"The extraction is blown!" Luca shouts from the doorway. "Alarms are triggered! We have movement on the west stairwell! Gia, move!"
I scoop Laura up, her legs wrapping around my waist. She’s heavier than I remember, but adrenaline is a hell of a drug. We move out into the corridor, the red emergency lights suddenly flickering to life, casting long, bloody shadows against the white tile. The alarm starts to wail—a high, piercing scream that tells me the world is finally ending.
We’re halfway down the long, white hallway toward the rear exit when the elevator at the far end dings.
The doors slide open.
A man steps out. He isn't in tactical gear. He’s in a charcoal grey suit, his silver hair perfectly coiffed, his expression as calm as a man walking into a board meeting. He looks at the carnage, at the Brotherhood soldiers, and then his eyes settle on me.
Father.
I freeze. My body goes rigid, the old, ingrained terror of nineteen years slamming into me like a physical wall. I pull Laura behind me, my hands shielding her, my breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches.
"You really did it, Gia," he says. His voice is a low, flat monotone that makes my skin crawl. "You really chose your husband. I must admit, I underestimated your capacity for stupidity. Or perhaps his touch was just that convincing?"
"I chose life, Father," I snap, my stubbornness flaring through the terror. "I chose my sister. Something you’ve never known how to do. You don't have daughters. You have inventory."
He walks toward us, his heels clicking on the tile. He pulls a weapon from his waistband, his movement smooth and clinical. He doesn't look like a man about to kill his children. He looks like a man about to delete a faulty line of code.
"Inventory is only useful if it sells," Father murmurs, his eyes two pits of dark, frozen glass. "You were always a disappointment, Gia. A ghost of a daughter. You were only ever an asset to be used and then discarded once the missionconcluded. Did you really think I’d let you walk away with the Caruso boy? Your survival was never part of the long-term plan."
He stops ten feet away, aiming the gun at my forehead.
"The Caruso boy won't come for you," he says softly. "By now, the O'Rourkes have turned the Villa d'Este into a graveyard. You're alone, Gia. You've always been alone."
"She's not alone."
The roar comes from the stairwell.
The heavy steel door bursts open, and Rafael charges into the hallway. He looks like a demon—covered in blood, his suit ruined, his eyes burning with a green, predatory fire. He doesn't look at the soldiers. He doesn't look at the decor. He looks at my father with a hatred so pure it makes the air turn cold.
"Rafael!" I scream.
The world turns into a blur of violence.
Rafael collides with my father, the sound of their bodies hitting the wall echoing through the corridor like a thunderclap. Salvatore tries to fire, but Rafael is a force of nature. He grabs my father’s wrist, and the sound of the bone snapping makes me flinch, but I don't look away. I can't.
They fall to the floor, a tangled mess of grey wool and black rage. It’s not a duel; it’s a reckoning.
Rafael is younger, stronger, and fueled by a vengeance that has been building since the first time he saw the bruises on my skin. He pins Salvatore to the ground, his good hand slamming into my father’s face with a rhythmic, punishing intensity that makes the floorboards vibrate.
"You sold Gia!" Rafael roars, his voice sounding like it’s being ripped from his chest. "! You put a tracker on a child!"
I stand there, clutching Laura to my side, watching my husband dismantle the architect of my pain. I should be horrified. I should be looking away. But for the first time in my life, I feel a cold, sharp sense of justice. I watch as Rafael brings his weapon up, the barrel pressed against Salvatore’s forehead.
"Say goodbye to your 'assets,' Salvatore," Rafael mutters, his voice a dark, final promise.
The shot echoes through the hallway—a single, definitiveCRACKthat ends nineteen years of silence.
My father’s body goes limp. The De Luca threat is over. The man who owned me, who traded me, who tried to erase me, is just a heap of expensive wool on a white floor.
I stare at the body, waiting for the surge of grief that never comes. Instead, there is only a hollow, ringing vacuum. Myfather is dead. The boogeyman is a stain on the tile. I expect to feel light, but I only feel heavy, as if the weight of my lies has finally crystallized now that the person I was lying for is gone.
Rafael stays there for a moment, his chest heaving, his head bowed. He looks down at his hands—red and shaking—and for a heartbeat, the "Butcher" mask slips. I see the man who knelt on the gravel to put slippers on my feet. I see the man who took a bullet for a "business transaction."
He stands up slowly, his movements heavy with exhaustion. He turns to me, his face splattered with my father’s blood, his eyes searching mine.
"Gia," he rasps.
