The Charity Gala was the apex of the social season for the families, a dazzling display of teeth disguised as smiles. It was less about philanthropy and more about a showcase of raw, dynastic power.

I wore black. It was a simple, sleek column of silk that covered more than it revealed, feeling less like evening wear and more like mourning clothes for a funeral that hadn't happened yet.

Catalina, predictably, wore red. A violent, arterial crimson that demanded the room's attention. She coiled around Jax's arm like a second skin, claiming him with every touch.

I stood by the champagne tower, nursing a glass I had no intention of drinking, watching them. They looked like a jagged, perfect power couple. He was the dark, dangerous king, and she was his vibrant, chaotic queen. I was merely the shadow cast in the corner.

Catalina was currently holding court with a phalanx of the older wives. I drifted closer, keeping my back to them, letting their voices wash over me.

"Oh, Jax is terribly protective," Catalina was saying, her voice carrying clearly over the polite swell of the string quartet. "You know, back when we were barely teenagers, he actually took a bullet for me."

I froze. The glass in my hand felt suddenly fragile.

"A bullet?" one of the wives gasped, clutching her pearls.

"Yes," Catalina sighed, the sound thick with dramatic flair. "It was a mess with the Irish mob. My father owed them debts he couldn't pay. They came for me to send a message. Jax... he didn't even hesitate. He drove straight into their territory, alone. He got me out, but he took a shot to the shoulder in the process. He hid the wound from his father for weeks so no one would know he risked the fragile truce just for me."

The air left my lungs.

I knew that scar. I had traced the raised, jagged ridge of it with my fingertips a thousand times in the dark. He had told me it was a training accident. He had told me he fell on a rusted fence.

He had lied.

He had risked a faction war for her. Before we were even engaged. Before the contracts were ink on paper.

"He's always been my guardian angel," Catalina continued, her voice dropping to a reverent whisper. "Even now. He told me, 'Cat, as long as I breathe, no one touches you.' Isn't that romantic?"

The wives cooed in unison.

I felt sick. Physically, violently sick. The room began to tilt on its axis.

I thought of all the times I had begged him to stay home because I had a bad feeling. All the times he had dismissed my intuition as paranoia. All the times he had told me his duty to the family came first.

It wasn't duty. It was preference.

He would burn the world to ash for her. For me, he wouldn't even skip a board meeting.

I turned to leave, needing air, needing to be anywhere that wasn't this suffocating ballroom.

Catalina was suddenly in front of me. With a calculated stumble, she "accidentally" bumped into me, tipping her glass. A splash of dark red wine bloomed across the front of my black dress.

"Oh, Eliana! I'm so sorry," she exclaimed, though her eyes gleamed with pure, unadulterated malice. "I was just telling the ladies about Jax's heroics. Did you know about the time he broke a man's hand just for looking at me wrong?"

She leaned in close, the scent of expensive perfume and alcohol cloying in my nose, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "He never did that for you, did he? You're too safe. Too boring. Jax likes the fire. He likes the damsel in distress."

She wasn't just marking her territory. She was salting the earth so nothing would ever grow there for me again.

"You're right," I said, my voice surprisingly steady, devoid of the tremor I felt inside. "He never did."

Because he didn't love me. He owned me. There was a chasm of difference.

"Eliana?"

Jax appeared behind Catalina. He looked breathless, his eyes scanning her face with frantic intensity. "Are you okay? I saw you stumble."

He didn't look at me. He didn't see the wine soaking into the silk at my waist. He didn't see the devastation fracturing my gaze. He only saw her.

"I'm fine, Jax," Catalina cooed, leaning into his solid frame. "Eliana and I were just talking about old times."

Jax finally looked at me. There was a flicker of annoyance in his eyes, quickly masked by his usual mask of command. "Eliana, go clean up. You look messy."

Messy.

I looked at him. Really looked at him. The sharp jawline I used to kiss. The broad shoulders I used to cry on.

He was a stranger.

"I'm leaving," I stated.

"Don't be dramatic," he snapped, his patience thinning. "Go to the bathroom, fix your dress, and come back. We have to take press photos later."

