Twelve years ago, a street firefight erupted, targeting Dante Falcone.

Isabella, his obsessive admirer, pushed me into the line of fire.

Dante took a bullet for me and knelt in a pool of his own blood.

He swore he’d spend his life loving me, that he’d never let me be hurt again.

Twelve years later, I saw Dante with that same woman.

He gently promised Isabella that the child she was carrying would be the Falcone family's sole heir.

Overcome with grief and rage, I trashed his entire study.

In the chaos, I stumbled upon his teenage diary.

I furiously wrote: "Dante! I hate you!"

On the page, ink bled into a sentence: "Who are you? I don't care who hates me, as long as it's not Elara."

For a moment, shock eclipsed fear.

Stroke by stroke, I wrote: "I am Elara."

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1

"You're Elara?"

"Impossible. You can't be her."

"Elara would never hate me. I haven't done anything to hurt her."

The three sentences, appearing out of thin air, were so jarring that the diary slipped from my grasp.

I fought for breath, trying to force a semblance of calm over the chaos in my mind.

My hand trembling, I picked up the diary and wrote, "Is this your diary? Who are you?"

A line of text quickly appeared on the page: "I'm Dante Falcone."

The hand holding the pen trembled uncontrollably.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

Could it be? Was the person on the other side the eighteen-year-old Dante?

"Who are you really? What right do you have to claim Elara hates me?" he pressed, the words sharp on the page.

I picked up the pen and quickly wrote, "I'm the thirty-year-old Elara."

"Twelve years from now, you will betray me. So stay away from me."

"Impossible!!!"

His handwriting was a wild scrawl, the ink seeming to leap off the page in defiance.

"If you are Elara, then you should know how willing I am to die for you!"

Distant, blurred memories surfaced.

I could imagine the indignation of the eighteen-year-old Dante—the boy who loved me more than his own life—reeling from such an accusation.

The boy who would have torn out his own heart for me without a second thought could never have imagined that one day, he would be the one to push me away.

My eyes reddened, and just as I was about to write more, the study door was thrown open.

The thirty-year-old Dante strode in and went straight to the antique cabinet.

He began rummaging through it without so much as a glance in my direction.

"I'm sure I put it here," he muttered to himself.

At that moment, he finally noticed me and turned his head. "Where did you put the family ring?"

I was speechless for a moment, my throat tightening.

At our wedding, in front of all the family members, he had given me that ring—Mamma’s ring—which symbolized my position as the family's matriarch.

"Elara, from this day forward, you are the matriarch of this family."

At the time, his older brother was furious and stood up to object.

"Dante, are you crazy? An outsider, a woman who can't even give you an heir—what right does she have to wear Mamma’s ring?"

During that firefight twelve years ago, I was hit by a stray bullet, and the doctors said I might be barren for life.

A dead silence fell over the room. Everyone stared at me.

I lowered my head, my face burning with shame, utterly humiliated.

But Dante, at that moment, held my hand tightly and punched his brother.

"Shut your mouth! My choices are not for you to question! No one besides Elara is worthy of this ring!"

As everyone stared, my eyes met Dante's. They were full of affection, and in that moment, I knew I’d chosen the right man.

I thought I had found the strongest fortress in the world.

But now, for another woman, Dante had broken his own vow.

I rose numbly, took the velvet box from the safe, and handed it to him.

Dante snatched it away, opened it, and looked at the ring with its enormous sapphire, nodding in satisfaction.

"With this, I can bless Isabella and my son and keep them safe."

After saying that, he cast a lazy glance at my haggard face. "You have no use for this anyway; you can't produce an heir. I'll buy you something else later."

"We'll celebrate our anniversary later. Isabella needs me more right now."

As an afterthought, he added, "Be sensible, Principessa. No one's trying to take your position as my wife."

I watched his retreating back, a bitter, broken laugh escaping me as tears streamed down my face, my heart aching with sharp, stabbing pains.

I opened the diary again, and a new line of text appeared before my eyes:

"We had a family photo taken today. I was waiting for your reply, so I missed my shot to be in the center with my brothers."

I immediately pulled out an old photo album. His position had indeed changed.

Could it be... that the choices made by the eighteen-year-old Dante could really change everything now?

Before I could process it, another line appeared below: "If you really are Elara, then do you know where my family tattoo is?"

"On your left shoulder blade," I replied.

The page remained blank for a long moment.

I continued writing, "Dante, I'm begging you, stay out of my life."

An eternity seemed to pass before new words appeared.

The black ink seemed to bleed into the paper, pressed hard with emotion.

"Elara, I live for you. Don't you know that? Why must you be so cruel to me?"

I looked at the line, feeling nothing but disgust.

The tear tracks on my face hadn't even dried yet.

I wrote:

"Live for me? I'm the cruel one?"

"You're the reason Isabella was so jealous, the reason she pushed me into the line of fire!"

"And you! Twelve years later, you've gotten her pregnant with your heir!"

"Dante, you have no right to say that to me."

For countless nights, I would wake with a start, the phantom pain of that ugly scar on my back sending me into a spiral of tears.

Twelve years ago, that street firefight.

Isabella had tearfully begged Dante to take her with him, but he had coldly refused.

In a fit of rage, when the gunshots rang out, she shoved me directly into the line of fire.

By the time Dante arrived, I had already collapsed in a pool of blood.

Seeing me on the verge of death, he let out a guttural, broken roar.

