Lucia POV

A few men crouching near overturned desks stood up hesitantly. They cast nervous glances toward the splintered window frame and the dark harbor docks that loomed below.

Bianca stepped down from the table, her mask of innocent, wide-eyed worry expertly in place.

She did not point, but clutched the silk of her collar, her knuckles white, forcing the tears that welled in her eyes as she accused me of letting my personal vendetta against her jeopardize the lives of our family's men.

"The panic room is standard protocol!" she preached to the frightened crowd. "Jumping out of a building is suicide."

It was a masterclass in deception; she manipulated the men effortlessly.

Several soldiers who harbored a secret obsession with her immediately stepped forward, their chests puffed with misplaced chivalry as they surrounded her protectively.

They called me insane. They told me to go die alone.

They pledged their loyalty to Bianca right then and there. The men chose to huddle near the compromised load-bearing wall to protect her.

I smirked, more than willing to let these fools embrace their chosen execution.

Silvio's grip on my wrist became a manacle of bone; he began to drag me backward, deaf to my warnings.

I refused to be cowed by his looming presence or the crushing pressure on my bones. I turned my gaze to the front row of desks.

Carmela, my loyal enforcer, was taking cover behind a heavy oak chair. She had been mine since the night I found her bleeding out in a rival family's warehouse—a debt she had repaid with unwavering loyalty ever since.

I caught her eye and gave a subtle, sharp nod, signaling for her help.

Carmela did not hesitate for a single second.

She grabbed a heavy, solid-bronze family crest from the top of a nearby desk.

She launched herself from cover, lunging forward and viciously smashing the heavy metal down on Silvio's forearm.

Silvio howled in sudden agony.

His fingers spasmed, and his iron grip finally broke.

I violently snatched my arm back against my chest, creating distance between us.

I looked down at my wrist. The skin was already blooming into a sick shade of purple where his nails had broken the flesh.

Silvio clutched his reddened arm. He glared at Carmela and then at me.

"Why do you refuse to listen?" he demanded, his voice shaking with anger. "Why do you insist on throwing your life away?"

Looking at his handsome face made my stomach turn; I felt physically nauseous.

The sight of him brought it all back in a sickening rush: the agonizing pain of my shattered leg, his illicit affair with Bianca, and his utter apathy toward my suffering while I sat in a wheelchair for years.

I remembered how Bianca spread malicious rumors to the other Capos, how she claimed that I crippled myself intentionally just to force him into the arranged marriage.

And I remembered how eagerly Silvio believed her lies.

The echo of his past-life confession to Bianca rang in my ears.

"I never loved her," he had said in the dark. "Looking at her crippled leg makes me sick."

Carmela stepped between us, snapping me back to reality.

I rubbed my bruised wrist and looked Silvio dead in the eyes.

"You are not nearly as important as you think you are," I told him coldly.

I stepped closer, making sure he heard every single word over the wailing sirens.

"I am not jumping to save you, because you are not worth the blood in my veins."

I kept my face a blank canvas, showing him my absolute detachment.

"Even if you are crushed into paste today, I won't spare you a second glance."

Silvio froze. He stared at me with a slow, hollow disbelief dawning in his eyes as he grasped that the woman he had discarded was gone.

Beneath that disbelief, something else flickered—a shadow of nameless terror, as if his buried instincts recognized this moment and knew it would cost him everything.

Lucia POV

Silvio opened his mouth, his jaw worked for a moment, a useless mechanical motion, before any sound came.

"Lucia, what the hell are you saying?" he asked, his voice trembling with a raw disbelief.

I would not waste another breath on him. I snatched Carmela's hand and sprinted toward the shattered window.

Bianca, meanwhile, cowered safely near the load-bearing wall, still playing the benevolent saint.

"She's throwing a tantrum!" she yelled over the noise. She accused me of dragging Carmela to her death just to prove a point.

This time, her finger was not trembling but ramrod straight, an ivory dagger aimed at the chaos beyond the window.

"Jumping is a death sentence!" she cried out. "Silvio, please stop her!"

Carmela shoved a heavy, overturned chair out of our path. She turned her head and fiercely cursed Bianca, swearing her absolute loyalty to my judgment in front of everyone.

"I trust Lucia with my life!" Carmela spat at the cowering crowd. "If the rest of you want to wait for the reaper, be my guest."

A great groaning crack echoed from the ceiling, and plaster rained down from the ceiling in thick sheets. The heavy, gilded family portraits swung violently from the splintering walls.

I stepped onto the wide window ledge.

I looked down, my mind a rapid calculator assessing the thirty-foot drop to the cargo netting and the soft earth below.

I knew the precise physics of this fall; as long as I executed a proper tactical roll to absorb the kinetic energy, I would survive.

"Protect your head!" I shouted over the grinding noise of the crumbling structure.

"Roll the instant your boots touch the ground!"

Carmela gritted her teeth. She looked at me, and her wide eyes reflected nothing but pure, unadulterated trust.

Panic finally shattered Silvio's veneer of composure.

He scrambled forward through the rising debris, reaching out desperately. He meant to grab my ankle and drag me back inside.

But I pushed off the ledge a fraction of a second before his fingertips could brush my skin.

The wind tore past my ears.

My descent was broken not by the ground but by the thick weave of industrial cargo netting suspended above the lower crates. The heavy mesh groaned, absorbing the lethal force of the fall and casting me outward.

My heavy boots hit the ground a few feet later. I bent my knees, throwing my momentum forward into a flawless tactical roll across the dirt.

The immense kinetic shock rattled my organs, compressing my chest and bringing the sharp, metallic taste of blood to the back of my throat.

I ignored the shock that rattled my organs and forced myself up from the dust.

"Carmela!" I shouted.

She mirrored my landing perfectly, rolling through the dirt and springing up right next to me.

Aside from a badly scraped elbow, she was intact. She laughed out loud, a wild, breathless sound fueled by the sheer adrenaline of being alive.

I exhaled a massive, shaking breath.

I looked down at my right leg. It was perfectly whole—strong and functional as I took a few testing steps in the loose earth.

The memory of my past-life jump surfaced like a nightmare.

I remembered how Silvio's terrified, rigid body had locked onto me in mid-air, destroying my ability to roll and causing my femur to snap upon impact.

That time, his dead weight had crushed me. This time, I carried only myself. And I landed whole.

I grabbed Carmela's arm, keeping her moving.

"Don't stop running!" I ordered. We sprinted toward the secure perimeter, moving far away from the collapsing estate.

The sky turned a choked, dusty yellow. The ground heaved beneath our heavy boots.

We supported each other by the shoulders, stumbling forward until we reached the dead center of the secure extraction zone.

Carmela suddenly stopped, her fingers digging deep into my arm.

Her eyes grew wide with a primal terror as she pointed back at the safehouse.

A tremor ran through the earth, so profound it seemed to steal all sound from the air. We could only watch as the five-story syndicate headquarters imploded, becoming a silent, suffocating mountain of rubble.

And somewhere beneath that mountain, Silvio Vitiello was about to learn the price of his arrogance—with his legs.