn't blink. I kept my eyes locked on Victor, but my hand slid down to my pocket, wrapping around the solid weight of my silver lighter. "You thought you covered every track. You staged the car accident in the drainage ditch. You even poisoned Uncle Robert when he started feeling guilty."

"Guilt is a liability," Victor replied. He pulled his hand out of his jacket—not holding a handkerchief or a pen, but a sleek, silenced Walther PPK pistol.

Thomas Reed stepped back into the shadows, pulling out his own weapon.

"I'm sorry, Luca," Thomas said, though his voice lacked any trace of remorse. "The Moretti empire is too big to be guided by sentimentality. We stabilized the family holdings after your sister's unfortunate passing. We made you richer than your father ever dreamed."

"And you thought you could just add me to the casualty list in a damp basement archive," I said calmly, stepping slightly to the side to put distance between myself and Marco, who was still weeping on the cold stone floor.

"No one comes down here on a Wednesday night," Victor said, raising the barrel of the pistol directly toward my chest. "And when the estate burns down tonight due to an 'electrical fault,' the police will find the charred remains of the entire family leadership—including the tragic little maid who accidentally started the fire with her smuggled contraband."

Victor's finger began to tighten around the trigger.

The silence in the archive was absolute, save for the hum of the vintage VCR playing the looping footage of my dead sister's final moments.

I smiled.

Victor frowned, hesitation flickering in his eyes for a split second. "What's funny?"