Jayme Barnes POV:

I stared down at the briefcase.

It was filled with rows of neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills. Crisp. Cold. Impersonal.

It was enough money to buy a house. It was enough money to buy a new identity.

But it wasn't enough to buy my silence.

And it certainly wasn't enough to buy my forgiveness.

"You think this fixes it?" I asked.

My voice was quiet. It was the heavy, suffocating silence before a hurricane.

Autry looked at me. He looked like a man trying to defuse a bomb with a sledgehammer.

"It secures your future, Jayme. It gives you a life away from the crossfire."

"My life was in the crossfire because you put it there," I countered.

I reached up to my neck.

My fingers found the cool metal of the silver star necklace. He had given it to me when I was eighteen. He had fastened it around my neck and told me I was his North Star.

Now, against my skin, it felt like a noose.

I unclasped it.

The chain slid through my fingers like water draining away.

I held it out to him.

"Take it," I said.

Autry stared at the silver star in my palm. He didn't move.

"Jayme, don't."

"Take it, Mr. Villarreal. Or I drop it in the dirt."

He flinched at the formal address as if I had slapped him.

He reached out slowly and took the necklace. His fingers brushed mine. His skin was burning hot. Mine was ice cold.

"We are strangers now," I said.

I turned around and walked away from the villa, leaving the money and the man behind.

I didn't go back to the hotel.

Instead, I walked up the winding path to the old temple garden on the hill.

It was a public spot, but at night, it was deserted. A ghost town of memories.

We used to come here when I was nineteen. Before the engagement. Before Cassie.

There was a wooden railing overlooking the city lights. Years ago, Autry had carved a knot into the wood. A lover's knot.

It didn't have initials. It was just a symbol of something that couldn't be untied.

I needed to see it one last time. I needed to see the lie carved in wood.

I reached the railing. I ran my hand along the rough timber, searching for the carving in the dark.

"Looking for this?"

The voice was high and sharp.

I froze.

Cassie stepped out from the shadows of a cypress tree. She was holding a flashlight.

The beam cut through the darkness and landed on the railing.

There was a fresh carving right next to where the old knot used to be.

It was a heart. Crude and jagged.

Inside the heart were the letters A & C.

And the old knot?

It had been sanded down. It was just a smooth, blank scar on the wood.

"He brought me here yesterday," Cassie said, smiling. "He told me about this place. He said he wanted to make new memories."

She walked toward me. She looked like a porcelain doll that had been dropped and glued back together wrong.

"You're pathetic, Jayme. Scrounging for scraps of a man who only saw you as a charity case."

"He offered me two million dollars to leave," I said, my voice steady.

Cassie's smile faltered for a second. Then it widened.

"Hush money," she said. "He's paying you to take out the trash. Himself."

She raised her left hand.

A diamond the size of a grape glittered in the flashlight beam.

"He designed it himself," she bragged. "We're setting the date for June. It's going to be the wedding of the decade."

Something inside me snapped.

It wasn't a loud snap. It was the sound of a final tether breaking.

I didn't think.

I stepped forward and slapped her.

It was a solid connection. My palm stung from the impact.

Cassie's head snapped to the side. She stumbled back, dropping the flashlight. It rolled on the ground, the beam spinning wildly across the grass.

"You bitch!" she shrieked.

"That was for the rose garden," I said.

"Jayme!"

Autry's voice roared from the path.

He had followed me.

He ran into the light, chest heaving. He saw Cassie holding her cheek. He saw me standing there, my hand still raised.

"She hit me!" Cassie cried, throwing herself at Autry. "She's crazy, Autry! She attacked me!"

Autry looked at me. His eyes were wide with shock. He had never seen me raise a hand in violence.

"Jayme," he warned, his tone low.

I looked down at the railing. I saw a loose piece of wood where the old knot used to be. A splinter of the past.

I ripped it off.

It made a loud cracking sound in the quiet night.

I held the piece of wood up.

"You sanded it down," I said to Autry.

"It was rotting," he said.

"Everything about us is rotting."

I snapped the wood in half.

Crack.

I threw the pieces at his feet. They landed on his polished shoes.

