Lucia POV
A few men crouching near overturned desks stood up hesitantly. They cast nervous glances toward the splintered window frame and the dark harbor docks that loomed below.
Bianca stepped down from the table, her mask of innocent, wide-eyed worry expertly in place.
She did not point, but clutched the silk of her collar, her knuckles white, forcing the tears that welled in her eyes as she accused me of letting my personal vendetta against her jeopardize the lives of our family's men.
"The panic room is standard protocol!" she preached to the frightened crowd. "Jumping out of a building is suicide."
It was a masterclass in deception; she manipulated the men effortlessly.
Several soldiers who harbored a secret obsession with her immediately stepped forward, their chests puffed with misplaced chivalry as they surrounded her protectively.
They called me insane. They told me to go die alone.
They pledged their loyalty to Bianca right then and there. The men chose to huddle near the compromised load-bearing wall to protect her.
I smirked, more than willing to let these fools embrace their chosen execution.
Silvio's grip on my wrist became a manacle of bone; he began to drag me backward, deaf to my warnings.
I refused to be cowed by his looming presence or the crushing pressure on my bones. I turned my gaze to the front row of desks.
Carmela, my loyal enforcer, was taking cover behind a heavy oak chair. She had been mine since the night I found her bleeding out in a rival family's warehouse—a debt she had repaid with unwavering loyalty ever since.
I caught her eye and gave a subtle, sharp nod, signaling for her help.
Carmela did not hesitate for a single second.
She grabbed a heavy, solid-bronze family crest from the top of a nearby desk.
She launched herself from cover, lunging forward and viciously smashing the heavy metal down on Silvio's forearm.
Silvio howled in sudden agony.
His fingers spasmed, and his iron grip finally broke.
I violently snatched my arm back against my chest, creating distance between us.
I looked down at my wrist. The skin was already blooming into a sick shade of purple where his nails had broken the flesh.
Silvio clutched his reddened arm. He glared at Carmela and then at me.
"Why do you refuse to listen?" he demanded, his voice shaking with anger. "Why do you insist on throwing your life away?"
Looking at his handsome face made my stomach turn; I felt physically nauseous.
The sight of him brought it all back in a sickening rush: the agonizing pain of my shattered leg, his illicit affair with Bianca, and his utter apathy toward my suffering while I sat in a wheelchair for years.
I remembered how Bianca spread malicious rumors to the other Capos, how she claimed that I crippled myself intentionally just to force him into the arranged marriage.
And I remembered how eagerly Silvio believed her lies.
The echo of his past-life confession to Bianca rang in my ears.
"I never loved her," he had said in the dark. "Looking at her crippled leg makes me sick."
Carmela stepped between us, snapping me back to reality.
I rubbed my bruised wrist and looked Silvio dead in the eyes.
"You are not nearly as important as you think you are," I told him coldly.
I stepped closer, making sure he heard every single word over the wailing sirens.
"I am not jumping to save you, because you are not worth the blood in my veins."
I kept my face a blank canvas, showing him my absolute detachment.
"Even if you are crushed into paste today, I won't spare you a second glance."
Silvio froze. He stared at me with a slow, hollow disbelief dawning in his eyes as he grasped that the woman he had discarded was gone.
Beneath that disbelief, something else flickered—a shadow of nameless terror, as if his buried instincts recognized this moment and knew it would cost him everything.
