Lucia POV
Silvio opened his mouth, his jaw worked for a moment, a useless mechanical motion, before any sound came.
"Lucia, what the hell are you saying?" he asked, his voice trembling with a raw disbelief.
I would not waste another breath on him. I snatched Carmela's hand and sprinted toward the shattered window.
Bianca, meanwhile, cowered safely near the load-bearing wall, still playing the benevolent saint.
"She's throwing a tantrum!" she yelled over the noise. She accused me of dragging Carmela to her death just to prove a point.
This time, her finger was not trembling but ramrod straight, an ivory dagger aimed at the chaos beyond the window.
"Jumping is a death sentence!" she cried out. "Silvio, please stop her!"
Carmela shoved a heavy, overturned chair out of our path. She turned her head and fiercely cursed Bianca, swearing her absolute loyalty to my judgment in front of everyone.
"I trust Lucia with my life!" Carmela spat at the cowering crowd. "If the rest of you want to wait for the reaper, be my guest."
A great groaning crack echoed from the ceiling, and plaster rained down from the ceiling in thick sheets. The heavy, gilded family portraits swung violently from the splintering walls.
I stepped onto the wide window ledge.
I looked down, my mind a rapid calculator assessing the thirty-foot drop to the cargo netting and the soft earth below.
I knew the precise physics of this fall; as long as I executed a proper tactical roll to absorb the kinetic energy, I would survive.
"Protect your head!" I shouted over the grinding noise of the crumbling structure.
"Roll the instant your boots touch the ground!"
Carmela gritted her teeth. She looked at me, and her wide eyes reflected nothing but pure, unadulterated trust.
Panic finally shattered Silvio's veneer of composure.
He scrambled forward through the rising debris, reaching out desperately. He meant to grab my ankle and drag me back inside.
But I pushed off the ledge a fraction of a second before his fingertips could brush my skin.
The wind tore past my ears.
My descent was broken not by the ground but by the thick weave of industrial cargo netting suspended above the lower crates. The heavy mesh groaned, absorbing the lethal force of the fall and casting me outward.
My heavy boots hit the ground a few feet later. I bent my knees, throwing my momentum forward into a flawless tactical roll across the dirt.
The immense kinetic shock rattled my organs, compressing my chest and bringing the sharp, metallic taste of blood to the back of my throat.
I ignored the shock that rattled my organs and forced myself up from the dust.
"Carmela!" I shouted.
She mirrored my landing perfectly, rolling through the dirt and springing up right next to me.
Aside from a badly scraped elbow, she was intact. She laughed out loud, a wild, breathless sound fueled by the sheer adrenaline of being alive.
I exhaled a massive, shaking breath.
I looked down at my right leg. It was perfectly whole—strong and functional as I took a few testing steps in the loose earth.
The memory of my past-life jump surfaced like a nightmare.
I remembered how Silvio's terrified, rigid body had locked onto me in mid-air, destroying my ability to roll and causing my femur to snap upon impact.
That time, his dead weight had crushed me. This time, I carried only myself. And I landed whole.
I grabbed Carmela's arm, keeping her moving.
"Don't stop running!" I ordered. We sprinted toward the secure perimeter, moving far away from the collapsing estate.
The sky turned a choked, dusty yellow. The ground heaved beneath our heavy boots.
We supported each other by the shoulders, stumbling forward until we reached the dead center of the secure extraction zone.
Carmela suddenly stopped, her fingers digging deep into my arm.
Her eyes grew wide with a primal terror as she pointed back at the safehouse.
A tremor ran through the earth, so profound it seemed to steal all sound from the air. We could only watch as the five-story syndicate headquarters imploded, becoming a silent, suffocating mountain of rubble.
And somewhere beneath that mountain, Silvio Vitiello was about to learn the price of his arrogance—with his legs.
