Chapter 3

Gianna POV

I dropped my phone and sprinted inside. The doctor was frantically trying to resuscitate her.

Elena had pulled the life support tubes out of her own arms. Crimson blood stained the white sheets.

"No, no, no—Elena, please!"

She fluttered her eyes open. Profound, agonizing love mixed with exhausted pain. "I can't endure it anymore, Gigi. I refuse to be the chain that keeps you enslaved to the mafia. Let me go."

"No!" I choked on my tears. "I forbid you to give up! I will do whatever it takes. I will beg him again!"

"He hung up on you." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I heard. He hung up while you were begging for my life." She smiled, and it shattered me completely. "You are free now, little sister. Be free."

With trembling hands, I dialed Julian's number anyway. I would crawl. I would grovel. I would do anything.

Someone answered, but it wasn't Julian. A dark chuckle—Serena. "Drop to your knees and beg for my forgiveness for humiliating me online. Then maybe I'll tell the Don to wire the money."

In the background, Julian's unmistakable voice: "Let her wait. She needs to learn respect."

The doctor ceased chest compressions. He looked at me with profound sorrow. "I'm sorry, Gianna. She's gone."

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Something inside me had broken so completely that even my voice had abandoned me.

My mind went blank. The phone slipped from my numb fingers. Elena's eyes were closed. She was still.

Then a violent agony ripped through my abdomen—a deep, tearing sensation, as if something vital were being torn from its moorings. A horrifying pool of warm blood bloomed on the linoleum between my legs.

The nurse gasped, catching me as my knees buckled. "Are you carrying a child?!"

Darkness swallowed me whole. The last thing I heard was Serena's voice, still speaking through the fallen phone: "Gianna? Are you there? I said, beg."

When I woke in the clinic's surgical ward, I felt hollowed out, a vast emptiness in my core. The doctor stood at the foot of the bed, his face gray with exhaustion and something worse—fear.

"The miscarriage was complete," he said quietly. "There was nothing we could save."

I turned to the nurse, who stood wringing her hands, terrified. "Remove it," I said, my voice a dry, unrecognizable rasp. "Clear the remains. Pack the tissue in a sealed medical cooler. And do not notify the Don."

"But ma'am—"

I pulled a scalpel from the nearby surgical tray, my grip trembling but resolute. "Do it, or I will. I have no family left."

The nurse hesitated, then nodded. She had watched Elena die under this syndicate's cruelty. She would help me. We both knew what Julian would do if he discovered the lost heir—he would bury the truth, dispose of the evidence, and never let me leave. The child was his property. Even dead.

After the procedure, I rested a weak hand on my empty stomach. There was nothing left to protect. Nothing left to endure for. The last tie binding me to Julian Moretti had bled out on a clinic floor while he sipped wine and rewarded my tormentor.

My phone lit up. Over a dozen missed calls from Julian. The last message read: I've waited five hours. If you don't show up at the compound now, your sister's medical funds will be permanently revoked.

He didn't know. He still didn't know she was dead. He was still using her as leverage.

I didn't reply.

I forced my battered body out of the bed, swallowing heavy painkillers that did little to dull the searing agony. I methodically placed the sealed, biohazardous cooler inside a duffel bag. I signed the unilateral Severance Declaration I had requested from the lawyers days ago—a formal renunciation of my ties to the family. I folded the papers and placed them at the bottom of the cooler, beneath the tragedy he had caused.

Let him open it. Let him see what his loyalty to Serena had purchased.

Then I walked out into the night, a ghost leaving her own grave behind. The city lights blurred past me. Every step sent fire through my abdomen. But I did not stop. I would never stop again.

Within the hour, I purchased a one-way bus ticket out of the syndicate's territory. I left my phone in a dumpster three blocks from the station. **The last screen showed Julian's final message: You are testing my patience, wife. **

No. I was ending his game entirely.