But we both knew this was necessary. Lorenzo wouldn't surface for Dante's men. Wouldn't expose himself to an ambush. But for his daughter? The one he'd raised to be obedient, the one he thought he could still manipulate?
He'd come.
And when he did, we'd end this.
Dante was positioned three blocks away with twenty men. Marcos had snipers on the rooftops. Vince was monitoring every exit. They'd give me thirty minutes—long enough to get what we needed, short enough that Lorenzo couldn't spring whatever trap he was planning.
Thirty minutes to face the man who'd murdered my mother.
Thirty minutes to prove I wasn't his tool anymore.
The cathedral smelled like rot and incense, a contradiction that fit Lorenzo perfectly. Beautiful decay. Holy corruption. I stood in the nave, stained glass casting crimson and gold across the cracked marble floor, and wondered how many souls he'd damned in places just like this.
Two guards flanked the altar. Lorenzo waited between them, hands clasped behind his back, posture relaxed. Theatrical. He'd always loved theater.
"Julietta." His voice echoed off vaulted ceilings. "I wondered if you'd come."
I walked forward. Each step felt like wading through water. My body remembered him before my mind caught up—the way my shoulders wanted to hunch, the way my spine tried to curl inward, the instinctive flinch that five years of conditioning had carved into my nervous system.
My hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists, nails biting into palms, using pain to anchor myself in the present. Not the eighteen-year-old girl in his office. Not the twenty-three-year-old being sold to Miguel. The woman I'd become. The woman who'd survived him.
His cologne reached me before I reached him—bergamot and cedar, the scent that used to make me freeze in doorways, waiting to see which version of him would emerge. The father who smiled.The tyrant who commanded. The monster who orchestrated murders while calling it family
My stomach churned. Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed it down and kept walking.
Five years. Five years of "yes, Father" and "of course, Father" and molding myself into whatever shape he needed. Five years of believing I was nothing without his approval, nothing without his name, nothing but the purpose he'd assigned me.
He'd been wrong.
And I was about to prove it.
My heels clicked against the broken tile. The sound ricocheted through the empty space like gunshots.
"You didn't give me much choice."
"There's always a choice,figlia mia." He smiled, spreading his hands. "You chose to leave the family. To betray your blood. To crawl into Taviani's bed like a common—"
"Careful." I stopped ten feet from the altar, my spine straight. "You might say something you regret."
Lorenzo laughed, the sound sharp and cruel. "Regret? You think I regretyou? I regret Elena ever gave birth. I regret wasting twenty-three years of resources on a daughter who turned out to be worthless." He descended the altar steps, circling me like a predator. "But here you are. Running back. Begging for forgiveness, I assume?"
My stomach twisted with old, familiar fear. The voice that had commanded my obedience for seven years, that had told me I was nothing without him, that I existed only to serve his ambition.
That voice used to control me.
Not anymore.
"I'm not begging for anything," I said quietly. "I came to tell you goodbye."
His eyes narrowed. "Goodbye?"
"You murdered my mother." The words tasted like ashes. "Elena Marchetti. You had her killed because she was pregnant with me, because she threatened your marriage, your legitimacy, your precious empire. You erased her. Then you paid the Bennetts to raise me like livestock until I was old enough to be useful."
"Elena was weak," Lorenzo said dismissively. "She knew what she was getting into when she spread her legs for a married man."
"She was twenty-three years old." My voice didn't shake. "And you were forty-six. A married man with an empire. You groomed her, used her, and when she became inconvenient, you killed her."
"Prove it."
