Gianna POV

I dragged my heavy suitcase out of the grand lobby doors of the apartment building.

The freezing night air bit at my cheeks, a welcome shock to my numb system.

Just as my boots hit the pavement, a sleek, brand-new armored SUV pulled up to the curb.

Its high beams flashed, momentarily blinding me.

The tinted passenger window rolled down with a smooth hum.

Lucia's dark eyes swept over my luggage, a smug smirk twisting her perfectly painted lips.

She leaned out slightly, mocking my midnight escape with a fake pout.

I offered her a cold smile in return. "I am merely making room. A creature of your nature requires a great deal of space to feed."

Lucia shoved the heavy door open and stepped out of the luxury vehicle.

She smoothed down her designer coat, feigning innocence as she looked at me.

"I am no homewrecker," she said, her voice a silken thread laced with condescension.

"I cannot help it if Ciro willingly bleeds himself dry for my vanity."

She paused dramatically, looking at me with venomous pity.

She took a step closer, her perfume suffocatingly sweet in the cold air.

"You know, a drunken Ciro once confessed a little secret to me," she murmured.

"He told me he never would have settled for a civilian like you if I hadn't been an untouchable Mafia Princess back then."

Lucia gloated, her eyes shining with malicious triumph.

"If I actually wanted him, you wouldn't stand a chance," she added.

The cold night wind whipped my hair across my face.

Hearing these words, I felt no heartbreak. I knew the story she was weaponizing—how her Capo father had pulled a starving Ciro from a gutter, given him a gun and a name. Ciro carried that debt like a crucifix pressed into his palms, and Lucia had spent five years driving the nails deeper. He believed repaying her was the only way to become a man worthy of me. The tragedy was that he never saw it was the very thing making him unworthy.

There was no tearing in my chest, no sudden inability to breathe.

There was only the absurd, heavy realization of how deeply I had wasted five years of my life.

I gave her a serene smile, the kind you give a stranger on the street.

"Then I wish you both a lifetime locked in your toxic, bloody cage together," I said.

My utter indifference stunned Lucia.

Her practiced smirk dissolved, the fury beneath it surfacing like a fracture in porcelain.

She had expected tears, screaming, or a desperate fight for a man who wasn't worth the dirt on my shoes.

Seeing me turn my back to leave, she lunged forward.

She aggressively grabbed the handle of my suitcase, her manicured nails digging into the plastic to physically stop me.

"You're staying to nurse Ciro," she demanded.

"Mafia Princesses don't play nursemaid to low-level Soldiers," she sneered.

I stopped walking and slowly turned my head.

I stared at her hand gripping my property.

The night wind rasped in my throat. I curled my frozen fingers inside my coat pocket, the nails biting into my palm until the words came out clear and without a tremor: "Let go."

Instead of releasing it, Lucia whipped out her phone with her free hand.

She tapped the screen and initiated a video call with Ciro.

The moment his face appeared, she instantly played the victim.

"Ciro!" she whined, her voice pitching an octave higher. "Gianna is throwing a tantrum on the street!"

"She's abandoning you and refusing to visit the clinic to care for you!"

On the screen, Ciro looked pale and battered, a bandage wrapped tightly around his head.

Hearing her lies, his brow furrowed in frustration.

He looked at me through the lens. "Gianna, stop being unreasonable," he scolded.

"Stop harassing Lucia and get to the clinic immediately."

Standing in the freezing wind, a sudden thought hit me with the force of a physical blow.

Dr. Wagner needed my passport and Syndicate identification first thing tomorrow morning.

He needed them to process my clearance for Don Gabriel's black site.

All my vital documents were locked inside Ciro's tactical go-bag.

That bag was currently resting on his bedside table at the clinic.

I looked dead into the camera at Ciro.

I let my shoulders relax, masking my true intentions behind a wall of terrifying calm.

"Fine," I told him, my voice completely devoid of emotion.

"I'm coming to the clinic right now." But it was not Ciro I was coming for.