My spirit followed Lucien back to the familiar estate.

That house had once been my home with Lucien. Every plant, every piece of furniture, every decoration had been chosen by me with care.

Now, Kate lived there.

The moment he pushed the door open, Kate rushed to meet him, her face filled with anxious hope.

"Lucien? Well? Did you find Serafine?"

Lucien shook his head, looking dazed.

"No… and they told me… they told me Serafine is dead."

"Dead?!"

Kate's eyes widened. She stumbled back a step, her hand instinctively gripping Lucien's arm.

"No way… That can't be right. Is she… is she just hiding from us? Making up lies to fool you?"

Lucien frowned, not answering right away.

Seeing this, Kate quickly forced a bitter smile.

"Serafine was our Madre! She had her own crew and access to family funds. How could she just die like that, for no reason?"

She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes, clutching his sleeve.

"Lucien, maybe… maybe we should just let it go? Don't pressure her anymore. I'll… I'll turn myself in to the Commission…"

Lucien was silent for a moment before finally nodding, as if he'd convinced himself.

"You're right. She must be hiding."

"I'll turn this city upside down if I have to. I will find her, and she will take the fall for you, Kate."

Tears welled in Kate's eyes, her voice choked. "Lucien, you're too good to me…"

"But…"

Lucien stared at Kate with a solemn look, his tone heavy. "But this is the last time. Once you’re out of danger, I’ll send you away." He paused, a flicker of regret crossing his face. "Before you showed up, Serafine and I never had these kinds of problems. She must be really disappointed in me now."

I floated nearby, stunned into silence. I was already dead, but I couldn't believe my ears.

Lucien was actually suggesting he end things with Kate?

What a joke. I could still remember when we'd been married less than a year, his "sister"—not by blood—had started insinuating herself into every crack of our lives.

It was Lucien himself who brought her into the family's inner circle, calling it "needing someone we can trust," which conveniently gave her free rein to be near him whenever she pleased.

How could I forget our first wedding anniversary? I had planned it for weeks—candles, a perfect dinner, just the two of us. But of course, that night, Kate had a "sudden emergency."

A phone call pulled Lucien away from my table. When he got there, he found she'd just had a bit of a headache from drinking too much.

I waited in the empty restaurant until the small hours of the morning. All I got from him was a text: "Kate needs me. You understand, she's family." When I later expressed my hurt, he frowned and called me "cold-hearted," asking if I was "really going to be jealous of a sick person."

And then there was the night before the crucial negotiation for the West Side territory. Kate "let it slip" to Lucien that I was "rather displeased" with the proposed outcome and had even "privately complained that he was making reckless decisions."

It was a complete lie. But Lucien believed it. We had a massive fight in the study. He accused me of questioning his authority, of being unworthy to stand by his side as the family's Madre.

The next day at the negotiation table, the icy atmosphere between us was so obvious our adversaries noticed it, ultimately causing a loss for the family. And Kate, of course, was there to provide "comfort" and "unconditional support."

It was always like this. Over and over.

In front of Lucien, she was always fragile, reasonable, and completely devoted to him.

In front of me, the provocative tone in her words and the smugness in her eyes were for me alone.

She successfully made Lucien believe I was petty and constantly targeting his "poor little sister." Any defense I tried made me seem even more "jealous" and "small-minded."

And now, he was saying he wanted to end this twisted relationship?

Lucien didn't notice the mask slipping from Kate's face. He turned away, his voice lower.

"I have to make things right with my family. I gave her protection back then, but these past few years… I've neglected my duties to her."

"If I'm honest… I feel guilty about it."

Kate stared at him in disbelief, her voice trembling.

"Lucien… are you throwing me away?"

"I don't know." Lucien's gaze shifted, brow furrowed. "But ever since that mess with the container in the Rust District?five years ago, I've had this bad feeling in my gut. Like something is deeply, fundamentally wrong."

He paused, then his voice turned hard again.

"But I will help you with this. I won't let you face the Commission alone. I'm going to find her now. You wait here."

With that, he turned and walked away, his back rigid with a stubborn determination.

Kate stood frozen in place.

