All Chapters of My Consigliere, I Will Not Stand Behind You Anymore: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

It took me ten years to become the right hand to Damian Costello, the Consigliere of the Costello crime family.From a nobody to the woman wearing his engagement ring.But two weeks before the wedding, I decided to throw that ring away.Everyone in the family knew how hard I had fought all these years just to stand by Damian's side.I gave up the chance to become a top trader on Wall Street, willingly becoming Damian's assistant, his shadow.This man was infamous for his coldness and exacting nature, keeping everyone at arm's length. So I hid my sharp edges, spending a decade wearing down his icy exterior with gentleness.I cleansed the blood from every dollar he made. I became a necessity to him, as essential as the air he breathed.I thought that after ten years, I had finally made my presence indispensable.And finally earned what looked, to outsiders, like a glimmer of his affection.The family's notoriously aloof genius actually remembered my birthday. He even made an exception,

Damian's brow tightened. "What did you say?"Just as he was about to press me, Isabella came running frantically from the direction of the dining hall. "Damian! Something's happened! Our offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands have been frozen!"The color drained from Damian's face. That account was one of the family's lifelines.Isabella grabbed his arm, her face etched with panic. "That's the account Dad cares about most. If the FBI is onto it…"Damian glanced at me, his demeanor instantly all business. "The accounts are an emergency. We'll talk after this is handled."Without another word, he turned and strode down the corridor with Isabella, not even giving me a second glance.I stood in the cold wind of the rose garden, watching them leave.I wasn't surprised.In his world, I would never be more important than the family's interests.And that "we'll talk later" would most likely never happen.Just like our wedding, a wedding no one truly cared about.I had handled all the preparat

The other end of the line went dead silent for a moment.Then, Damian spoke again, and his words chilled me to the bone."Ava, let's be honest. You gave up a high-paying job on Wall Street to follow me. Wasn't it because you wanted my protection?"My hand tightened around the phone, my knuckles turning white.He continued, his logic infuriatingly clear."If that's the case, then a meaningless title shouldn't matter to you.""Isabella is different. She's a potential successor. She needs a weapon in her hands, and Phoenix is the perfect way for her to prove her capabilities to the entire underworld."A roar filled my ears, and my blood ran cold.He knew.He knew all along. Every compromise I made, every time I swallowed my pride, every time I willingly stood in his shadow… he saw it all.It wasn't that he didn't understand. He just didn't care.He even saw my love for him as a license to strip me of my dignity whenever he pleased.Since I loved him, I was expected to sacrifice my life's

Damian remained frozen in the hallway outside the conference room, the fiery sting on his cheek a brand marking his new, absurd reality.Ava had hit him.The woman who had once been willing to shield him from bullets with her own body, the fiancée who had sheathed her claws for a decade, who had been as quiet as a shadow by his side, had just slapped him with all her might.He closed his eyes, unable to shake the image of her final look: those eyes, which had flashed red but stubbornly refused to shed a single tear.And, he had to admit, a look of raw disappointment.He didn't understand why.He had just wanted her to calm down, to stop her from making a scene they couldn't recover from in front of the other families.As for the kiss, it was instinct. It was the fastest, most direct way to get her to stop spiraling.Hadn't she craved that kind of intimacy for the past ten years?Every accidental brush of their bodies would make her ears turn red. Now that he had given her what he thoug

Knock, knock, knock.The sound broke through his stupor. Isabella pushed the door open and came in."Damian, something's wrong! The 'Phoenix' model is suddenly throwing a cascade of logical errors, and the system is warning our liquidity is at risk. We need the original calculation data to run a recovery…"Damian snapped back to reality, forcibly suppressing the strange, unsettling agitation that was making him lose control.The data…He remembered Ava saying that, for security, a backup of the entire core calculation process for "Phoenix" was stored on his private, secure server."Don't panic," he said, his voice low and radiating a calm that permitted no argument. "I'll get it."He walked to the biometric safe that only he and Ava had clearance for and scanned his iris.The heavy metal door slid open slowly.However, when he saw what was inside, he froze.The server's hard drive array was still blinking with blue light, but the file directories, which should have been neatly organize