The Betrayed Princess's New Reign

Elena Vitiello POV:

The temperature in the gallery felt like it dropped below freezing.

Luca's hand was shaking violently. His knuckles were white as he kept his gun raised, staring wildly at the rifles pointed at Sofia.

"Luca, save me!" Sofia wailed from behind the red laser grid. She sounded incredibly fragile, perfectly weaponizing his desperate need to be a hero.

Luca ground his teeth together. He snapped his head toward me, his chest heaving. "Why are you doing this, Elena?! Why did you set a trap to frame her?!"

A collective gasp echoed from the armed guards in the room. They stared at Luca as if he had lost his mind. To accuse the boss of framing a thief caught red-handed was a death wish.

I didn't yell. I didn't get angry. I felt nothing but a cold, clinical emptiness when I looked at him.

I took another slow sip of my wine. I raised my left hand and pointed at the massive holographic projection on the wall, which was currently looping the footage of Sofia plugging the hacking device into the keypad.

"Frame?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Luca refused to look at the screen. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. "She was just curious! She walked into the wrong room! She didn't know what it was!"

Matteo yanked hard on Luca's shirt collar. "Put the gun down, Luca!" Matteo hissed, his voice cracking with panic. "That's the New York token! People die over that!"

The word "die" hit Sofia like a physical blow. She let out a choked gasp, crying harder, and began to dry heave on the floor, clutching her stomach to look as pathetic as possible.

Seeing her physical distress snapped whatever remained of Luca's logic. The blood rushed to his face. He shoved his gun back into his holster and dropped hard to his knees right in front of me.

I looked down at the man who had been my shadow for ten years. A brief, sharp pang of pity hit my chest, but it vanished instantly, replaced by disgust.

"Please, Elena," Luca begged, staring up at me with wet eyes. "Let her go. She's just a naive girl from the South Side. She doesn't know the rules."

I let out a harsh sneer. "Naive enough to carry a black-market micro-decoder and crack a military-grade security lock?"

Luca stuttered. Sweat dripped down his forehead. His eyes darted around the room, panicking, until he blurted out the most ridiculous sentence I had ever heard in my life.

"I'll buy it!" Luca yelled, pointing at the black diamond necklace on the pedestal. "I'll use my salary! I'll give you six months of my pay, and I'll buy it for her!"

Dead silence fell over the gallery.

Domenico let out a loud, mocking snort. Several of the guards shifted their weight, trying not to laugh.

I stared at Luca. The sheer absurdity of his words hit me, and a laugh bubbled up in my throat. My shoulders started shaking. I laughed out loud, the sound echoing off the high ceilings.

Behind the lasers, Sofia's eyes lit up. A spark of greedy hope flashed across her face. She actually believed him.

I stopped laughing. My eyes turned into chips of ice. I stepped closer to Luca, looking down at his pathetic, kneeling form.

"Do you even know how much debt you are in, Luca?" I asked coldly.

Luca's face turned completely white. The memory of the twelve million dollar ledger crashed down on him. His jaw went slack.

I walked past him to the pedestal. I tapped a code into my phone, and the red laser grid vanished.

Sofia gasped in relief. She put her hands on the floor, preparing to stand up, thinking she had won.

I pulled a pair of black velvet gloves from my robe pocket and slipped them on. I reached out and picked up the necklace.

The black diamonds caught the harsh gallery lights, flashing with a heavy, terrifying brilliance. It was the physical weight of absolute power.

I walked back to Luca. I stopped right in front of him and let the necklace dangle from my fingers, suspending the massive stones directly in his line of sight.

"This is called the Eye of the Abyss," I said, my voice smooth and lethal. "The starting auction price is twenty million dollars. It is worth ten of your miserable lives."

Luca's body went completely limp. He sagged backward, his knees still on the floor, his eyes hollow and vacant. The last shred of his male pride had just been pulverized by a number he couldn't even comprehend.

Sofia heard the price. She let out a strangled noise. She stared at the diamonds, her eyes wide, her breathing erratic. She bit down on her lower lip so hard a drop of blood welled up.

I didn't hand it to Domenico. I lifted the necklace and fastened the heavy platinum clasp around my own neck. The cold stones settled against my collarbone.

I touched the black diamond on my neck, looking at the two broken people on the floor, and ordered coldly:

"Throw this thief out of the estate. She is banned forever."