Three days later, my door opened.

Vincenzo walked in, Katerina on his arm.

She wore a white Chanel suit. The family ring on her left hand glittered, stabbing at my eyes.

“Chiara,” Vincenzo’s voice was flat. “How are you feeling?”

“Still breathing,” I said, my voice like gravel. “Disappointed?”

Katerina walked to my bedside, her face a mask of fake concern. “I’ve been wanting to see you. I heard you were badly hurt protecting us. You’re so brave.”

Protecting you.

What a fucking joke.

“Just doing my job.”

“Your loyalty is very touching,” Katerina said. Her gaze dropped to the open collar of my hospital gown, zeroing in on the small phoenix tattoo just below my collarbone.

We got it after our first firefight together. Our first secret.

A flash of jealousy crossed her eyes. She turned to Vincenzo, her voice sickly sweet. “Darling, Chiara’s tattoo is so unique. But… I don’t really like it. It reminds me you have a past I don’t know about. It makes me feel… insecure.”

Vincenzo went still.

He was silent for a few seconds. Then he took out his phone and dialed Marco.

“Get Tony over to the hospital with his kit. Now.”

My blood ran cold. Tony was the family’s tattoo artist.

No. He wouldn’t…

Twenty minutes later, Tony Marcelli walked in, carrying a black case.

He saw me in the bed, then looked at Vincenzo, confused.

“Boss, you sure… you want to do this here?”

I thought he was here to erase mine. To strip me of our last secret. But I was wrong. It was so much worse. Vincenzo took off his own shirt.

The scars on his chest were suddenly blinding.

The ones I traced with my fingers after we made love. The marks of our life together.

The one on his left pec, from three years ago at the docks. I’d shoved him out of the way and took Tony the Butcher’s knife for him. He held me, covered in blood, and lost control for the first time, his eyes shot with red as he screamed my name. He’d said, "Chiara, you're mine. No one touches you."

The bullet graze on the right, from five years ago in Milan. We were cornered. I used a fake ID to talk us past the cops and get us out. He kissed my wounds and called me his goddess of victory.

And now he was going to erase it all.

“Right here,” Vincenzo said, revealing the much more intricate phoenix on his chest.

The one I designed for him when I was nineteen. One of a kind.

He pointed to the phoenix and gave Tony his order.

“Cover it. With the Russian double-headed eagle.”

“Boss!” Tony’s voice was tight. “Are you sure? A cover-up that big... it’s gonna hurt like hell. And it’s going to scar like a motherfucker.”

“Do as I say,” Vincenzo’s tone left no room for argument.

I struggled to sit up. “Vincenzo, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up.” He didn’t even look at me. His eyes were ice. “This has nothing to do with you.”

The buzz of the needle was sharp in the quiet room.

Blood seeped out, mixing with ink, a smear of red before my eyes.

I watched the phoenix I designed, the symbol of our past, get tortured, consumed, and swallowed whole by the eagle that stood for his alliance, his new woman.

Vincenzo gritted his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead, but he didn’t make a sound.

His eyes never left Katerina.

“Does it hurt?” Katerina asked, dabbing his sweat with a handkerchief.

“No,” he gritted out, his voice rough. He never took his eyes off her. “For you, nothing hurts.”

Two hours later, it was done.

Vincenzo’s chest was a mess of blood and raw flesh, but the snarling Russian eagle had completely replaced the phoenix.

My phoenix was gone.

“Perfect,” Katerina purred, kissing his bloody chest. “Now, inside and out, you belong only to me.”

Vincenzo looked at the strange, bloody symbol in the mirror. He gave Katerina a weak but satisfied smile.

“Yes,” he said, but his eyes found mine in the reflection.

“Now, I’m only yours.”

The next morning, my burner phone rang. It was Vincenzo.

“Viktor’s workshop,” he commanded, his voice empty of emotion. “One hour. Katerina needs a new piece. You’re designing it.”

“I refuse.”

“This isn’t a request, Chiara. Don’t make me have my men ‘ask’ you again.”

He hung up.

An hour later, I was in the basement of the abandoned factory.

Vincenzo and Katerina were already there.

“Viktor,” Vincenzo said to the workshop’s owner, a legendary Russian weaponsmith. “This is Chiara. The best art forger in Chicago, and the best weapons expert. I need her to create a one-of-a-kind sidearm for Katerina.”

Viktor’s eyes lit up. “Art and arms! I like it!”

He led us to a workbench covered in black velvet, laid out with rare metals and gems.

Vincenzo came to my side. His voice was a low whisper, just for me. “I want you to build her the perfect gun. Use the same specs as my Glock. The one you built for my hand.”

My breath caught.

“I know you remember every detail,” he went on, his voice cold. “The 7-degree cant on the grip, the 2mm trigger pull, the platinum front sight that catches the faintest light in the dark. Replicate all of it. For her.”

I understood.

He wanted me to cut open our past, take the trust and blood we’d built, and gift-wrap it for another woman.

It was a hundred times crueler than another tattoo.

