Chapter 72: You Will Pay For This
Danielle swallowed the stuck saliva inside her throat when at least 10 n entered the room. All of them were ard.
Ethan smiled, and Jackson raised his gun, aid between her eyes.
"You will pay for what your father did. They are all victims of your father’s tyranny, Danielle. No one will let you out of here tonight, alive."
But Danielle didn’t even flinch. Instead, she lifted her head high.
"If I die today...I die knowing you will all end in hell."
And suddenly, the energy inside the warehouse felt like it was so full of rust and desperation.
Ethan’s smile spread across his face like poison. "You think they’ll care? You think they’ll stop long enough to bury you?"
He walked forward and knelt before her and Danielle saw how his eyes glead with the kind of delight that made her feet clench.
"You’re a loose end, princess. And I tie up loose ends."
The engines outside grew louder. Car doors slamd and many familiar and foreign voices eventually cut through the walls.
Ethan’s phone rang, but he ignored it.
Jackson’s hands shook around the gun.
Jackson whispered, "do we really have to do this..?"
Ethan turned his head slowly. "We? There is no we."
The single gunshot split the air like a knife. For a half second nothing moved. Then a body collapsed with a wet thud and blood painted the concrete in a dark, shaful star.
Jackson stared at the fallen man as if he could not believe he had done it.
Ethan laughed once gladly, as if the sound ward him. He pushed a strand of hair back and looked at Danielle with slow, thoughtful eyes.
"You see? This is what happens when soone balks. This is what happens when loyalty becos weak. There is no forgiveness in my world. Only consequence."
Danielle watched the man on the floor and felt sothing in her ribcage split open.
Her hands trembled against the steel ring biting into her wrist.
Ethan crouched and touched the dead man’s forehead like a priest testing warmth. He smiled at Danielle as if he offered her a gift.
"You will be the ssage. The whole country will see what happens to those who stand for the tyrant. They will watch the princess speak the truth and then they will watch the penalty for being the fruit of his blood."
Ethan stood up and clapped slowly. Two n dragged forward a tal case and opened it with a soft cough.
Inside was a cara, lenses hungry and bright. Wires spilled like veins and portable transmitters lay beside it, small and clean, the tool he intended to burn across the nation’s screens.
"Live," Ethan said. "Let us make them watch."
He tapped a man at his shoulder and pointed. The man seized Danielle roughly and pushed her toward the chair.
Her back t cold tal. A leather strap crossed her chest and tightened until her breath hitched. The caraman fitted the lens in front of her face. The lights flared and the room beca a theater.
Ethan walked slowly in front of the lens like a conductor before an orchestra of pain. He spoke to whoever would see, not to Danielle.
"People need to wake up," he was talking into the cara as casually as if he described the weather. "They need to feel the weight of their leader’s sins. When a king hides his blood on his hands, a country must bleed to see. Let her speak!!! Let her condemn him..!"
Danielle’s voice ca out thin and small at first when he forced her to tell what he wanted. The words were not hers.
"If you won’t read them properly-I will kill your father with my own hands too."
So, Danielle has no other choice but to obey his wild idea of brainwashing people with lies about her father.
These words felt like they were with a hard design. She read them as a mouth reads a script under threat.
"My father is guilty. He has stolen from our people. He has killed. I was complicit by silence."
Her throat closed...
Each phrase ripped through her chest as if he pulled rope through tender skin. Behind the lens Ethan smiled, pleased with each tear.
He stopped the cara and walked to a monitor.
One by one he connected each transmitter to a list of local channels and social feeds.
He had friends in places where power could be bought and aning could be forced. He did’t need a crowd in the square.
"By the ti the first people wake up to drink their coffee," he said as fingers danced on the board, "your father will be trying to look innocent in front of caras that will feed him my image. He will be naked and he will be blad. His power will rot."
Danielle tried to speak again. She wanted to shout that she was forced, that the words were not true, that she loved nothing about what he pretended to love.
The strap pressed harder against her collarbone. A wire bit into her wrist where tal t skin.
Ethan’s thumb brushed her cheek once. The contact felt like a violation. Instead of comfort it carried disgust.
"I will make him watch you...I will make him watch you confess. When the people begin to shout, he will not stand. And when he falls, you will not be free. You will be his live wound, the proof that monsters breed monsters."
The n around him moved like puppets. One of them produced footage from a phone and slid it into Ethan’s hand.
He flicked and ford a long smirk...
"My beautiful, Danielle...did you know that your father just got into another fight?"
"What?" Danielle furrowed her eyebrow.
"I an, baby...co on, how is this man your father?"
"No matter what he did...he’s still ten tis better than you, you asshole!"
*Slap...!*
"Haven’t I told you how bad I hate loud bitches like you? It’s ti to teach you one more lesson."
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