Eliana Carter POV

I didn't go home.

Instead, I circled back to the library window of the Riley estate.

The window was cracked open just enough to ventilate the heavy stench of cigar smoke.

I heard Mason's voice drifting out into the night.

"You can't keep doing this, Jax. The Carters are going to pull the alliance."

"Let them try," Jax replied, his voice low and unbothered.

I heard the distinct clink of glass against glass.

"Eliana isn't going anywhere," Jax continued. "She's mine. She's been mine since we were five."

"You're humiliating her," Mason argued.

"I'm breaking her," Jax corrected him, the words sharp and precise.

I felt a chill settle into my marrow that had nothing to do with the night air.

"She needs to learn her place," Jax went on. "She thinks she's a partner. She thinks she has a say. Once I break that pride, she'll be the perfect wife."

He paused, likely taking a drink.

"Silent. Obedient."

"And Catalina?" Mason asked.

"Catalina is just a tool, Mason. A fun distraction until Eliana learns to heel."

I backed away from the window, my heart hammering against my ribs.

He didn't love me.

He didn't even hate me.

He viewed me as a mare that needed to be broken.

I walked the two miles back to my parents' house in a daze. My ankle was throbbing with a rhythm that matched the painful beat of my heart, but I barely felt it.

Jax was already waiting on my front porch.

He was leaning against the railing, casual and arrogant, holding a thick envelope.

I recognized the logo immediately.

NYU.

My acceptance letter.

He must have intercepted it from the mailbox before I even arrived.

"Thinking of running?" he asked, his tone mocking.

He held the letter up to the light.

"New York is Tran territory. You think you can just walk into the enemy's city?"

I snatched the letter from his hand.

He let me take it.

He was smiling, as if my resistance was adorable.

"You're not going anywhere, Eliana. My father already agreed to move the wedding up."

My blood ran cold.

"Two weeks," he said, stepping closer. "You'll be in my bed in two weeks, and this..."

He pointed to the letter in my hand.

"This will be ashes."

His phone rang, cutting through the tension.

He glanced at the screen. It was Catalina.

He answered it, his voice shifting to irritation. "What?"

He listened for a moment, his jaw tightening.

"I'm coming," he said.

He hung up and looked at me, his eyes dark.

"She thinks someone is following her."

"Probably a cat," I said, my voice flat.

He stepped into my personal space, smelling of whiskey and the cloying perfume I had smelled on him earlier.

"Don't leave the house, Eliana. I'll deal with you later."

He turned and walked to his car.

He drove away to save the damsel who was lying to him.

He left the real threat standing on the porch with a ticket to freedom in her hand.

He thought he had time.

He thought he owned the clock.

I went inside and locked the door.

I didn't pack clothes.

I packed the letter.

I packed my passport.

And finally, I packed the gun Uncle Sal had given me for my sixteenth birthday.

Eliana Carter POV

There was one last stop I had to make before the airport swallowed me whole.

The Old Oak stood at the edge of the Little estate, a silent sentinel guarding the creek. It was the sacred ground where Jax and I, at ten years old, had sliced our palms.

It was where we swore a blood oath to protect each other.

I needed to kill that memory before I could leave.

I pulled the pocket knife from my jacket, the metal cold against my feverish skin. I found the scar in the ancient bark easily enough. It had weathered with time, but it was still there.

*J + E.*

I drove the blade into the wood.

The oak was ancient, hard and resisting my efforts as if trying to protect the lie we’d carved there. I didn't care. I carved a deep, jagged line through the initials, sawing back and forth until bark flew like shrapnel.

Sap bled out from the fresh wound, weeping like a severed vein.

"Well, isn't this pathetic."

I spun around.

Catalina was standing there. She wasn't being followed. She had been hunting me.

Her gaze flickered over my shoulder, and a slow, toxic smirk spread across her lips. Jax was walking up the hill behind her, though he hadn't seen us yet.

She stepped toward me, lowering her voice.

