Twisted Obsession (Editing)

63 - Replacing the Crown

Lorenzo Vincelli

It had been just over twenty-four hours since I lit the match. Every damning shred of evidence against the Allisters—meticulously curated over months, some even years—was no longer buried. I hadn't simply leaked the truth. I orchestrated a spectacle. Names. Dates. Wire transfers. Offshore accounts. Video recordings, raw and unedited. Surveillance footage that painted them not as powerbrokers, but predators. Their sins weren't just exposed—they were paraded.

This wasn't an act of revenge. It was a strategy.

From the beginning, I knew their empire wasn't built on strength, but on illusion—smoke and mirrors held together by fear, favors, and falsified loyalty. So I cracked the mirror, piece by piece, until the whole façade shattered under the weight of undeniable truth.

I lounged on the velvet couch, the cold flicker of the television casting blue-gray shadows across my cheekbones. Every channel—local, national, international—was running with the story. The media didn't even need bribing; the scandal sold itself. Outside their Manhattan estate, chaos had taken root. Protesters flooded the gates, pelting eggs, pig's blood, rotten food—anything to mark their disdain. Some wore masks of the Allisters' faces, crossed out in thick red paint. Others climbed the iron fence, waving signs like "Corruption Has a Face" and "We Know What You Did."

The sirens, once a symbol of their control, now blared in panic. Officers—former Allister lapdogs—tried in vain to hold the line. But it was over. The people had seen too much. There was no propaganda strong enough to erase the images now etched into public memory. No spin could fix what I had so thoroughly dismantled.

New York wasn't burning with fire—it was burning with fury.

But fury is directionless without a hand to steer it.

Ours.

With the Allisters exposed and disgraced, their networks began to rot from the inside out. Judges they bought. Senators they groomed. Police commissioners they launched with on Sundays. All gone. Quiet removals. Some disappeared willingly. Others required persuasion—blackmail, leverage, threats they didn't know we had. Košarac's men and mine were already assuming key positions. The replacements weren't loyal to justice. They were loyal to us. That was the point.

This wasn't a power grab. This was a regime change.

Not a single bullet fired. Just documents and truth, weaponized.

Now, the next phase begins.

Luciana and I had already moved operations. That so-called Montenegrin vacation? It was never about pleasure. It was strategy—precision layered beneath sunlit distractions. Every move is calculated. Every smile rehearsed. Now we were back in California, fading into the steam rising from subway grates, swallowed by the slick glint of rain on asphalt and the neon haze that never slept. This city—equal parts graveyard and throne room. They thought they could just disappear here?

But we didn't come to hunt them.

We came to flush them out—one by one.

You see, when the empire burns, rats always scurry into the open. All we had to do was watch. And when they run, we decide who disappears... and who lives long enough to beg for it.

And just like that, the trap was set.

"Ready, baby?"Her voice curled around me like smoke, and when I turned, there she was—gliding in like sin.

Her black trousers clung to her hips like a second skin—sculpted, fluid, lethal in motion—each stride less a step and more a declaration. But it was the top that stole the breath from my chest. A striped cream-and-grey button-down, its neckline left recklessly undone, draped against her like a whispered secret. The soft fabric curved over her chest, brushing the swell with every breath, teasing glimpses of skin, of warmth, of the faintest, most dangerous valley. It was untucked, clinging tightly at the waist, and when she moved—when she raised a hand or shifted her stance—it fluttered just enough to expose the smooth lines of her stomach, golden and taut.