He carried me in a frenzy, rushed me to the family's private hospital, and knelt outside the operating room, praying.

My life was saved, but I was left with a permanent scar on my back and the possibility that I could never conceive.

That day, Dante held my hand tightly, his shoulders trembling as he cried.

"Elara, as long as you're okay... that's all that matters. We don't need children. You are my whole world."

"Elara, I swear in the name of the Falcone family, I will protect you with my life."

And yet this man who loved me so much would, years later, cheat on me with Isabella and even have a child with her.

I closed my eyes in despair.

Now, this diary was the only chance heaven had given me to make Dante disappear from my life forever.

But this time, I received no reply.

Utterly exhausted, I hugged the diary and fell into a deep sleep.

I dreamed I was eighteen again. Dante was kneeling beside me, sobbing and begging me to open my eyes.

A sudden chill woke me. There was no one beside me.

The thirty-year-old Dante had chosen the woman who hurt me most. He wasn't coming back.

I opened the diary. There were two new lines on it.

My dream shifted, plunging me back to that dark street from twelve years ago. Gunshots echoed everywhere, the sky lit with flashes of fire.

I was shoved forward by Isabella, exposed to the line of fire.

I closed my eyes, but the searing pain I remembered never came.

When I fearfully opened my eyes, I saw Dante standing in front of me.

He gritted his teeth and shielded me with his body, taking every bullet meant for me.

Blood blossomed across his white shirt, but he was still using his last ounce of strength to smile at me.

In the dim light, the eighteen-year-old boy slowly knelt on one knee in a pool of his own blood.

Our eyes met. His were bright, burning with a triumphant pride.

A slow, determined smile spread across his lips. "Elara, I love you. I will never let you get hurt."

"I... did it..."

He closed his eyes and collapsed in front of me.

I screamed his name and shot up from the sofa, drenched in a cold sweat and gasping for air.

I wrapped my hands tightly around my trembling body, trying to convince myself it was just a dream.

But when I subconsciously touched my back, I found that the ugly, uneven scar was gone.

In disbelief, I opened the diary.

Two new lines had appeared.

"Elara. I'm hurt. Gods, it hurts."

"But for you, it was worth it."

The knot of tension in my chest began to loosen.

The clock chimed the hour, marking the end of our wedding anniversary.

I wrote expressionlessly, "It wasn't for me. You owed me."

If it weren't for you, I would never have been the target of Isabella's jealousy, much less been pushed out to die.

And I certainly wouldn't have had to see you with her and your heir twelve years later, repeatedly tortured by your happiness!

On the diary page, shaky, crooked characters continued to appear, as if written with the last of his strength.

"Elara, is there anything else you need me to do?"

asked the boy who was once so deeply in love with me.

But I felt no mercy.

"Leave my life, and never appear again."

Once, when family members mocked me for being "barren," he was my shield.

I once believed that as long as I had him, I could overcome any hardship.

But later, he was also the one who let go of my hand, stood with those who ridiculed me, and pushed me into the abyss.

The one who loved me most also knew best where to stab to cause the most pain.

Countless times I had broken down in despair, questioning why fate was so unfair.

I’d even thought about ending it all.

Now, if there was even the slightest chance, I would not let it all happen again.

The eighteen-year-old Dante clearly couldn't accept my rejection, filling the page with a torrent of words, desperate proof of his love:

"Why, Elara, why won't you believe me? Do you know how much I love you?"

"Every time you had an art exhibition, I’d ditch my bodyguards and slip into the crowd, just to catch a glimpse of you."

"When I heard you were skipping meals for your art, I immediately skipped a family meeting, crossed the city to buy your favorite food, and had it anonymously delivered to your studio door."

"And..."

"That's enough! I know all of that!" I interrupted him, my eyes red, as if I was seeing the girl I used to be, the one who fell for all of this.

"I know that once, when my painting was maliciously destroyed by a rival, you took on a whole block of thugs by yourself. You were beaten until you were covered in bruises, your head bleeding, all to get justice for me."

After a long pause, a line slowly appeared in the diary.

"Elara, how do you know about these things?"

He didn't know yet what his future self would say to me.

I took a deep breath and slowly wrote:

"The future you told me."

The reply came quickly: "If you know that, why do you still want me to leave?"

I gave a bitter smile. "Because the thirty-year-old you deeply regrets doing those things for me."

"You said you mistook youthful possessiveness for love, and that marrying me was the biggest mistake of your life."

"No, Elara. Why won't you believe me? I don't want anyone but you," the crooked words scrambled across the page.

"It's all lies! Not only will you regret marrying me, you'll have a child with that woman!"

Tears fell silently, smudging the ink, and I accidentally tore the paper.

In an instant, the world spun. When I came to, I found myself in a hospital room.

In front of me, the eighteen-year-old Dante lay weakly on a hospital bed, his abdomen wrapped in thick gauze, his face pale.

One hand was pressed against his wound, while the other painstakingly wrote every word, muttering to himself.

"Elara, I'm begging you, give me a chance. You have to believe me, I..."

He looked up, and his gaze met mine.

We stared at each other in silence.

After a long moment, he spoke with difficulty, "Elara, these words..."

The next second, a piercing ringtone shattered the vision, and I was back in my ransacked home.

I answered the phone, and a sharp, commanding voice pierced my ear:

"Elara, come to the restaurant downstairs from the office now. Isabella and I have something to tell you."