“Chiara?” Katerina came over, her voice sweet and innocent. “Can you help me? I’ve always wanted a gun engraved with my and Vincenzo’s initials. Wouldn’t that be the most romantic token of our love?”

I looked at her innocent smile, at Vincenzo’s unyielding stare. I forced a smile of my own.

“Of course.”

I picked up the stylus, but my hand was shaking.

I drew the streamlined frame, the perfect balance, every detail that had once been ours.

My hand was drawing, but my heart was bleeding.

“Brilliant!” Viktor admired the blueprint. “This is a work of art!”

“How long?” Vincenzo asked.

“Three weeks,” Viktor replied. “If Miss Chiara is willing to oversee the production.”

Oversee it. Watch another woman hold a “love token” made from my past with him.

“No.”

I stood up abruptly, my voice hoarse.

Everyone stared at me.

I took the design I’d just finished, and in front of everyone, I tore it to shreds.

“I don’t build fucking love tokens for your new whore!” I threw the pieces on the floor, releasing a rage that had been building for what felt like an eternity.

Vincenzo’s eyes turned dangerous. “Chiara—”

I turned to leave.

“If you walk out that door,” his voice was a threat, “don’t force me to use the family’s rules on you. You know what happens to traitors.”

I looked back at him, my eyes cold. “Then try me.”

I walked out without another glance, Katerina’s terrified scream and Vincenzo’s roar of anger chasing after me.

Back at my safe house, a gold-embossed invitation was waiting at the door.

“You are cordially invited to the engagement party of Mr. Vincenzo Russo and Miss Katerina Petrov.”

I stared at the beautiful card, imagining them picking it out together.

Then my phone buzzed. A photo from Marco.

Vincenzo was at my favorite private shooting range, coaching Katerina.

In her hands was the custom SIG Sauer P226 that used to be my favorite.

I flicked open my lighter and held the flame to the corner of the invitation.

I watched it burn. Watched their names turn to black ash, and with them, the last shred of hope I had.

I dialed my father’s encrypted number.

“Papa.”

“Is it time?”

I watched the invitation turn to ash. My voice was ice.

“It’s time. We do it tonight.”

I had just zipped the last bag when the door to the safe house was kicked off its hinges.

Vincenzo stood in the doorway, his eyes bloodshot, blazing with rage.

“Found you,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous.

My hand went to my gun. His was faster. Of course, it was.

Three strides, and he had me. He slammed me against the wall, his hand an iron vise around my wrist.

“Where did you think you could run?” he snarled, his breath hot on my face, smelling of whiskey and fury.

I struggled, but he had me pinned.

Suddenly, the rage in his eyes flickered, replaced by something almost broken.

“I’ve been looking for you all night,” he said, his forehead resting against mine, his voice rough with exhaustion. “I thought something happened to you…”

A sharp pain went through my chest.

But my head knew better. This was just another trap.

“Let go of me, Vincenzo.”

“Not until you tell me what the hell you’re doing.”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?” He let out a cold laugh, grabbing my chin. “You are mine, Chiara. Every inch of you has been branded Russo for ten years. You don’t get to decide when it has nothing to do with me.”

“Brands get old. They get replaced.” I looked him dead in the eye. “You and your family… you mean nothing to me anymore.”

The words were a poisoned knife, and they hit their mark.

CRACK.

His hand flew across my face. The force was so strong I tasted blood.

“Take it back,” he said, his voice like ice. “You’re not just insulting me. You’re insulting the Russo family.”

I wiped the blood from my lip with the back of my hand and smiled. A broken smile.

“You hit me for her. You hit me for the family. Vincenzo, what’s your line? Is there anything you won’t hit me for?”

“You don’t get to talk about lines!” He was furious. He reached into his suit and pulled out an old, heavy medallion carved with a two-headed serpent. He slammed it on the table.

The Rossi family blood oath seal.

“Your father swore a blood oath with the honor and blood of the Rossi family,” his voice was the Don’s now, every word a stone crushing my heart. “Your life, your loyalty, everything you are… from the day you were born, it belongs to the Russo family. It belongs to me!”

I stared at the seal. My blood ran cold. This was the chain I could never break.

“You’re going to use my father’s oath against me?”

“If it’s the only way to make you obey.” He picked up the seal, his eyes turning cold and hard again. “The night after tomorrow. The engagement party. You will be there.”

He paused, then delivered the final, cruel blow.

“And you will be the one to present Katerina with the Petrov ‘pact of peace’—the diamond dagger. You will kneel, and you will show every family in that room what Rossi loyalty looks like.”

I just looked at him. The man I would have died for.

Watching him chain me with my family’s honor, only to humiliate me with the sharpest blade.

“I understand,” I said, my voice empty.

“Good.” He turned to leave, satisfied. “Remember your place, Chiara. You are my property. Not my enemy.”

He and his men left.

I stood alone in the trashed apartment. The setting sun cast a long, lonely shadow on the floor.

A blood oath.

He was holding me to a blood oath.

I picked up the small blade I used for cutting canvases. I stared at its sharp edge.

“A blood debt,” I whispered, my voice as light as a feather.

“Must be paid in blood.”