Katarina De Luca POV:
The moment the lock clicked, the strength that had carried me through the hallway deserted me. My body slid down the cool, smooth wood of the door until I was sitting on the cold marble floor.
The mask was gone. The performance was over. But the tears didn't come. I had no tears left for that man.
Instead, a tremor started deep in my bones, a violent shudder of pure, suppressed rage. My hands clenched into fists, my nails digging so deep into my palms that I felt the sharp sting of breaking skin.
I lifted my head and looked around the opulent room. Gold leaf, silk drapes, priceless art. It wasn't a home. It was a cage. A beautiful, gilded cage I had bought with five years of my life.
My eyes landed on our wedding portrait above the fireplace. We were both smiling, two perfect strangers playing their parts. I stared at the man in the photo, at the coldness in his eyes that I had once mistaken for strength.
I pushed myself to my feet and walked, not to the photo, but to the far side of my enormous walk-in closet.
I pushed aside a row of couture gowns, the silk and sequins whispering against my hands, revealing the paneled wall behind them. I found an almost invisible knot in the wood grain and pressed it three times in a complex sequence.
With a faint hiss of hydraulics, a section of the wall slid away, revealing a flush-mounted biometric safe.
I entered the long passcode, then pressed my thumb to the scanner. It glowed green, and the heavy steel door clicked open.
Inside, there were no jewels, no stacks of cash. Just a single black portfolio and a small, featureless satellite phone.
I took out the portfolio and carried it back into the bedroom, sinking onto the chaise lounge by the window. On the cover, embossed in simple gold lettering, were two words: PROJECT PROMETHEUS.
This was my escape plan. My scorched-earth protocol. I’d started building it the day after our honeymoon, born from a lesson my own family's downfall had taught me: never, ever depend on a man for your survival. I had hoped I would never need it.
I opened it. The first section was a detailed forensic accounting of every dirty dollar that flowed through the De Luca empire, every hidden asset, every illegal transaction I had ever facilitated or cleaned.
The second section was my own empire. A labyrinth of offshore accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, and shell corporations, a financial fortress I had built in secret, brick by digital brick.
I flipped through the pages. The numbers, the flowcharts, the exit strategies were all etched into my memory.
Tonight, Alessandro had not just humiliated me. He had liberated me. He had extinguished the last, foolish flicker of hope that this marriage could be anything more than a contract.
Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to man.
I was about to steal my future back from the De Lucas.
My gaze was no longer clouded with pain. It was sharp, clear, and cold as steel.
I picked up the satellite phone. It was untraceable. I dialed the single number stored in its memory.
It was answered on the first ring.
A distorted voice, electronically altered to be neither male nor female, spoke a single letter. "K?"
It was my designation. My real name in a world Alessandro knew nothing about.
I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at the sleeping estate below. The manicured lawns, the fountains, the sprawling wings of the main house. It all looked different now. It was no longer my prison.
It was my hunting ground.
I took a breath, my voice steady and clear. "It's me."
I paused, letting the weight of the moment settle. Then I gave the command that would burn my old life to the ground.
"Activate Project Prometheus."
