They watched the Prince of the City hold the mistress while the fiancée dripped muddy water onto the pristine limestone patio.
Jax climbed out, setting Catalina down gently. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her trembling shoulders.
Only then did he look at me.
His eyes were devoid of warmth. There was no apology. There was only irritation.
"You're making a scene, Eliana," he said, his voice smooth, low, and lethal.
I shivered, my teeth chattering so hard I thought they might crack. "She pushed me, Jax."
Catalina sobbed into his shirt, burying her face against the silk. "I slipped! I tried to grab her hand to steady myself!"
It was a lie so transparent it was insulting. But Jax didn't care about the truth. He cared about what he wanted. And right now, he didn't want me.
"Go home," Jax ordered me, dismissing me like a disobedient servant. "Clean yourself up."
"You're supposed to be my partner," I whispered, the words tasting like chlorine and bile. "You just left me there."
Jax stepped closer. The menace radiating off him was palpable. He was the son of the Underboss, a man who had killed for the Family, a man who terrified grown men.
"Your reputation is not my problem, Eliana," he said, loud enough for the inner circle to hear. "Grow up."
Something inside my chest snapped.
It wasn't a loud crack. It was a silent, final severance. The tether that had bound me to him for eighteen years didn't just break; it dissolved.
I didn't cry. I didn't scream.
I turned around and walked away.
I walked past the staring faces of the people I had grown up with-people who were now witnessing my social execution. I walked out of the estate gates and into the dark street.
I pulled out my phone. My fingers were numb, but I dialed the number I had saved for an emergency I never thought would happen.
"Uncle Sal," I said when the voice answered. "I need a favor. The favor you promised my mother. The transfer to UCLA... cancel it. Put me in the NYU system. Tonight."
"Eliana?" His voice was rough with sleep and confusion. "Does your father know?"
"No one knows," I said, staring at the lights of the city that was no longer my home. "And if you tell them, I'm dead."
I hung up before he could argue.
I went home to my empty room. I didn't sleep.
I took a box from my closet. I moved like a robot, programmed only for survival.
I took down the photos. The ticket stubs. The dried corsage from junior prom. The silver locket he gave me when I turned sixteen.
I packed his lies into the cardboard coffin.
I was done being the Thorny Rose of the Chicago Outfit. I was done being the canary in his gilded cage.
Jax thought he had just disciplined me. He thought he had put me in my place.
He was right. He had put me exactly where I needed to be.
Out of his life.
