No flowers for the dead - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

The plan was simple.
Let Matteo believe he still held the strings.
Let him keep watching, keep sending threats, keep thinking Elias was playing defense.
Because Elias wasn’t.
He was preparing the final strike.
⸻
Alina stayed out of it. Not because she was told to, but because she trusted him. And Elias only made her one promise before he left that night:
“I’ll come back. No matter what I have to do.”
⸻
The meeting took place in the ruins of a property that had once belonged to Matteo’s father—abandoned for years, just like the illusion of brotherhood between them.
Matteo waited by the shattered fountain, coat open, smile sharp.
“I was beginning to think you forgot how to show up without her.”
Elias didn’t respond.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t blink.
He stepped forward and dropped a thin envelope at Matteo’s feet.
“What’s this?” Matteo sneered.
“Proof,” Elias said coolly, “that you’ve been bleeding the offshore accounts dry since before our father died.”
Matteo’s face changed. Only slightly—but enough.
“And?”
“And,” Elias continued, voice like iron, “that every single wire transfer was routed through a shell company linked to a now-indicted foreign contractor.”
Matteo crouched, picked up the envelope, and flipped through the pages.
“You think this scares me?”
“No,” Elias said. “I think it buries you.”
⸻
Behind them, the sound of tires on gravel.
Two black cars pulled up.
No police.
Just lawyers.
Accountants.
And a judge.
Matteo stood as Elias turned slightly toward the cars.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” Elias said. “I came to end the bloodline properly.”
Matteo’s laugh was bitter. “You still think there’s honor left to salvage?”
“No,” Elias said. “But I have her. And she’s worth burning everything else for.”
⸻
By the time the ink dried, Matteo Vale had been legally stripped of his claim to any Vale Holding subsidiaries. The documents he signed, under pressure and surveillance, were airtight.
In return?
Elias gave him one thing: a plane ticket. One way. Untraceable.
Matteo took it.
Not out of mercy.
But because he finally understood—Elias had become the man their father never could be.
And unlike their father, Elias didn’t need to destroy Matteo.
He’d simply erased him.
⸻
It was nearly dawn when Elias returned home.
Alina met him in the foyer, barefoot, robe slipping off one shoulder.
“Is it done?” she asked.
He nodded once.
And then—like the world had waited for this final shift—they both exhaled.
He pressed his forehead to hers, eyes closed.
“It’s just us now.”
Her hands slid up his chest. “It’s always been just us.”
⸻
That night, in their bed, Elias didn’t make love to her out of desperation or possession.
He made love to her because it was the only language left strong enough to carry everything they’d survived.
And as the sun rose, spilling light across her skin and the bare stretch of his back, Alina whispered the words that neither of them had dared speak out loud until now:
“I’m ready.”
Elias stilled. “For what?”
“For forever.”