Eliana POV:

On my last day in Chicago, I returned to the academy to collect my final records. It was a formality, a loose end I needed to tie before I disappeared.

The campus was hushed, suspended in the lull between semesters.

I saw him near the old stone archway-the one where we'd once hidden during a sudden downpour years ago, his jacket wrapped around my shoulders.

He was taking pictures of Catalina.

She posed and preened while he directed her, his voice patient, a faint smile playing on his lips.

He'd always hated having his picture taken, swatting my phone away whenever I tried to capture a moment. Now, he was a devoted photographer for her.

I remembered standing in that exact spot with him four years ago, our futures stretching out before us like an endless, sunlit road. A future that now belonged to her.

I turned away, my footsteps making no sound on the grass, and walked toward the edge of the campus, where Gallo territory bled into Moretti land.

The old oak tree stood there, its branches heavy with the weight of decades.

I found our carving. A lopsided heart with 'J.M. + E.G.' carved within.

A promise made by two kids who thought they knew what forever meant.

I pulled the key to my old locker from my pocket. The metal felt cold against my palm. I pressed the sharp edge into the bark, right over my initial.

I scraped and clawed at the wood, digging until my own initial was nothing but a jagged, ugly scar. The pact was nullified. The promise, void.

"What are you doing over here?"

His voice. I didn't turn around. I heard their footsteps approaching, the crunch of dry leaves under their feet.

Catalina's voice was cloyingly sweet. "Jax, look. We should carve our initials."

I heard the whisper-slide of a knife being drawn from its sheath. Then, the rhythmic sound of metal cutting into wood. He was overwriting our history, carving her name over the space where mine used to be.

I dropped my key. It landed in the dirt with a soft thud.

"Looks like you lost something," Catalina called out, her voice laced with triumph. She bent down and picked up the key, dangling it from her fingertips. "You've lost everything."

Something inside me snapped. A primal, white-hot rage I didn't know I was still capable of.

I lunged forward and shoved her. Hard.

She stumbled backward, her arms flailing. Her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, her nails digging into my skin. Her momentum pulled me with her.

We crashed through the surface of the lake together.

The icy water was a shock, a brutal slap that knocked the air from my lungs. My clothes became a lead weight, dragging me down into the murky darkness. I kicked, fighting my way back to the surface, gasping for air.

My eyes found Jax on the bank. He was already moving.

He dove into the water, his powerful strokes cutting through the surface. He was swimming right for me.

For a single, stupid second, a flicker of hope ignited in my chest.

Then he swam past me.

He swam right past my gasping, struggling body to reach Catalina, who was staging a theatrical performance of drowning a few feet away.

He pulled her into his arms, holding her head above the water.

One of his men on the shore started forward, his eyes on me.

Jax's voice sliced through the cold air. It wasn't directed at me. It was an order.

"Her life is no longer my problem."

Jax POV:

My world had shrunk to the four walls of my Chicago apartment. A hollow ache had taken up permanent residence in my chest, a dull, constant thrum beneath my ribs.

The silence was the worst part. It wasn't just an absence of noise; it was a physical weight, a heavy blanket that pressed down, smothering every sound, every thought.

I dropped out of my classes. The paperwork was a blur of signatures and bureaucratic nonsense.

My parents called, their voices laced with fury and disappointment. They threatened to cut me off, to freeze my accounts, to strip me of everything.

"I don't care," I told my father, my voice flat.

Finding her was the only thing that mattered. The empire, the power, the future they'd meticulously planned for me-it was all ash without her.

Catalina showed up at my door one afternoon, her expression a practiced mask of concern. The sight of her sent a wave of revulsion through me. She was a symbol of my own stupidity, a walking monument to my arrogance.

"There was never an us," I said, my voice like ice. "Leave. And don't ever come back."

The flicker of pain on her face was satisfying for a fraction of a second, then it was just...nothing. She was nothing. A ghost from a life I no longer wanted.

It took weeks. Weeks of pulling strings I didn't know I possessed, of calling in favors I knew would cost me later, of wrestling with the bureaucratic beast of a cross-country university transfer.

But I did it. I got into NYU.

I spent the first two days on campus in a frantic haze, a ghost haunting lecture halls and student centers. I showed her picture to hundreds of people, my voice raw and hoarse from repeating her name.

Finally, a girl with bright pink hair, in the middle of tacking up a flyer for a dance performance, paused and squinted at the photo.

"Oh, Lia? Oh, yeah, she's incredible. She's probably at the studio right now. It's in the arts building, third floor."

I ran.

I didn't walk, I ran, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Stairs and hallways blurred as I moved. I found the studio, a massive room with floor-to-ceiling windows flooding the space with afternoon light.

And I saw her.

She was in the middle of the floor, moving with a fluid grace that seemed to pull the very air from my lungs. She looked...stronger. More confident. Whole.

The light from the window ignited her hair, turning it to fire. She was radiant.

Then she laughed. It was a full, genuine sound that echoed in the cavernous room.

I followed her gaze to a guy standing near the barre, a tall, quiet-looking guy with kind eyes. He was watching her with an expression of such open adoration it made my stomach clench.

The quiet intimacy between them, the easy way he held her gaze, the smile that was so clearly just for him-each detail was a physical blow, a dagger twisting in my gut.

I threw open the door. The heavy wood slammed against the wall.

"Ellie."

The music screeched to a halt. Every head in the room snapped toward me.

Her smile vanished. It didn't fall, it was just...gone. Replaced by the polite, impersonal mask one reserves for a complete stranger.

She picked up her water bottle from the floor, her movements unnervingly calm and deliberate.

She turned her back on me and walked out another door on the far side of the studio, never once glancing in my direction.

She left me standing alone in the suffocating silence.