Elena Vitiello POV:

"Let's go to hell together."

Sofia’s twisted words echoed in my mind as the heavy, armored doors of the Rolls Royce locked into place with a solid *thud*.

The convoy of three black, bulletproof SUVs rolled out of the Outfit Manor gates, heading straight for Manhattan.

I sat in the back of the Rolls Royce, my legs crossed. I wore a long, tailored black wool coat over my suit. The heated leather seats did nothing to warm the cold, calculated anticipation spreading through my chest.

Thirty minutes later, the convoy approached the grand plaza of Columbia University.

The sky was a bruised, heavy grey. A freezing, biting wind whipped through the streets, carrying the threat of sleet.

Through the dark, tinted, bomb-resistant glass of my window, I saw them.

Luca and Matteo.

They were standing in the dead center of the open stone plaza. They looked like common vagrants.

Luca was clutching his side, clearly agonizing over the fractured ribs my guards had given him days ago. His designer clothes were filthy, torn, and stained with street grime.

Matteo leaned heavily on a cheap, wooden crutch. His left leg ended in a stump below the knee. His prosthetic was gone, shattered by my security detail. He was shivering violently in the wind.

A small delivery truck from a local florist was parked haphazardly by the curb. The driver was tossing out massive bundles of red roses.

I watched Luca dig into his dirty pockets. He pulled out a few crumpled, damp dollar bills—likely their last remaining cash—and shoved them into the driver's hand.

Matteo hobbled forward. With painful, agonizing slowness, he bent down and began spreading the red roses across the cold, grey paving stones.

They were arranging the thousands of flowers into a gigantic, pathetic heart shape.

Luca knelt in the center of the flowers. He pulled out a lighter and began lighting cheap, windproof candles, trying to create a pathetic illusion of romance.

A crowd of college students had already gathered. They pointed, whispered, and held up their phones, live-streaming the humiliating spectacle. They recognized the former princes of the Chicago syndicate, now reduced to freezing beggars.

Luca tried to look up with a soulful, tragic expression. But his jaw was still swollen and bruised from being shattered, making him look grotesque.

He actually believed this would work. He believed that if he groveled, if he performed this grand, dramatic gesture, I would revert to the obedient, desperate girl who used to crave his scraps of affection.

He didn't realize that girl died in a Chicago basement.

My convoy roared into the plaza. The massive engines drowned out the wind.

The three vehicles drove right onto the pedestrian stones, stopping aggressively at the edge of the rose heart.

Ten heavily armed Outfit guards poured out of the front and rear SUVs. They physically shoved the crowd of students back, forming a tight, impenetrable perimeter around my Rolls Royce.

Luca saw the convoy. A manic gleam of hope ignited in his bloodshot eyes.

He dropped to his knees right in the middle of the wet roses.

"Elena!" Luca screamed. His voice was hoarse, ragged, and utterly pathetic. "Elena, please!"

Inside the silent, soundproof cabin of the Rolls Royce, I felt my stomach turn.

I looked at the red roses. All I could see was the memory of the cheap, insulting diamond ring he had thrown at me years ago.

My lead guard tapped the intercom button. "Queen. Do you want us to clear this trash?"

I stared through the glass at Luca’s kneeling form. A dark, cruel smirk touched my lips.

"No," I replied smoothly. "That is too easy."

I picked up my encrypted phone. I dialed a direct line to the New York municipal sanitation director—a man whose gambling debts Dante owned.

"This is Elena Moretti," I said. "Send a heavy-duty street sweeper to the Columbia University main plaza. Immediately."

I hung up.

I smoothed the lapels of my coat. I pulled a pair of black leather gloves from my pocket and slid them onto my hands, adjusting the fit over my fingers.

My guard opened the heavy car door.

The freezing wind instantly rushed into the cabin.

I stepped out onto the concrete. My high heels clicked against the stone.

Luca saw me. He tried to crawl forward on his knees, his hands crushing the roses beneath him.

I stood at the top of the stone steps, looking down at him. I looked at him exactly the way one looks at a dead rat rotting in a sewer.