When she looked up again, gazing in the direction Lucien had gone, the pitiful, helpless expression on her face vanished without a trace.

I saw it clearly: her eyes were like poisoned daggers, venomous and hateful.

And from between her teeth came my name, a venomous hiss.

“Serafine… Lucien's love and the position of Madre - all of these are mine? You will never be able to take it away.”

Desperate to find me, the first place Lucien thought of was one of the family's safe houses—a place used to hide the relatives of important members.

It was where they had once placed my grandmother.

I watched Lucien slam his foot on the gas, his brow furrowed in a tight knot since he got in the car.

The car screeched to a halt in front of the family's safehouse— a building disguised as a rundown warehouse, with tight security hidden inside.

Lucien practically threw the door open before the car had even stopped. He stormed inside and grabbed a young Soldato who was counting weapons in the front lobby.

"Pull up the protection records for Serafine's grandmother."

"…Yes, Don."

The young soldier paused, then started flipping through the thick paper files. Just then, a low, cold chuckle came from nearby.

"Well, well... look who graces us with his presence. Don Lucien, making a personal visit to our little outpost?"

Lucien spun around, his face instantly darkening.

It was Damine. He had once been the family's Consigliere, with many loyal followers and Lucien's most trusted right-hand man.

Strangely, shortly after my "accidental death," Damine was demoted to Caporegime, only put in charge of the family's back-end operations.

The word on the street was that he often spoke up for me, which displeased Kate. Then Kate framed him for embezzling family funds, causing Lucien to lose all trust in him.

The moment these enemies saw each other, the tension became razor-sharp. Lucien looked him up and down, snapping:

"Do I need to report my whereabouts to you now?"

Damine leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a sneering smirk on his lips.

"Of course not. Just curious... how can you be so cold-blooded?"

"You disappear when they needed protection the most, but now that she's gone, you finally decide to look for her?"

"Protection?" Lucien's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Lucien looked completely bewildered, as if he truly knew nothing. But I knew exactly what Damine was referring to—my grandmother and me.

Back when I was shot over a dozen times in that dark alley, my consciousness fading, I had desperately tried to contact Lucien, wanting to see him one last time.

But he was out shopping with Kate and simply hung up on me. When I tried calling again, the number was completely blocked.

The same with my grandmother. When her medical feewere withheld and she lost the family's shield, with no funds or caregivers, a well-meaning contact had tried reaching Lucien for her.

He was on a private island vacation with Kate, completely cut off from the world. As a result, when she passed, she was completely alone, not a single soul by her side. They only found her body after she had already started to decay.

Seeing Lucien's confused expression, Damine stared at him for a few seconds, then let out a bitter laugh.

"You're a great actor. Forget it. I really don't see what she saw in you, what made her give up everything for you."

Damine said no more and walked away, leaving those words hanging in the air. Lucien stood rooted to the spot, his fingers unconsciously tightening on the cuff of his suit jacket—a telltale sign of his inner turmoil.

But... why was he so shaken up?

"Don?"

The soldier's voice pulled him back to reality. "The woman you're looking for… her grandmother..."

The soldier hesitated before continuing.

"She passed away three years ago."

Lucien's pupils constricted, as if he'd been nailed to the floor.

"What? The grandmother's dead? Three years ago?"

The soldier nodded timidly. "The records show winter, three years ago. Died of... terminal lung cancer with complications."

"Impossible! That's impossible!"

Lucien's control shattered. He smashed his fist onto a steel table with a deafening crash that drew the attention of every other member in the safehouse.

But he quickly forced himself to calm down. As the Don, he knew these protection records couldn't be wrong, nor could they be easily altered.

He clutched the soldier's collar, his voice trembling.

"How could this happen? We provided the best protection for her! How could she just... die! And..."

He suddenly remembered something, his face turning even paler.

"And I've been paying the medical fee every month! Kate told me just last week that the grandmother was doing well, that her vitals were improving..."

The soldier gasped for breath under his grip but quickly pulled up the ledger.

"Sir... and according to family records, the old woman's condition was never good. It never improved. And her medical fee wasn’t paid on time."

