---- Chapter 24 Chapter 24 Aimee Ramirez POV: The wine cellar was my command center. On the tablet screen, | watched Julian's red dot move methodically through the house. He was smart, checking every room, every closet. He was a professional. But he was in my world now. "You can't hide forever, Aimee," his voice, muffled by the thick door, echoed down the stairs. | didn't need to hide. | needed to fight. | tapped a command on the screen. The state-of-the-art irrigation system for the indoor garden, a feature I'd designed myself, roared to life. Not with a gentle mist, but with a high-pressure deluge. Water flooded the main floor, turning the polished marble into a treacherous sheet of ice. | watched him slip, cursing as he struggled to keep his footing. It was a small victory, but it bought me time. My mind raced, assessing my assets. The house was a smart house, a network of interconnected systems. The fireplace was gas-powered. The security shutters were steel. The sound system had speakers in every room. | initiated a sequence. The gas in the great room fireplace began to hiss, silent and odorless. The steel security shutters ---- on all the windows and doors slammed down, plunging the house into absolute, tomb-like darkness and sealing him inside. Then, | activated the sound system. From every speaker, at maximum volume, | blasted a recording of Karma's hysterical, weeping confession from her trial, the one where she admitted to everything, blaming her family, Kyle, anyone but herself. Her pathetic, whining voice filled the house, a cacophony of ghosts. | watched the red dot on my screen. He was disoriented, enraged by the sound of his sister's voice, stumbling on the wet floor. He was heading for the great room, toward the source of the gas. It was a trap. A lethal one. All it would take was a single spark. My finger hovered over the ignition command for the fireplace. | could end it. Right now. | could turn my beautiful new home into a funeral pyre. The cold, ruthless part of me, the part that had destroyed Kyle, urged me to do it. An eye for an eye. But then | thought of Anderson, racing toward this house, toward me. | thought of the life we were trying to build. A home, not a fortress. A future, not a monument to a painful past. | couldn't do it. | would not become the monster he wanted me to be. Just as Julian's red dot entered the great room, | heard a new ---- sound: the roar of a powerful engine, followed by the sickening crunch of metal as a heavy vehicle smashed through the main steel shutter. Headlights flooded the great room. Anderson. He had arrived. | watched on the tablet as a second dot-Anderson-appeared on the screen, moving with a speed and precision that was terrifying. He was armed. The confrontation was brutal and blessedly short. Julian, blinded by the headlights and deafened by his sister's screams, was no match for Anderson's focused, silent fury. A single gunshot echoed through the house. The red dot that was Julian Wells stopped moving. Silence. The heavy cellar door was ripped from its hinges. Anderson stood there, silhouetted by the emergency lights of his truck, his face grim, his gun still raised. He saw me, huddled in the corner, clutching the tablet, and his expression softened. He lowered the gun and rushed to my side, pulling me into an embrace so tight it felt like he was trying to fuse us together. "It's over," he whispered into my hair, his voice rough with emotion. "It's really over." | buried my face in his chest, the smell of gunpowder and the ---- cold night air clinging to him, and | let myself shatter. The tears | had held back for years finally came, a flood of grief and terror and a profound, overwhelming relief. He just held me, a steady, unshakeable rock in the storm of my past. | had tried to fight my own battle. But in the end, we had won it together.