"Trying to erase history?" she asked, her tone dripping with mock pity. "You can't erase what everyone knows, Eliana. He chose me."

She lunged.

It was a clumsy, flailing motion, but the ground beneath me was treacherous. She shoved me, hard.

I stumbled back, my bad ankle buckling under the sudden weight.

I fell heavily into the mud near the creek bank. The freezing slime seeped instantly through my jeans, chilling me to the bone.

Jax reached the clearing at that exact moment.

He saw me sprawled in the mud. He saw Catalina standing over me, breathless and feigning terror.

"Jax!" she cried out, her voice pitching into a calculated whimper. "She came at me with a knife!"

The damning evidence was still gripped tight in my hand.

I looked up at Jax.

I waited for the truth to matter. I waited for the boy who had bled with me on this very spot to reach down and pull me up.

Jax looked at the gouged, weeping tree. Then he looked at the knife in my hand. Finally, his cold eyes landed on me.

"You are a mess, Eliana," he said, his voice devoid of warmth.

He reached out, but not for me. He took Catalina's hand.

He pulled her to his side, shielding her from the threat he believed I was.

"You are no longer my burden," he said.

The words hung in the damp air, heavier than the mud clinging to my clothes.

They were the sound of a key turning in a lock.

He thought he was discarding me. He didn't realize he was severing the last chain holding me down.

I watched them walk away. I didn't attempt to rise until they had vanished over the crest of the hill.

Slowly, I wiped the mud from my hands. I didn't cry. There were no tears left to shed for people who didn't exist anymore.

I walked to my car.

I drove to O'Hare in a trance. I pulled into the long-term parking lot, turned off the engine, and left the keys sitting on the dashboard.

I walked into the terminal.

I wasn't Eliana Carter, the Chicago Princess, anymore. I was just a ghost with a one-way ticket to New York.

And for the first time in my life, the silence in my head wasn't fear.

It was peace.

Eliana Carter POV

The emergency room smelled like bleach and other people's bad decisions.

The doctor told me to stay off my ankle for six weeks. He handed me crutches and a prescription for painkillers I had no intention of taking.

I needed the pain.

The pain was the only thing reminding me that I was still in my body, that I hadn't completely dissociated into the ether.

I drove back to the Little Estate one last time.

Not to see Jax.

To see the woman who raised him.

Karen was in the solarium, arranging white lilies in a crystal vase. It was a perfect picture of domestic Mafia bliss—ignore the blood, focus on the blooms.

She looked up as I hobbled in, her eyes scanning the bandage on my ankle.

"You're making a spectacle, Eliana," she said softly.

She snipped a stem.

"Jax is just blowing off steam. Men have needs. You know this."

I walked to the glass table.

I didn't sit down.

Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the engagement ring. It was a five-carat diamond, heavy and cold. It was supposed to be a promise.

It was actually a price tag.

I set it on the table next to her shears. The metal clicked sharply against the glass.

"The engagement is void, Karen."

She stopped snipping. She looked at the ring, then at me.

"You can't void a contract," she said.

"Only the Don can do that."

"My father has already spoken to the Commission," I said.

"The Carters are transferring allegiance. We are under the protection of the New York Syndicate as of an hour ago."

Karen went pale. New York was a rival territory. It was a declaration of war, or at least a massive geopolitical shift in the underworld.

"Jax did this," I said.

"Tell him his asset has liquidated herself."

I turned around.

"Eliana!" she called after me.

"You can't survive out there. You're a canary. You'll die in the wild."

I didn't answer.

I drove my Mercedes to O'Hare International Airport. I parked in the long-term lot, row G.

I left the engine running.

I left the keys on the dashboard.

I left my phone in the cup holder.

Taking only my bag, my passport, and the cash Uncle Sal had given me, I walked away from the car.

I walked away from the Carter name.

I walked away from the girl who thought love was enough to tame a monster.

I boarded a plane to New York City.

As the wheels left the tarmac, I looked down at the sprawling grid of Chicago. It looked small from up here.

It looked like a cage I had finally figured out how to open.