"The brother in charge said a woman came by a few times, claiming to 'cut costs,' and... she swapped out the doctor-prescribed imported meds. Most of the time, the patient was on cheaper substitutes."

"Later... she cut off all funding for the old woman's protection... After she stopped treatment and moved back to the Rust District... she passed away not long after..."

But the wire transfers for the family funds couldn't be faked. Kate had embezzled that money to fund her own lavish lifestyle.

Every word from the soldier felt like a knife through my heart. That damn bitch, Kate! She knew that money was her grandmother's lifeline, and she dared to steal it!

As Lucien listened, his whole body began to tremble. Of course, he knew who was responsible—besides Kate, no one would dare touch funds he had personally approved.

I thought he must be remembering five years ago, when I took the fall for Kate. I remembered the promise he made to me then—that he would use all the family's resources to protect my grandmother. He had sworn with such conviction, and in the end...

Lucien sank into a chair, burying his face in his hands. His shoulders shook violently.

"How could Kate... She promised me she'd take care of her!"

"How could she do this..."

Serval years ago, Lucien had just been a small-time hustler on the streets when my grandmother would secretly take money she'd saved for her own medicine and slip it into his pocket.

"You're doing big things now. You can't go on an empty stomach," she would always say. Her weathered, calloused hands would gently stroke his back, offering encouragement.

In the winter, she would stay up late knitting him sweaters. When he was injured, our shanty in the Rust District became his safest haven.

Even after he became the Don and owned countless mansions, he still most fondly remembered the scent of baking bread from that small kitchen.

But everything changed after Kate came along. She always said that my grandmother was "old-fashioned" and "out of place at family functions."

Slowly, the number of times he visited my grandmother dwindled to almost nothing.

At their last meeting, my grandmother had just gently held his hand and said, "My child, don't lose yourself in all this power."

Back then, he'd just seen it as an old woman's nagging. Now, he finally understood the weight of her words.

Lucien did love my grandmother. For the first time in five years, I finally saw the agonizing pain of his regret on his face.

But it was all too late.

Lucien kept apologizing, but as I watched him falling apart, I felt not a shred of pity.

If it weren't for his years of indulgence and silent approval, how could Kate have been so audacious?

At the end of the day, they were two of a kind, using each other on this blood-soaked path to power, ready to push the other into the abyss without hesitation.

Suddenly, Lucien shot to his feet. In his eyes, once feared by his enemies in negotiation rooms, I now saw a cold ruthlessness I had never witnessed before.

He pulled out his phone to call the family's Consigliere, Vincent. His fingers trembled so violently he could barely hold the device.

"Vincent, I need you to find someone for me." His voice was hoarse.

I could hear the detective on the other end of the line, asking for details in his usual professional, cautious tone.

Lucien's voice, however, was unnaturally calm. "Serafine. Find her. I need to see her now."

"Serafine? Is this about the arms deal with the British? Or do we need to find her because of Kate's case?"

"No." The whites on Lucien's knuckles were visible as he gripped the steering wheel. The veins stood out on his back of his hand, like twisted cables about to burst.

After what felt like an eternity, long enough for Vincent on the other end to think the call had dropped, Lucien finally spoke in a low voice.

"I just... I need to apologize to her..."

The car shot forward like an arrow from a bow, the tires screeching against the asphalt, a piercing sound in the quiet night.

I floated in the passenger seat, watching Lucien's rigid profile.

The afternoon sun through the car window highlighted the new lines at the corners of his eyes.

Five years ago, he was the rising Don of the Rossi family, powerful and brilliant. His eyes, full of calculation when he smiled, now held new wrinkles. Especially after learning of my grandmother's death, he looked ten years older.

So, after five years, no one stays the same.

Watching Lucien in pieces, I felt nothing but cold indifference.

Five years as a specter had worn down all my sympathy and compassion.

Lucien didn't know that the person he wanted to apologize to had died in a pool of blood in a Brooklyn alleyway five years ago on a rainy night.

What he owed me, what he owed my grandmother, could never be repaid, even if he emptied the entire New York underground arsenal. Some debts, once incurred, can never be settled.

When he returned from the safehouse, Lucien nearly slammed the front door open.

Kate, who was in the living room, immediately plastered on her usual innocent expression.

