Chapter 4

The sky darkened again after I left the Bellandi Hotel. Ava handed me my car key and studied my face. “You look like you crawled out of a morgue. Did you finally go to war with that Bellandi Don?”

I shook my head. “No.”

We hadn’t gone to war. We hadn’t even raised our voices. We were simply walking, quietly and steadily, toward the end of the countdown.

At six, the wind picked up without warning. I was driving back to the penthouse when I passed under the West Loop freight bridge. A strip of scrap metal on the road sliced into one of my tires.

The car lurched hard and died under the bridge. Abandoned warehouses crowded both sides of the street. Two streetlights were out.

All I could hear was the fine, relentless hiss of snow pellets striking the roof. I took out my phone. Thirteen percent battery.

I called Lucian. For seven years, calling him had been my first instinct whenever I was in trouble.

The phone rang for a long time before he answered. “Elena.”

His voice was messy. Men were shouting in the background, and somewhere glass shattered.

“Lucian, I got a flat under the West Loop freight bridge.” My fingers had gone stiff around the steering wheel.

“There’s no one around, and I can’t get a ride out here. Can you send someone to pick me up?”

He was silent for one second. Then Mia’s broken sobs cut through the call. “I didn’t mean to ruin the shipment. I swear. If the family loses that money, I can’t pay it back in ten lifetimes. Maybe it’s better if I just disappear.”

Lucian’s voice turned sharp and urgent. “Mia, put the gun down. That’s not something you touch.”

Then he spoke into the phone, fast. “Elena, Mia handed a dock ledger to the wrong person. One of our rivals almost got tonight’s route. She’s hysterical right now, and she has a gun.”

“I can’t leave. Call security. Have them send a car.”

The line went dead. I stared at the dark phone screen.

Suddenly the air inside the car felt colder than the snow outside. I didn’t call him again. I didn’t call security either.

I opened the door and stepped into the storm. Snow slapped my face like tiny knives. My heels sank into half-melted slush, and every step felt cold, heavy, and absurdly loud in the empty street.

I walked along the freight bridge alone for a long time before I finally flagged down a ride outside a twenty-four-hour auto shop. By the time I returned to the penthouse, it was close to midnight.

I pulled out a deep green suitcase and opened the wardrobe, then packed only my usual clothes, my passport, my bank cards, and the old framed photo my mother had left me.

I didn’t touch the gowns Lucian had ordered for me, the key to our opera box, or the racing club membership card Lucian had issued under the Bellandi name. After I finished packing, I went into the study. Rosalind had already sent me a checklist for separating my accounts, property access, and every private arrangement tied to the Bellandi family.

I went through it line by line, leaving instructions for everything that had to be removed from the Bellandi name before I left Chicago.

Then I placed Rosalind’s checklist and a note on the black obsidian coffee table in the middle of the living room. Beside them, I set down the diamond engagement ring Lucian had slid onto my finger the night he asked me to marry him.

When it was done, I took my suitcase and left the penthouse I had lived in for seven years. At two in the morning, Lucian opened the front door with exhaustion dragging at every line of his body. He had just patched the ledger mess and sent Mia back to the safe house.

“Elena, I’m home.” He unbuckled his holster as he called my name.

No one answered.

He frowned and switched on the living room lights. The first thing he saw was the stack of papers on the coffee table, the note beside them, and the diamond ring catching the light like a piece of ice.

He walked over and picked up the note.

[Lucian, I’m calling off the engagement. Don’t come after me.]

His eyes dropped from the note to the diamond engagement ring lying beside it.

For the first time in his life, something like panic tore through him. At that exact second, the countdown above his head—the one that had fallen below a hundred days—flickered violently.

[89 days, 12 hours, 5 minutes.]

Red light surged. Then it changed.

[125 days, 7 hours, 30 minutes.]

For the first time, the countdown began to move backward.