You Always Make Me Wait

Walking away meant I never had to be his ghost again. No more burying his rotten ambitions under the Palermo moon.

My mother was still droning on about her "survival logic," but I was already done talking.

"Mom, on this island, no one can force a woman with a dead heart to look back."

I hung up and accessed the family's core security system, the Sanctuary Protocol.

"This is Rhea. Pull all covert defenses around the Don immediately. Delete all unregistered firewall data. From now on, his life or death has nothing to do with me."

The family steward in charge of tomorrow's security went silent for a long time. Finally, he whispered, "Rhea, the Don ordered us to keep tomorrow's setup. He said the family crests and the ruby ring would be locked away for three years. But leaving the bride's seat empty would make him look weak in front of the other families."

In that moment, I saw Lucius's absolute arrogance.

He thought this was just a temporary political play. Sienna had the old-school elders backing her. They controlled the most vital shipping docks and weapons routes in Sicily.

They hated Lucius for his rapid rise to power, and Sienna's "pregnancy" gave them the perfect lever.

They used the "legitimate heir" excuse to force Lucius into a marriage and crawl back into the family's inner circle.

And Lucius actually expected me to understand. He wanted to freeze me and my eight years of loyalty like a specimen in a glass box, waiting for him to finish using the elders and come back for me.

"Throw it all away," I said, staring at the black waves outside. "In Sicily, a broken umbrella is just as useless as a rotting corpse. It only brings crows."

Next, I dialed Lucius's mother—the infamous "Iron Widow," the Donna.

To her, Sienna was not hope. She was a Trojan horse from the elders. She despised women who used pregnancies to steal power, and she loathed Lucius for cutting off his own right hand just for some shipping docks.

I transferred the gold-backed financial keys back to the main family account. Seconds later, my secure phone rang.

"Rhea! Why did you pull the gold reserve access? Without your dynamic keys, the elders' docks can't process a single dime!"

"Madam, my alliance with Lucius ended the moment he broke our contract. Since he chose the elders' bride, let Sienna clean his dirty ledgers."

The old lady gasped, her voice turning icy. "That idiot boy thinks he owns an empire just because he got the docks? Without you, the elders will eat him alive! Tomorrow night, no one wears that ruby ring but you!"

"Madam, the wedding has turned into a funeral. There's no point in holding it."

It was time to go. Every trap, every panic room in this villa was designed by me to keep Lucius alive. Now that he wanted to sit down with his enemies, I was taking my protection with me.

I packed light. A single tactical case was enough. Before leaving, I grabbed the only photo of us—taken in the ruins after a shootout eight years ago. Back then, he was a bleeding stray, and I was the one who stitched his chest back together in a dark clinic.

But at the front door, I ran right into him.

The frame hit the marble floor, the glass shattering into pieces. A shard sliced my ankle, and blood bloomed into the expensive Persian rug.

Lucius barely looked at the blood. He tightly shielded Sienna behind him, a flash of guilt in his eyes quickly replaced by raw anger. The elders had clearly given him hell earlier:

"Rhea! What the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea that Sienna is carrying the future of this family? If the glass cuts her and ruins my deal with the elders, how are you going to pay for that?"

"Pay for that?"

I looked at his power-hungry face and said softly, "Will my life do? Or... how about your crumbling family?"