“It’s over,” I say.“Your fucking grip on me dies right now.It’s over.Your threats don't mean shit anymore.And if you ever come near me or Emery again, I’ll fucking end you.”
He stands there clinging to his delusion of power like it’s not already crumbling in his hands.
But I see that tiny crack in the mask he’s worn my whole life.He fucking knows.He’s lost me.
Emery’s hand slides around my arm, steady and firm.
“Come on,” she murmurs.“We need to go, Matteo.”
We move backwards, my eyes never leaving my father.I can feel the cold weight of the guns still trained on us, every inch of my skin prickling.But that won’t stop me because I’m done playing the obedient son.I’m done bleeding to earn love that was never real.
“Walk out that door,” he growls, voice low and vicious, “and you’ll never stop running.I’ll hunt you down.I’ll destroy every fucking inch of the life you think you’re building.It will be gone.”
I laugh, because the mistake isn’t walking away.The mistake was letting that piece of shit shape me into his heir.
Emery’s hand tightens around mine, like she knows I’m one wrong breath away from storming back in there, ripping his fucking head clean off.Her grip is the leash holding back the animal in me, the only thing tethering me to sanity right now.
We step through the busted doorway, the goddamn gates of hell finally spitting us out.
The afternoon air hits hard, burning off the filth we just crawled out of, as if the universe itself is trying to scorch us clean.
We move fast.
Every step away from that place feels like shedding another layer of pain, of chains, of years spent choking on someone else's idea of who I was supposed to be.
We don’t stop moving until we hit the truck, parked deep in the shadows where sunlight barely touches it.
Emery slides into the passenger seat, fast and focused, her chest rising hard, phone still gripped like a loaded weapon.
I climb behind the wheel.My heart’s still pounding, too wrecked to realize we made it out alive.For the first time in what feels like a lifetime of bleeding and breaking, I let out a breath.
Not that shallow, panic-laced shit I’ve been surviving on.A real one.
Emery reaches across the console, her fingers finding mine.“We did it.”
“Yeah,” I say, voice shredded, thick with emotion.“You fucking did it.You saved us.”
She shakes her head.“We saved each other,” she says, quiet but certain.
But I know my father.Today’s just the prologue to the next fucking nightmare.
He’ll come for her.Hunt her down with that rabid-dog smile and blood still drying under his nails.And when he’s done tearing her apart, he’ll drag my ass back—not because he wants me, but because I’m the fucking heir.Because I’m his, and he won’t let anyone forget it.Because control is the only goddamn language that bastard speaks.
A shrill beep slices through the silence.The ten-minute timer detonates like a goddamn bomb.
My eyes snap to hers.
“Did you just leak that?”
Her mouth curves into that wicked little smirk that always meant trouble.Danger laced in sugar.
“Yes,” she says.“Matteo, we were never going to be free.Not while he's still breathing.He’d hunt us forever.But now?” She shrugs, casual, effortless, like she didn’t just strike a match and torch the world behind us.“Now he won’t show his face again.”
Emery didn’t just threaten my father.She played him.Out maneuvered the monster.And I know exactly what it means.
He’ll vanish into the shadows, tail tucked between his legs.His enemies will smell the blood in the water and circle like sharks.Every skeleton he’s buried, every bribe, every bullet, every dollar-stained red will all be exposed now.The empire he spent a lifetime building.Gone in a fucking heartbeat.All because of her.
She’s chaos wrapped in silk.A fucking storm I’d let wreck me again and again.
