Four weeks after the incident at the Northstar Room, the final loose thread of the conspiracy remained to be cut.

Anthony Caruso had not been killed.

Instead, Gabriel had kept his former friend locked in an underground holding facility on an abandoned farm in McHenry County, allowing his legal team to quietly strip away every asset, shell company, and bank account Anthony had spent fifteen years building.

On a rainy Thursday evening, Gabriel took Nora with him to the holding facility.

“You don't have to go inside,” Gabriel told her as the SUV pulled up to the weathered red barn tucked deep in the woods. “You can wait in the car.”

“No,” Nora said, buttoning her dark wool overcoat. “He sat across from me at that table. He looked me in the eye while he waited for you to die. I want to see him.”

Gabriel looked at her with that familiar quiet pride, nodding once.

Inside the barn, hidden beneath a trapdoor covered in straw, was a spotless, climate-controlled concrete basement fitted with steel reinforced doors.

Viktor opened the center cell door.

Anthony Caruso sat on a metal cot in the corner of the small room. He was wearing grey sweatpants and a plain shirt, looking thin, hollowed-out, and years older than he had a month ago.

He looked up when the heavy door creaked open.

When his eyes fell on Gabriel—dressed in an immaculate charcoal suit, looking richer and more powerful than ever—and then on Nora, standing proudly at his side wearing a diamond solitaire ring on her left hand, Anthony let out a bitter, raspy laugh.

“Look at you,” Anthony sneered, his voice hoarse from weeks of isolation. “The king and his little waitress. You really brought her here to watch my execution, Gabe?”

Gabriel stopped three feet from the cot, his hands resting in his trouser pockets.

“There is no execution, Anthony,” Gabriel said quietly.

Anthony blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

“A bullet is too quick,” Gabriel stated softly. “And it leaves a mess for Viktor to clean up. You aren't dying tonight.”

He gestured to Viktor, who stepped forward and set a heavy leather folder on the small folding table beside the cot.

“Those are the flight documents and passport papers,” Gabriel explained. “There is a private cargo plane leaving for a small mining town in Northern Canada at midnight. You will be on it.”

Anthony stared at the folder, then back at Gabriel in shock. “Canada? A mining town?”

“You have been stripped of your citizenship, your accounts, and your name,” Gabriel said, his voice as cold as iron. “You will spend the rest of your life working as a third-shift clerk at a logging supply warehouse. You will earn fourteen dollars an hour. You will live in a one-room cabin with no internet and no phone.”

Anthony’s face drained of what little color remained. For a man who had lived his entire life in luxury, driving sports cars and wearing custom silk suits, the prospect of a bleak, nameless existence in the freezing wilderness was far worse than death.

“You’re leaving me alive... in the mud?” Anthony gasped, his voice cracking with terror.

“I am leaving you with the exact life Nora Bell lived before she walked into the Northstar Room,” Gabriel said, placing his arm gently around Nora’s shoulders. “A life where you have to count every penny just to keep the heat on. A life where nobody knows your name, and nobody cares when you walk into a room.”

Gabriel turned his back on his former friend, taking Nora by the hand.

“Gabe! Gabe, please!” Anthony shrieked, throwing himself off the cot and scrambling across the concrete floor toward the door. “Shoot me! Shoot me, damn you! Don't leave me out there!”

Viktor stepped between them, slamming the heavy steel cell door shut with a deafening CLANG that cut off Anthony’s screams forever.

As they walked back up the wooden stairs into the rainy night, Nora squeezed Gabriel’s hand tightly.

“Is it over?” she asked softly.

Gabriel looked up at the grey clouds sweeping across the moon, feeling the cool rain against his face, and then down at the beautiful, courageous woman standing beside him.

“Yes, Nora,” Gabriel smiled softly, lifting her hand to his lips. “The ledger is clear.”