She held a half-finished glass of whiskey in her hand and hurried toward him. "Lucien! You're back? Did you find Serafine?"

Her voice was as sweet as ever, but it made me sick to my stomach. For the last five years, I'd had to listen to this voice, watch her step-by-step how she manipulated Lucien, how she steered the Rossi family toward ruin.

Lucien ignored her question completely, throwing his car keys onto the marble entryway table with a loud clatter that echoed in the quiet living room.

"Kate, what the hell really happened to Serafine's grandmother?"

Kate's hand with the wine glass paused. She frowned, her expression a perfectly crafted look of confusion.

"Her grandmother? She's fine! I've been transferring the medical fee every month on time! Just last week, the handler told me she was doing well, that all her vitals were improving..."

"Fine?" Lucien let out a cold, bitter laugh. Pulling up the death record from Antonio that he'd seen on his phone, he shoved the screen in Kate's face. "She's been dead for three years! You pulled her security detail and drained her medical fund. Don't you dare tell me you knew nothing!"

The date on the record was clear as day. Kate's face instantly went deathly pale.

She put her glass down, her hands twisting nervously in her lap. I'd seen that little gesture a thousand times—every time she lied.

"Listen... Lucien, let me explain! I had no choice!" Her voice started to tremble, but I knew this was just another act. "There was a mess-up with the arms deal. The buyer wanted more money, so I figured I could borrow a bit from the fund, just for a little while. I'd pay it back as soon as we had new cash flow..."

''Borrow a little?" Lucien took a step forward, his eyes bloodshot.

The eyes that once held nothing but tenderness for me were now filled with a terrifying rage.

"She was the only family Serafine had left in this world! When she took the fall for killing that Sollozzo member, the one thing she asked for was for us to take care of her grandmother! How could you do this?!"

Seeing that Lucien was truly enraged, Kate suddenly dropped to her knees with a thud. Tears welled perfectly in her eyes and slid down her flawless cheeks.

"I was wrong, Lucien! Please forgive me! The Safehouse discharged her against my orders, and by the time I tried to fix things, it was too late... I couldn't find her anywhere, I was just so stupid, I wasn't thinking straight!"

The sight of her pathetic performance made me want to retch.

I remembered the night she bought a new wardrobe of luxury items with the money from the arms deal that I had taken the fall for.

There hadn't been a hint of guilt on her face that night.

I remembered how excitedly she'd shown Lucien the latest collection from Hermès, all while those luxury goods could have funded my grandmother's protection for a decade.

The two of them stared at each other, the atmosphere in the living room thick enough to choke on.

Finally, Lucien sighed, his voice laced with exhaustion. "That's enough. Get up. I'm partly to blame—I shouldn't have given you complete control over the family funds without any supervision."

A spark of hope flashed in Kate's eyes. She thought he was going to forgive her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off with ice in his voice.

"Kate, I'll handle your incident of mistakenly killing deal with the British. But after this is over... it's over between us."

"I've already failed Serafine too many times. I can't continue to betray her."

"Lucien!" Kate's head snapped up, a look of genuine panic on her face this time. Her fear wasn't an act.

But Lucien didn't look at her again, turning to leave. His back looked strangely lonely in the grand foyer. The once untouchable Don was just a man, broken by the truth.

As he reached the door, he stopped—he'd left his jacket in the living room.

He sighed and turned back. This small oversight was about to reveal an even darker truth.

Just as he approached the bedroom, he heard Kate's voice, low and venomous, from inside. The words were chillingly vicious, completely devoid of her usual sweetness.

"...You have to find Serafine, and you have to kill her, no matter what!"

Her voice wasn't sweet now. It was cold and malicious. "Lucien is growing colder toward me. As long as she's around, he'll eventually leave me!"

Lucien, who had been eavesdropping, froze in the doorway, his entire body cold as ice. I saw his lips tremble, but no sound came out.

His expression was too complex for me to read—shock, rage, but mostly a deep, bottomless despair.

Just then, the screen on his phone lit up. A new message flashed into view.

It was from Vincent, a single sentence that would shatter Lucien completely:

"Serafine is dead."