Chapter 21
Every damn day. Harder than with Peter.
We started at dawn. Blades first. Guns after. He taught me how to disarm men three times my size and how to shoot between their eyes without blinking.
“Upper mafia circles don’t fear bullets,” he told me. “They fear control. And the woman who doesn’t flinch when she loses it.”
He wasn’t gentle. But he wasn’t cruel either. Just… precise.
At night, when my hands were sore and my body ached, we sat across from each other drinking cheap scotch under a too–expensive chandelier. It was there, somewhere between shadows and confession, that I broke my own silence.
“I was pregnant when I left,” I said, not looking at him. “Twelve weeks. And I terminated it before the escape.”
He didn’t react the way I expected. No lecture. No pity. He just reached over, poured more into my glass, and said quietly, “Then that was your choice. And no one gets to grieve it but you.”
I stared at him. At the way he said that like he’d seen women burn and knew better than to adc more flame.
I downed the drink.
“I don’t know how to feel about that child,” I muttered. “I don’t know how to feel about me anymore.”
He finally looked up. His eyes were sharp, but not cold. “You feel what you feel,” he said. “Anc then you survive it.”
I laughed. Bitter and soft.
“You don’t feel like a stranger anymore,” I whispered. “You feel like what peace would look like if
wasn’t broken.”
He didn’t smile. Just leaned back, exhaled slow, and nodded like he understood every fucking word I didn’t say.
I didn’t dare tell him that for the first time in months, I didn’t wake up from screams in my sleep That his silence was louder than Harvick’s apologies. That I caught myself watching the curve of his jaw more than the gun on his hip. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want him to matter.
But deep inside, he was starting to.
And while I sat there… letting the scotch numb my pain and Jeremiah’s presence sharpen my edges, I didn’t know that somewhere in another city, Harvick was spiraling.
He was probably glued to screens, rewinding CCTV frames, watching the exact angle of my smile like a madman digging for ghosts. I knew him. He was the type to burn kingdoms for control but fall apart when a woman walked away without crying.
Let him spiral.
Let him watch.
Let him finally feel what it’s like to be the one left behind. Because this time, I wasn’t the broken
one.
I was the fire.
The next day, I pulled the trigger without using a single bullet.
I sent the files out at dawn–neatly packaged, deeply encrypted, every piece of Elodie’s dirty little theater exposed. The fake sonogram. The prescription bottles laced with sedatives. The forged medical records signed by a doctor who didn’t exist. I sent it to three major media contacts, five underworld news brokers, and the head of the mafia council’s internal code committee. No
names attached. Just one alias stamped at the bottom:
Whistle // A
By noon, the entire city was buzzing. Phones ringing. Screens flashing. Group chats in chaos. Ferrante allies started backing out from joint deals like rats jumping from a burning ship. The tabloids called it “The Pregnant Lie.” The council called it a violation of honor code. And the people?
They called it exactly what it was: fraud.
sat on the couch in Peter’s war room, TV volume low, watching it all unfold. Elodie had a mic shoved in her face the moment she stepped out of the clinic–reporters clawing to get her reaction. Her mascara was already smudged before they even asked the first question.
And then she snapped.
‘I’m not lying!” she shrieked, voice cracking as she swung her bag at a camera lens. “She’s a witch! Danica cursed me! She won’t let me have peace! That bitch faked her death just to haunt
me!”
She collapsed on the marble steps in full view of ten cameras, her dress torn at the seam and ner lies unraveling with it.
_ara tried to hold her up, but her face was pale as bone. One of the older mafia wives from a ival family pulled away from Lara like she had leprosy. Another whispered in disgust, “So this is he Ferrante heir’s legacy now?”
didn’t blink. I didn’t smile.
just sipped my tea and whispered, “No curse. Just karma.”
Peter chuckled from across the room, feet up on the desk like a bored king watching peasants
<ill each other.
‘Well, damn,” he muttered. “You really served that with style.”
Jeremiah stood against the wall, arms folded, eyes locked on the screen. He didn’t laugh, but the way his jaw ticked told me he was trying not to. He just shook his head slowly and said, “You’re not even done with them yet, are you?”
I turned to him and let my lips curl just slightly.
“I’m not even warm.”
He raised a brow and smirked, then poured himself a drink and one for me.
“You were born Monroe, baptized in fire, and reborn Velenza. I don’t think Hell can keep up with you anymore.”
I took the glass from his hand and clinked it lightly with mine.
“They started this war thinking I’d die like a lamb,” I said. “But I came back with teeth.”
Jeremiah nodded.
“Then let’s see how loud they scream when you bite next.”
And outside that room, the Ferrante empire began to bleed.