"No," I said.

I turned and walked away. I walked past the security detail, past the valet who scrambled to offer the car. I walked out into the cool, biting night air of the city.

I hailed a taxi. A beat-up yellow cab. The kind of car a Mafia princess never steps foot in.

I slid into the backseat.

"Where to?" the driver asked, eyeing my dress in the rearview mirror.

"Anywhere," I said, staring out at the blurring city lights. "Just drive."

The tension in the house had been suffocating for days following the gala.

Jax was avoiding me, a mutual arrangement that suited me perfectly.

But Catalina was emboldened. She prowled through the halls as if she already held the deed to the estate.

I was descending the main staircase. It was a grand, sweeping curve of marble, treacherous if you weren't careful.

Catalina was coming up. We met in the middle.

"You're still here?" she asked, blocking my path. "I thought you'd have gotten the hint by now. He doesn't want you."

"Get out of my way, Catalina," I said, my grip tightening on the banister.

"Or what?" She laughed. "You'll tell on me? Jax won't believe you. He believes whatever I tell him. I told him you were rude to me at the gala, and he's been complaining about your attitude all week."

She took a step closer. Her perfume was cloying, suffocatingly sweet.

"He loves me," she hissed. "He's always loved me. You're just a contract. A signature on a piece of paper."

"Then have him," I said, exhaustion bleeding into my voice. "I don't want him anymore."

Her eyes narrowed. She didn't like that. She wanted a fight. She wanted to win, but she couldn't win if I forfeited.

Without warning, she reached out and shoved me.

It wasn't a hard shove, but I was wearing heels, and I was tired, and my center of gravity was off.

I stumbled backward. My hand slipped from the banister.

The world tilted.

I fell.

My body hit the marble steps. Once. Twice. A sharp, sickening crack echoed through the foyer as my leg twisted beneath me.

My head slammed against the bottom step.

Pain exploded in my skull. White hot. Blinding.

I lay on the floor, gasping for air, the taste of copper filling my mouth.

"Jax!" Catalina screamed. It was a piercing, theatrical shriek. "Help! She attacked me!"

I tried to move, but my leg wouldn't obey. I looked up through the haze of pain.

Jax was running from his office. He saw us. Me, bleeding on the floor. Catalina, standing at the top of the stairs, clutching her chest, fake tears streaming down her face.

He didn't check for a pulse. He didn't so much as glance at the unnatural angle of my leg.

He ran up the stairs. Past me.

He wrapped his arms around Catalina. "Cat! Are you okay? Did she hurt you?"

"I was so scared!" she sobbed into his chest. "She tried to push me! She slipped and fell, but she tried to kill me, Jax!"

"Shh, I've got you," he whispered, stroking her hair. "I've got you. You're safe."

I lay there, watching the man I had loved for ten years comfort the woman who pushed me, while my blood stained his expensive Italian marble.

That was the moment. Not the dinner. Not the gala. This.

The pain in my leg was excruciating, but the clarity in my mind was absolute.

I wasn't a person to him. I was furniture. If a fixture breaks while injuring a guest, you comfort the guest.

"Call... an ambulance," I wheezed.

Jax looked down at me then. His face was hard. Cold. "You're lucky you didn't hurt her, Eliana. Or I'd finish what gravity started."

He picked Catalina up bridal style and carried her away from the 'danger.' He shouted for a guard to deal with me.

Darkness swarmed my vision. I closed my eyes.

Later, in the hospital, the silence was deafening. My leg was in a cast. I had a concussion.

Jax came in once. He stayed for ten minutes. He checked his watch three times.

"Cat is really shaken up," he said, offering no inquiry into my condition. "You need to apologize to her when you get home."

I stared at the ceiling. "Get out."

"Excuse me?"

"Get out," I whispered.

He scoffed. "Fine. Be a brat. I have to go anyway. Cat needs her meds."

He left.

My phone buzzed. A text from Catalina.

It was a photo. Blurry, taken in low light. It showed Jax draping his suit jacket over her shoulders, kissing her forehead.

