Chapter 1

The night before the trial list was sealed, the DeLuca encrypted channel blew up.

"Lucas, are you kidding me? You really changed your rotation from Marseille to London? Weren't you supposed to go to the Rossi coastal lab with Evelyn?"

Lucas DeLuca replied as if he had not tossed a match into gasoline.

"So I changed it. She has the key to my seal vault. Once she sees it, she'll change hers too."

A few seconds later, he sent a voice message. There was a spoiled, lazy smile in his voice.

"My little shadow can't live without me. She's followed me since we were kids. When has she ever left me behind?"

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor of the Rossi estate, phone in hand, and heard something inside me crack.

My luggage was still open on the rug: black field boots, lab notebooks, the silver cuff links my grandmother left me, and the gift I had prepared for Lucas. It was a custom microscope pin, engraved on the back with the promise we made as children: Go where the sea wind is, and do something that matters.

Twelve years ago, he called that our future. Tonight, for Vivian Castor, he changed it like he was flipping a page in a ledger.

I left the channel and threw the velvet box into the fireplace. The flames climbed over it. I did not open the family trial system again.

If he could throw away a future with me for another woman, I could throw him away and choose my own.

All the nights I stayed up, all the frostbitten field samples and antidote models built from black-market toxins--none of it was just to make myself worthy of him.

Someone in the channel asked, "What if Evelyn doesn't see it? The list seals tomorrow at midnight. Once the family seals lock, no one can change anything."

Lucas sounded as if he had heard the dumbest question in the world.

"She checks the trial file every ten minutes. How could she miss it? Besides, her route has always followed mine."

Someone hesitated. "But Marseille matters more to her, doesn't it? The Rossi family poured a fortune into that lab. Hasn't she always wanted a place in the neurotoxin reversal team?"

Lucas’s voice had gone cold.

"Shut up. Evelyn has separation anxiety. When we were kids, I spent one day at the Chicago branch, and she dropped all her training to come find me. If she doesn't come to London with me this time, she won't see me for three years. I'm more important to her than any lab. She'll choose me."

For once, the channel went quiet.

After a long pause, someone said carefully, "Lucas, that's rough on her. You should at least tell her face-to-face. You're engaged, for God's sake."

Lucas clicked his tongue.

"Too much trouble. If she finds out I changed it for Vivian, she'll cry and give me a headache. Better if she finds out on her own. The result will be the same anyway."

The channel came alive again.

"Fair. Vivian is the kind of girl men want to protect."

"The DeLuca heir has it good."

"Rossi might be strong, but she doesn't know how to be soft."

I stared at the messages and almost laughed. I wanted to call Lucas and ask what I was to him--his fiancee, a treaty clause, or a dog he could whistle back whenever he pleased. My finger hovered over his number, then slowly dropped.

Lucas and I had been called inevitable since childhood. The Rossis controlled pharma cold chains and labs; the DeLucas owned docks, casinos, and weapons routes. Our marriage was in the Council contract before we were born.

I first met him at eight, when I picked the lock of an old wine cellar and pulled him out before his pride cracked. Since then, whenever he spiraled, he reached for me first.

Everyone said I could not live without him. They had it backward.

I had been willing to make room for him in my future. That did not mean my future belonged to him.

The Marseille coastal lab was something I earned. It held Europe's most secret neurotoxin database and my mother's unfinished research. I wanted to finish her antidote model and save people broken by mafia wars from permanent sleep.

Lucas knew all of that.

He had simply never cared enough to remember.

I wiped my tears and closed the trial page I had opened by accident.

He had his London and Vivian. I had my Marseille and my lab.

Tonight, I stopped being his shadow.、