Lucius hung up immediately, terrified I'd say no.

Then, another encrypted text popped up: "Rhea, please don't make a scene right now. I'm just giving Sienna a title. I postponed our wedding because I wanted to give you a bigger ceremony at the right time."

The right time? I had heard that lie for eight years. I stayed by his side, watching him go from a hunted stray dog to the most feared Don in Palermo. I waited nearly three thousand nights. I waited for him to slide that ruby ring onto my finger before the priest. I waited for him to put my name beside his in front of all Sicily.

And in the end, he gave that place to someone else.

Lucius, I'm done waiting for you. We were never from the same world anyway.

He deleted the message a second later. He was probably scared Sienna would see his promises to me. I stared at the "Message Deleted" notification and scoffed, typing a single word back: "Fine."

But before it could even send, a bright red exclamation mark flashed on my screen. To keep his precious "bride" happy, he had already locked me out of his core channel and wiped my access codes.

Perfect.

I logged into the family's internal terminal and posted my resignation notice. I sent one order to every informant under my command: The wedding is off. I am stepping down permanently.

The underworld went wild. old Council members bombarded my secure line: "Rhea, are you insane? Lucius hasn't secured his position yet. His enemies are circling. If you drop his defense lines now, you're handing his head to the traitors on a silver platter."

I didn't reply. Lucius chose someone else to protect him. From now on, his blood and chaos were no longer my problems.

Right after I shut down my access, Sienna's private email arrived. Attached was a photo of the fresh, ink-scented marriage contract.

She rubbed it in my face: "Thanks for stepping aside, Rhea. Lucius wanted to avoid trouble, so he took me to meet the elders last night. My name is officially in the family registry now."

Then, my phone buzzed again. It was my mother.

"Rhea, have you lost your mind? On this island, a woman's shelf life is shorter than fresh seafood! The seat beside him is right there, and you're just walking away?" Her screech cut through my ears. "Lucius runs Palermo now! Even if you have to kneel in the ashes and stitch up corpses to stay by his side, you hold onto that spot!"

She was a widow from a dead, wiped-out family. Her only survival skill was clinging to men with power. She screamed into the receiver from her moldy apartment in Palermo, frantic with the fear of losing her status.

I listened to her desperate, greedy breathing and laughed softly. "What if he is the one who put my ring on another woman's hand?"

The line went dead silent for a few seconds. Then, she shrieked: "Then it's because you're always so cold! You smell like death. Of course he wanted someone softer! Men want a bride they can take up the cathedral aisle, not a machine that patches bullet holes! Go beg him! Don't waste eight years without taking anything from that family!"

A title? For eight years, Lucius told me that once he cleared out his enemies, he'd give me a real home. But the moment he reached the top, he decided a partner who dragged him out of the mud didn't belong in the front pews of the church.

For eight years, I slept in bulletproof cars. I patched his wounds on abandoned docks. I even got rid of an "unborn problem" myself just to keep his reputation clean before the Council. All because he said the timing wasn't right, that he didn't want a child born into the smoke of Sicily.

I loved him, so I swallowed the pain and turned myself into his sharpest blade. And tonight, he wanted to give Sienna a title. My heart broke, but for the first time in my life, I felt completely free.

Walking away meant I never had to be his ghost again. No more burying his rotten ambitions under the Palermo moon.

My mother was still droning on about her "survival logic," but I was already done talking.

"Mom, on this island, no one can force a woman with a dead heart to look back."

I hung up and accessed the family's core security system, the Sanctuary Protocol.

"This is Rhea. Pull all covert defenses around the Don immediately. Delete all unregistered firewall data. From now on, his life or death has nothing to do with me."

The family steward in charge of tomorrow's security went silent for a long time. Finally, he whispered, "Rhea, the Don ordered us to keep tomorrow's setup. He said the family crests and the ruby ring would be locked away for three years. But leaving the bride's seat empty would make him look weak in front of the other families."

In that moment, I saw Lucius's absolute arrogance.

He thought this was just a temporary political play. Sienna had the old-school elders backing her. They controlled the most vital shipping docks and weapons routes in Sicily.

They hated Lucius for his rapid rise to power, and Sienna's "pregnancy" gave them the perfect lever.

They used the "legitimate heir" excuse to force Lucius into a marriage and crawl back into the family's inner circle.

And Lucius actually expected me to understand. He wanted to freeze me and my eight years of loyalty like a specimen in a glass box, waiting for him to finish using the elders and come back for me.

"Throw it all away," I said, staring at the black waves outside. "In Sicily, a broken umbrella is just as useless as a rotting corpse. It only brings crows."