*Caption: He's so worried about me. Thanks for the push. It brought us closer.*

I put the phone down.

I looked at the nurse who came in to check my IV. She had kind eyes.

"Nurse?" I asked.

"Yes, honey?"

"My engagement is over," I said. The words tasted like ash, but also like freedom. "Can you tell me how to get a taxi to the airport from here?"

I hadn't gone to the airport. Not yet. Attempting to flee with a broken leg and no plan was suicide. I needed to be smart.

So, I went back to the house one last time.

Jax was lounging in the living room when the guards wheeled me in. He looked up, surprised, mid-sip of his scotch. He probably expected me to stay in the hospital for at least another week.

He set his glass down and walked over, looking guilty now. But the guilt was fleeting. The anger from the accident had faded, replaced by that dismissive charm he used to smooth over felonies.

"Eliana," he said, reaching for the handles of my wheelchair as if reclaiming his property. "I'm glad you're back. Listen, about the stairs... let's just put it behind us. Accidents happen."

Accidents. As if he hadn't made a choice.

He pulled a black card from his pocket. The Centurion card. No limit.

"Why don't you buy yourself something nice? Redecorate the bedroom. Whatever you want."

I looked at the card. It was a piece of plastic that could buy a small island. He was trying to buy my silence. He was trying to buy my forgiveness for choosing her over my life.

I took the card.

Jax smiled, relieved. "Good girl."

The endearment made my skin crawl. I snapped the card in half.

The crack was sharp, echoing in the quiet room like a pistol shot.

Jax's smile faltered. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I don't want your money, Jax," I said, my voice steady. "I don't want your gifts. I don't want your apologies."

"Then what do you want?" he demanded, his patience snapping.

"Nothing from you."

I wheeled myself past him toward the elevator.

"You're being hysterical," he called after me, his voice bouncing off the marble floors. "You'll get over it. You always do."

I went to my room. I didn't redecorate. I purged.

I took every gift he had ever given me. The designer bags. The shoes. The jewelry I hadn't given to Maria.

I shoved them all into trash bags. I piled the bags onto my lap and wheeled them into the hallway, dumping them like refuse.

Then, I opened the drawer where I kept the engagement ring. A five-carat flawless diamond. It felt cold and heavy in my palm.

I wheeled myself to the bathroom and dropped it into the trash can next to the toilet. It landed with a dull thud among used tissues. Fitting.

My phone rang. It was my father.

"Eliana," his voice was tight. Urgent. "Where is Jax?"

"I don't know," I said. "With her, probably."

"Listen to me. The Rossi family... they have something. They claim to have proof of Jax's off-book deals in the harbor. The ones he did for Catalina's father."

I closed my eyes. Of course.

"They're threatening to go to the Commission," my father continued, panic rising in his tone. "If they do, Jax loses his seat. He might lose his life. We need to strategize. Put him on the phone."

"He's not available," I said.

"Eliana, this is life or death!"

"Not my life," I said. "And not my death."

"He is your fiancé!"

"No," I said, cutting the cord. "He's a liability."

I hung up.

I sat there in the silence of my room. I knew exactly what was happening. Jax had exposed the family to protect Catalina. He had broken the rules. And now the wolves were circling.

Normally, I would be the one fixing this. I would be the one forging the documents, making the calls, smoothing the ruffled feathers. I was the Consigliere's daughter. I was the fixer.

But I looked at my broken leg. I looked at the trash can where the ring lay buried in filth.

I wheeled myself to the window. Down below, I saw Jax's car speeding out of the driveway. He was probably going to "fix" it himself. Which meant he was going to shoot someone.

He was going to start a war. For her.

And for the first time in my life, I wasn't going to stand in front of the bullet.

I picked up my phone and dialed a number I had memorized but never used. A contact in New York. A safe house broker.

"I need a flat," I said when the line connected. "Tonight. Cash upfront."

"Name?" the voice asked.

"Eliana," I said. Then I paused. "Just Eliana. No last name."

I hung up. The storm was coming for Jax Viles. And I wasn't going to be his shield anymore.