"You dirtied my carpet."

Elena Vitiello POV:

"You dirtied my carpet."

My voice cut through the freezing wind, sharp and completely devoid of pity.

Luca didn't care about the insult. He was completely unhinged. He dragged himself forward, his knees scraping against the rough stone. His hands, caked in mud and grime, reached out desperately toward the hem of my black wool coat.

He used to recoil if I even brushed against his sleeve. Now, he was begging to touch the dirt on my shoes.

Before his fingers could even come close, my lead guard stepped forward.

The guard drove his heavy combat boot directly into Luca’s injured shoulder.

The impact produced a sickening *crack*. Luca was launched backward. He tumbled through the wet roses and landed face-first in a puddle of freezing mud.

Luca curled into a ball, clutching his chest. He coughed violently, a spray of red blood splattering onto the white stones. Yet, his eyes remained locked on me, wide and pleading.

Matteo hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his wooden crutch. "Elena, please! We have nothing left!"

Another guard didn't even hesitate. He swung the heavy stock of his assault rifle and smashed it into the small of Matteo’s back.

Matteo screamed. He collapsed forward, his stump hitting the hard ground.

The surrounding college students gasped collectively. The flashes of their phone cameras strobed like lightning, capturing every second of the Chicago heirs being treated like stray dogs.

I stood perfectly still. The wind whipped my hair around my face, but my expression remained carved from ice.

"I know I was wrong!" Luca sobbed, spitting mud from his mouth. "Give me one more chance, Elena! I love you!"

I let out a low, mocking laugh.

"Do you think this is moving, Luca?" I asked, gesturing to the crushed red roses. "Do you think a few dead flowers erase the basement?"

Before he could answer, a deep, mechanical rumbling vibrated through the soles of my shoes.

At the far end of the street, a massive, heavy-duty city sanitation water truck turned the corner. Its enormous yellow chassis dominated the road.

The truck slowly rolled up to the edge of the plaza, stopping right in front of the heart-shaped bed of roses.

The driver leaned out of the window and gave a sharp nod to my guard captain.

I raised my black-gloved hand and flicked my wrist forward.

The driver slammed his hand down on the control lever.

The high-pressure water cannon mounted on the front of the truck erupted.

A thick, violent stream of water blasted out with the force of a localized hurricane. It slammed into the ground, instantly shredding the thousands of red roses into a slurry of red pulp and mud.

The cannon swept across the plaza. It hit Luca dead center.

The sheer kinetic force of the water lifted his emaciated body off the ground. He was thrown backward, sliding helplessly across the rough stones for ten feet.

The water blasted Matteo next. His wooden crutch was snapped and washed away into the gutter. He lost all balance and face-planted directly into the freezing, red-stained sludge.

The freezing water soaked them to the bone. They lay in the mud, shivering so violently their teeth chattered, gasping for air as the cannon mercilessly pinned them down.

The crowd of students erupted into cruel laughter. The romantic gesture had been completely obliterated, turning into a humiliating circus act.

Luca lay in the puddle, sobbing uncontrollably. The last microscopic shred of his dignity had just been washed down the drain.

I looked at their pathetic, broken forms. The heavy knot of anger that had sat in my chest for years finally dissolved. They were nothing to me anymore.

I turned around to walk back to the Rolls Royce.

Suddenly, the tiny earpiece tucked into my right ear cracked with static.

"Queen!" Julian’s voice screamed through the comms, panicked and urgent. "The grey van! It just blew past the outer perimeter cameras! It’s coming in hot!"

I whipped my head around. I looked past the water truck, down the long avenue.

Three blocks away, a rusted grey van was tearing down the street. It ignored the red lights, swerving violently around civilian cars.

The engine screamed, a high-pitched mechanical wail of a machine being pushed past its absolute limit. White smoke poured from the tires as they burned against the asphalt.

My guard captain drew his weapon. "Protect the Queen!" he roared.

I didn't move. I stood at the top of the stairs, my eyes narrowing.