"The Omertà is broken," I said. "I owe you nothing. Not silence. Not loyalty. Not love."

I walked past them.

Autry reached for my arm.

"Don't touch me," I hissed.

He froze.

I walked down the hill, leaving the Don and his future wife alone in the dark.

Jayme Barnes POV

Sleep was out of the question.

I went straight to the hotel, my hands shaking as I packed my single bag.

My phone was vibrating on the nightstand, dancing across the wood with each buzz.

Autry.

Autry.

Autry.

I didn't block him.

I needed to know he was looking; I wanted to imagine him desperate.

I called the front desk.

"I need a taxi to the airport," I said, keeping my voice steady. "Immediately."

"Ms. Barnes," the concierge said, his tone laced with nerves. "There are... men in the lobby asking for you."

Autry's soldiers.

He was trying to cage the canary again.

"Is there a back exit?" I asked.

"Through the kitchen," he whispered.

"I'll be down in two minutes."

I grabbed my bag.

I grabbed my teddy bear.

I left the rest of my clothes where they lay-shedding a skin I no longer needed.

I slipped through the service elevator and out into the alley behind the hotel.

A taxi was waiting, engine idling in the damp air.

I didn't go to the airport.

He would have men there.

"Take me to the train station," I told the driver.

I considered the obvious route: a train to Paris. Then a train to London. Then a flight to New York.

No.

That was exactly what he would expect.

Instead, I took a train to a small town called Arles.

I found a cheap hostel tucked away on a quiet street.

I called Chloe.

"I need you to do something for me," I said.

"Anything," she replied instantly.

"Log into my social media. Post one picture. A black square. Caption it: Goodbye."

"And then?"

"Deactivate everything. Delete the accounts."

"Jayme, are you sure? That's your career."

"My career was built on his name," I said, the realization cold and sharp. "I want it dead."

"Done," she said.

I hung up.

I took the SIM card out of my phone.

I snapped it in half and flushed it down the toilet, watching the pieces swirl away.

I went to a local jazz bar that night.

I needed a drink.

I sat in the corner, nursing a whiskey that burned pleasantly on the way down.

The music was loud.

The saxophone wailed, a mournful sound like a dying animal.

Suddenly, the music stopped.

The lights flickered on, stark and blinding.

The manager walked to the center of the room.

He looked terrified.

"Everyone out," he stammered. "Gas leak. Emergency. Everyone out now."

People started grumbling and grabbing their coats.

I stood up.

I knew the smell of a gas leak. There was none.

This wasn't gas.

This was power.

I walked toward the exit, heart hammering against my ribs.

A large hand blocked the door.

It was Mark.

Autry's shadow.

"He wants to see you, Jayme," Mark said quietly.

"I'm not here," I said.

"He cleared the bar. He knows you're here."

"Tell him I died in the gas leak."

I pushed past Mark.

He didn't stop me.

He looked at me with something like pity, a crack in his stoic armor.

"He's going to tear the city apart," Mark warned.

"Let him," I said. "I won't be in it."

I ran down the street.

I flagged down a passing car.

It was a beat-up Peugeot.

"Marseille Airport," I told the driver. "I'll pay you double."

I got to the airport.

I bought a ticket to the furthest place I could find on the departure board.

Tokyo.

Then Sydney.

Then back to Europe.

I zig-zagged across the globe for three weeks until the world blurred into a series of terminals and takeoff lights, until I landed in London.

I was exhausted.

I was broke.

But I was invisible.

I sat in the terminal, watching the planes take off.

I borrowed a stranger's phone to call Chloe one last time.

"It's done," she said. "The accounts are gone. The press is saying you had a breakdown."

"Good."

"Autry called me," she whispered.

My heart skipped a beat.

"What did he say?"

"He didn't say anything. He just breathed into the phone for a minute and then hung up."

I looked out at the runway.

A plane was taxiing.

"Goodbye, Chloe."

"Be safe, Jayme."

I handed the phone back to the stranger.

I walked onto the plane.

As the wheels lifted off the tarmac, I felt the gravity letting go.

I wasn't Jayme Barnes anymore.

I was just a girl in the sky.