Chapter 176 - The Sovereign Trial
The upper library of Villa Balbianello was an abattoir of broken glass, shredded tapestries, and smoking server racks.
Victor Sterling sat behind his desk, surrounded by six Carabinieri tactical officers with assault rifles leveled at his chest.
His face was pale, his lip bleeding where a piece of flying glass had clipped his skin, his hands cuffed behind his back with heavy Italian steel.
The quantum decryption terminal on his desk was dead—its power cables severed, its hard drives removed and sealed inside an evidence case held by Marcus Vance.
Ethan and I stepped through the shattered French doors, our clothes soaked, our expressions carved from the ancient granite of the Alps.
Victor looked up.
He saw Ethan standing beside me, tall, broad, radiating an aura of absolute, unassailable majesty that no surgery and no stolen suit could ever replicate.
"You won't kill me, Ethan," Victor rasped, trying to summon a shred of his theatrical arrogance. "I am an officer of the French Foreign Legion. I have diplomatic immunity under the Valais covenants."
Ethan walked across the ruined room, stopped two feet from the desk, and looked down into the face of his duplicate with an expression of pure, bone-deep pity.
"You aren't an officer, Victor," Ethan said softly. "You're just a broken copy of a man who chose honor over greed."
He reached out, his thumb catching the edge of the medical gauze taped to Victor’s neck, and ripped it away.
Beneath the gauze, the black dragon tattoo was peeling at the edges—cheap, synthetic ink applied over scarred tissue, already fading into an ugly gray smudge.
"A copy always fades, Victor," Ethan whispered.
The Chief Magistrate of Milan stepped forward, holding an international arrest warrant bearing the embossed seals of the International Criminal Court, the French Republic, and the Swiss Confederation.
"Victor Sterling," the magistrate declared, his voice ringing through the ruined baroque hall. "You are remanded to the International Detention Center in Scheveningen without the possibility of bail. You are charged with forty-six counts of high treason, maritime piracy, attempted murder of minor sovereign wards, and crimes against humanity."
The Carabinieri officers hauled Victor to his feet, dragging him toward the terrace doors.
As he passed Ethan, Victor stopped for a fraction of a second, his eyes wild, his voice breaking into a ragged, pathetic hiss:
"Who are you, Ethan?! What are you?!"
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Ethan looked at him with an unshakeable, tranquil peace that filled every corner of his soul.
"I am a husband," Ethan said. "And I am a father. Now get out of my sight."
