Aria POV

Serena reached for the red rose pinned to her chest, her fingers affecting a tremor as she made a show of unfastening it.

Cassius immediately released my arm and stepped between us, placing a large, prohibitive hand over Serena's.

"What a Don gives cannot be taken back," he declared, his voice pitched to carry the absolute authority of the underworld.

His dark gaze returned to me, and he reached out again, gesturing toward the safety of the stadium.

"Step away from the edge, Aria."

His tone was a brittle warning now.

"Do not make a scene in front of the Family's associates and the press."

I did not move.

I just nodded slowly, repeating his words in my head—what he gives cannot be taken back.

I looked at the baseball bat in Serena's hand—the very length of ash wood Cassius had used to survive his first street war.

"I do not want it anymore," I said.

Cassius narrowed his eyes.

"I do not want you, the rose, the bat, or the safehouse."

A memory surfaced, sharp as a shard of glass, of the terms The Commission had set down for me when I was eighteen.

If my brother or one of the targets chose me without hesitation, I could take the cure and return to the civilian world.

Cassius let out a harsh breath, folding his arms over his broad chest.

"You are using a breakup threat to force me to strip Serena of her protection."

He shook his head, looking so profoundly disappointed.

"It will not work."

I smiled at him, though it was a mere twitch of the lips that held no warmth.

"I promise I will not take anything back."

Cassius slowly uncrossed his arms, his confusion returning.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

I looked at the massive stadium behind him.

"A place you can never enter."

I walked over to home plate and dropped the ninety-eight white roses onto the dirt.

I pulled my burner phone out of my pocket and placed it on top of the flowers to pin them down.

Cassius barked an order to his soldiers.

"Cut the live feed. Block the journalists from the field."

The heavily armed men immediately moved to form a solid wall around the perimeter.

Cassius stood still, watching me.

He assumed I was playing a byzantine mafia mind game, fully expecting that I would wait for him to coax me back.

I kicked off my high heels, leaving them like abandoned sentinels on the concrete steps leading down to the treacherous coastal cliffs.

I did not look back as I descended the jagged rocks.

The freezing ocean water soaked the hem of my dress as I stepped into the dark tidal cave that was known to flood completely at high tide.

Behind me, I heard Cassius's voice—strained now, stripped of its earlier command. "Aria, the tide turns in twenty minutes. This is not a negotiation tactic that ends well."

He still thought I was bargaining.

I kept walking. The water rose to my calves, then my knees, the cold stealing sensation from my limbs as the cave's darkness swallowed me whole.

I pressed deeper into the cave, feeling the walls narrow around me. The roar of the ocean became muffled, distant. Good. The more isolated I was, the less chance of interruption.

The system's countdown began—a soft, rhythmic pulse in the back of my skull, like a second heartbeat slowing toward stillness.

Somewhere above me, I heard the distant thrum of helicopter rotors.

Enzo.

I closed my eyes and pressed my back against the wet stone.

"Not this time," I whispered. "Please, not this time."

Aria POV

The damp air of the tidal cave was a palpable weight against my skin, thick with the sharp odor of salt and rotting seaweed.

I leaned my head against the cold stone wall, letting its rough surface anchor me in the present.

I remembered Cassius bringing me to this exact cave when I was but eighteen.

He had wrapped his heavy jacket around my shivering shoulders and promised me a home in a world that had left me without one.

Now, there was no jacket—only the freezing tide washing over my bare feet.

With a faint chime, the Commission's interface projected a secure holographic feed directly into my line of sight.

It showed a bright, sterile civilian hospital room that seemed a world away from my current reality.

My brother, Arthur, was asleep in an angular plastic chair by a hospital bed.

A familiar thermos of homemade noodles rested on the small table next to him, a quiet testament to his daily vigil.

On the wall behind him, I could see a calendar with days crossed off—three years' worth of marks. A stack of billing statements sat on the windowsill, stamped with the logo of the clinical trial program that was keeping my body alive. Arthur must have fought to get me enrolled. He must have fought for everything.

"Three years have passed in the real world," the Commission's automated voice stated, hollow and impassive. "Without the medical reward, your survival upon extraction is not guaranteed."

I stared at the threads of silver forming at Arthur's temples, each one a testament to the time I had stolen from him.

