“It’s almost fitting,” I murmur, brushing my thumb across a petal. “People use these at funerals. I suppose a part of me has been dying.”
The realization doesn’t come as a sudden jolt. It’s been gathering for weeks, simmering beneath every forced smile, every controlled breath, every moment I told myself to endure just a little longer. Tonight simply strips away the last veil.
I lift my gaze and look around the penthouse—the floor-to-ceiling windows, the immaculate hardwood floors, the expensiveart curated to impress anyone who enters. A cage disguised as luxury.
My home doesn’t feel like mine.
My life doesn’t feellike mine.
And then I see him in my mind—Matteo—his eyes molten and unguarded, his touch a contradiction of gentleness and possession, his kiss searing something awake inside me that I had long believed dead. The memory strikes me with startling clarity, and something inside me shifts long before I can resist it.
Not a flicker. Not a whisper.
A breaking.A clean, undeniable snap.
“I can’t do this,” I breathe, and the words feel like a truth that has been waiting behind my teeth for far too long. “I can’t do this anymore.”
I can’t keep pretending I’m planning a wedding I never wanted. I can’t keep dressing in gold and calling it freedom. I can’t keep letting fear dictate the shape of my life. I would rather face the debt, the shame, the consequences that come with leaving than let him carve away the last piece of myself I still recognize.
“I won’t marry him.” My voice steadies, gaining weight. “Not now, not ever. I don’t care what it costs me—my comfort, my reputation, my safety. I will burn everything to the ground before I become his wife.”
The vow hangs in the air like a brand.
I walk to the window and rest my forehead against the cool glass, watching the city below—messy, loud, chaotic, pulsing with people living their lives on their own terms. The sight carves something fierce and bright through my chest.
“When he comes back,” I whisper, “I’ll tell him. I’m done. I’m walking away. I’ll face whatever comes after.”
If I have to take out a loan, I will.
If I haveto work myself raw, I will.
If I haveto rebuild my life from ashes, I will.
Because the alternative is a lifetime of pretending I’m free while living in a gilded cage.
For the first time in months, I feel certainty settle into my bones—heavy, unshakable, resolute.
Matteo’s voice echoes in the back of my mind, low and commanding.Choose you, for you, bella.
And for the first time, I let myself believe those words.
“I will,” I say softly, turning away from the window as a sense of determination ignites in my chest. I walk toward the bedroom, not with fear, but with purpose.
Two weeks. Two weeks to free myself. Two weeks to reclaim the woman I was before all of this.
And this time, nothing—not money, not fear, not even Giacomo—will stop me.
The next morning, I wake with a clarity that feels almost foreign, as if someone has poured steel into my bones overnight. For weeks I have been moving through life like a ghost in my own story, smiling when expected, speaking softly, swallowing every instinct that told me this was not my path. I kept telling myself to adapt, to be grateful, to learn how to love the life that had been handed to me. But I am done surviving on delusion. I want something real. Something I built. Something that cannot be taken from me.
I shower, get dressed, and leave the penthouse with my head held higher than it has been in months. I half-expect Matteo’sdoor to open as I pass, half-expect to see him leaning there with that unreadable stare that always knots something low in my stomach. Every time I walk this hallway, a part of me braces for him—his height filling the frame, his eyes sweeping over me with that quiet intensity that says far more than his mouth ever does.
But the hallway stays empty. Quiet. Merciful.
And I’m grateful. Or at least I pretend to be. After what happened between us, after the way he touched me like he could rearrange pieces of me I didn’t even know were broken, I need distance. I need clarity. I can only survive one dangerous man at a time, and Matteo is… too much. Too potent. Too capable of tilting the decisions I have barely begun to find the courage to make.
I step into the elevator, exhale slowly, and try to remind myself why I’m doing this—why I need to stay focused, why every breath has to be deliberate now.
The doors slide almost closed.