Through the cracked windshield of the speeding van, I locked eyes with the horrific, scarred face of the driver.

"Sofia."

Elena Vitiello POV:

"Sofia."

The grey van hit the plaza curb with a violent, metal-crunching slam. It didn't slow down. It launched into the air for a split second before slamming back onto the paving stones, acting like a missile fired directly at me.

Through the shattered windshield, I saw Sofia. Her burned, centipede-like scar stretched tight as she mashed the accelerator to the floor. She was laughing—a wide, manic, soundless scream of pure insanity.

She wasn't afraid of dying. The fear had been entirely consumed by her hatred for me.

My guards reacted instantly. A barrage of gunfire erupted.

Bullets shattered the van's windshield, spider-webbing the glass into a million pieces. I saw a red mist spray inside the cabin as a bullet tore through Sofia’s shoulder.

She didn't even flinch. Her foot stayed pinned to the gas pedal.

I stood frozen on the steps, my brain calculating the distance and speed. She was going to hit the stairs.

In a fraction of a second, Dante’s chief driver inside the Rolls Royce slammed his foot on the gas and cranked the steering wheel hard.

The massive, heavily armored luxury car lurched forward. The tires shrieked against the stone. With a flawless, aggressive drift, the Rolls Royce slid sideways, parking parallel right at the base of the stairs.

It formed an impenetrable wall of military-grade steel between me and the incoming van.

Sofia saw the black wall of the Rolls Royce block her path. Her eyes widened in absolute, furious despair.

She knew the physics. If she hit the armored Rolls Royce, her cheap van would crumple like an aluminum can, and I wouldn't even feel the vibration.

In that split second of realization, her manic eyes darted to the right.

She saw Luca and Matteo.

They were still lying in the freezing mud, exactly where the water cannon had blasted them.

I saw the exact moment Sofia’s hatred pivoted. Luca had used her, abandoned her, and thrown her to the wolves in Chicago. If she couldn't kill me, she was going to drag the men who ruined her straight to hell.

Sofia yanked the steering wheel violently to the right.

The van’s bald tires lost all traction on the wet, mud-slicked stones. The heavy vehicle went into a massive, uncontrolled slide, its trajectory shifting directly toward the two men on the ground.

Luca lay paralyzed in the mud. He looked up. His eyes bulged out of his skull as the massive grill of the van filled his vision.

He tried to scramble backward, but his broken ribs made his body completely useless. He just lay there, screaming soundlessly.

Matteo dug his fingernails into the cracks of the paving stones, trying to drag his one-legged body out of the way.

It was too late.

The van’s front bumper slammed into Matteo’s back first.

A sickening, wet *crunch* echoed over the roar of the engine. Matteo was instantly sucked underneath the chassis, his body rolling beneath the spinning tires.

A millisecond later, the center of the grill struck Luca.

The impact launched Luca’s body into the air like a broken ragdoll. He flew backward, his head slamming with a horrific, hollow *thud* against the sharp edge of the stone steps.

The van rolled over Matteo’s legs and completely lost control.

It veered sharply and plowed headfirst into the massive, solid stone pillar in the center of the plaza.

The impact was catastrophic. The van’s engine block folded inward, metal shrieking and tearing. A shower of bright orange sparks erupted from the crushed hood.

The sheer kinetic force ejected Sofia through the remaining shards of the windshield. Her body slammed into the stone pillar and dropped to the ground like a sack of wet cement.

Inside the crushed cabin, the violent impact triggered the crude blasting caps taped to the steering wheel.

A blinding, white-hot flash of light erupted from the center of the van.

Then came the boom.

A massive fireball expanded outward, vaporizing the rain and mud. A shockwave of pure force ripped through the plaza, tearing streetlamps from their bolts and turning the crushed rose petals into burning shrapnel.

Before the heat could even touch my face, my guard captain tackled me hard to the stone floor, pinning me safely behind the thick steel chassis of the Rolls Royce.

The deafening roar stripped away all hearing, the world burning in fire.