My chest tightened with a heavy, constricting ache.

"I accept the risk," I whispered into the echoing dark of the cave.

I just wanted to see my brother again, if only for a fleeting second.

The freezing seawater rose to my ankles, but the cold was a distant thing.

A strange sense of relief washed over me, a quietus to my racing heart.

I closed my eyes and waited for the lethal extraction protocol to trigger.

Outside the cave, carried faintly over the crash of the waves, I could hear Cassius shouting orders.

He was locking down the stadium and ordering his men to sweep the coastline.

But he did not come down into the cave.

He still believed I was just hiding to test his limits, blind to the fact that I was already saying my farewells.

The water reached my knees, numbing my legs completely as the system's countdown began to hum through my bones.

Suddenly, the deafening roar of a chopper engine echoed off the serrated cliff walls, shattering the morbid peace.

A blinding white searchlight hit my face, forcing my eyes open against the sudden, painful glare.

I looked up through the jagged mouth of the cave.

A figure was descending rapidly on a rescue line, a dark shape cutting straight through the violent storm.

It was Enzo.

He was the Syndicate's elite smuggling pilot and a made Soldier—a man whose dominion was the sky, not the treacherous depths of a rising tide.

A crushing weight of disappointment slammed into my stomach, driving the breath from my lungs.

I was only seconds away from extraction, only seconds away from Arthur.

Enzo's heavy boots hit the water next to me, sending an ice-cold spray against my skin.

He instantly read the profound disappointment in my eyes, and a muscle in his jaw jumped in response.

The storm violently shook his rescue line, threatening to smash us against the unforgiving rocks.

Without a word, Enzo grabbed my waist with brutal force.

He secured me to his harness in one fluid, economical motion.

As the wind threw us toward the stone, he used his own body to shield me from the jagged cave walls, absorbing the brutal impact himself.

I saw blood dripping from his bare hands where the friction of the rope had burned the skin from his palms.

Ignoring the pain, he checked the metal rigging three times with a frantic precision.

Then, he grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at his intense, storm-gray eyes.

"I came to get you," he yelled, his voice nearly lost in the roaring wind. "I promised I would always extract you. Every time. No matter the cost."

I remembered his old promise to always extract me from any danger, no matter the cost.

Hearing those words now only brought a bitter, acrid taste to my mouth, for this was the one time I had not wanted to be saved.

The winch pulled us up violently, yanking me away from my escape.

Once we were dragged into the shuddering cabin of the chopper, Enzo's knees buckled, and he fell heavily onto the metal floor.

He barked rapid orders at his syndicate medics for oxygen and thermal blankets, his voice sharp enough to cut glass.

He frantically checked my pulse, his bloodied fingers trembling against my ice-cold skin.

I coughed up a lungful of harsh seawater, choking on the very fact of my survival.

My entire body shivered uncontrollably as the adrenaline fled my system.

Enzo wrapped a thick thermal blanket tightly around my shoulders, hauling me flush against his chest.

He held it there, a steadying weight in the chaos, until the heart monitors in the cabin finally stopped their shrill blaring.

The Commission's voice echoed coldly in my mind, a final judgment.

"External stabilization detected. Extraction failed. You must reach the brink without intervention."

The words were new—a clarification I had never received before. The system was learning from each failure, refining its protocols, or perhaps simply growing impatient. Either way, the message was clear: they couldn't just let me almost die. They had to let me cross the threshold entirely.

I looked up at Enzo through the clear plastic of the oxygen mask, my vision blurred by a film of unshed tears.

He ripped off his bloodied communication headset, his chest heaving as he stared down at me.

"Are you disappointed I am not Cassius?" he asked, a raw vulnerability in his tone cutting through the noise of the rotors.

I looked at him honestly, acknowledging the twisted, broken truth of it, and nodded.

His face crumpled for just a moment—a fracture in the hardened Soldier's mask—before he rebuilt it into something harder, angrier.

"Then you should have picked a better place to hide," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Because I will always find you, Aria. Always."

His words were a promise and a threat wrapped into one. And as the chopper banked toward his underground hospital, I realized with sick certainty that Enzo would never stop extracting me—even when extraction was the very thing killing my only chance to go home.