Next, I dialed Lucius's mother—the infamous "Iron Widow," the Donna.

To her, Sienna was not hope. She was a Trojan horse from the elders. She despised women who used pregnancies to steal power, and she loathed Lucius for cutting off his own right hand just for some shipping docks.

I transferred the gold-backed financial keys back to the main family account. Seconds later, my secure phone rang.

"Rhea! Why did you pull the gold reserve access? Without your dynamic keys, the elders' docks can't process a single dime!"

"Madam, my alliance with Lucius ended the moment he broke our contract. Since he chose the elders' bride, let Sienna clean his dirty ledgers."

The old lady gasped, her voice turning icy. "That idiot boy thinks he owns an empire just because he got the docks? Without you, the elders will eat him alive! Tomorrow night, no one wears that ruby ring but you!"

"Madam, the wedding has turned into a funeral. There's no point in holding it."

It was time to go. Every trap, every panic room in this villa was designed by me to keep Lucius alive. Now that he wanted to sit down with his enemies, I was taking my protection with me.

I packed light. A single tactical case was enough. Before leaving, I grabbed the only photo of us—taken in the ruins after a shootout eight years ago. Back then, he was a bleeding stray, and I was the one who stitched his chest back together in a dark clinic.

But at the front door, I ran right into him.

The frame hit the marble floor, the glass shattering into pieces. A shard sliced my ankle, and blood bloomed into the expensive Persian rug.

Lucius barely looked at the blood. He tightly shielded Sienna behind him, a flash of guilt in his eyes quickly replaced by raw anger. The elders had clearly given him hell earlier:

"Rhea! What the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea that Sienna is carrying the future of this family? If the glass cuts her and ruins my deal with the elders, how are you going to pay for that?"

"Pay for that?"

I looked at his power-hungry face and said softly, "Will my life do? Or... how about your crumbling family?"

I looked at Lucius. In that exact second, I realized nothing he said or did could ever hurt me again. Since I was leaving this dead land anyway, I'd play along one last time—consider it a final settlement for the past eight years.

"Fine. Have it your way."

My sudden submission made Lucius think he was back in control. He finally looked down and saw our shattered photo, and the thick crimson blood coating my foot.

His composure shattered. His calm vanished, and panic took over. He ran toward the back hall to grab a medical kit.

The moment he left, Sienna dropped her fragile act. She tilted her chin up, her eyes bright with malice.

"Rhea, you really are pathetic. It doesn't matter how many bullets you took for him or how much blood you wiped away. You will always be his ghost, hiding in the dark."

"Tomorrow night, all of Sicily will see me standing by his side. You will never be allowed at that table. The old lady can hate me all she wants, but she'll have to watch him slide that ruby onto my finger."

"Lucius is mine, and you're just a machine meant to patch his wounds and clean up his sins. Don't dream about him fetching you back in three years, because..." She stroked her stomach, smiling like a snake, "The child I am carrying is the only legitimate heir this family will ever recognize."

I lowered my eyes before she could see the tears. So, Lucius really did betray me. He wanted me to go into exile for his "big picture" while he left his legacy inside another woman.

I quickly did the math. Three months ago, the first time he stayed out all night during a family summit. It was my birthday. He skipped our wedding rehearsal for "dock business." The next day, he came back acting incredibly guilty, gave me this ring, and proposed.

I had waited eight years for that proposal, so my joy blinded me to the red flags. But that night, I saw fresh scratches on his back while he was showering. He calmly told me it was a stray cat, and even showed me a fake vet report.

I forced myself to believe him. But a survival instinct forged on a knife's edge kept telling me that something was wrong. He proposed only because his guilt was eating him alive.

I didn't want to live a lie, so I used my clearance to dig into his moves. When I found out his "meetings with elders" were actually visits to Sienna's private villa, I knew the end was coming.

"Move," I said, not wanting to waste another breath on her.

But just as Lucius ran back out with the medical kit, Sienna grabbed my hand and violently threw herself backward into the pile of broken glass.

"Rhea, I know you hate me, but why would you push me?" she shrieked from the pool of blood. "Ah! My stomach... it hurts so bad..."

Lucius sprinted over, a terrifying panic consuming his face. He scooped Sienna into his arms and bolted for the getaway car, not even casting a glance back at me.

His voice was a low, lethal line: "Rhea, I didn't think you could be this evil. To attack my child! If anything happens to this baby, you and I are completely done."

Watching his vanishing silhouette, I stood in the wreckage and whispered, "We were already done."

I knelt down and quietly started picking up the glass. The cut on my foot had already stopped bleeding, but the wound in my chest was wide open and raw.