Chapter 3

Six minutes left.

Bianca pulled out her phone and dialed the estate steward. She paced the sidewalk, agitated, the enormous diamond on her finger flashing all the while.

"Listen to me," she snapped into the receiver. "When we get there, I want you to play the video Luca shot on the big screen. The one where the Godfather proposes to me."

Clara came out of the flower shop and gasped. "Bianca, you can't do that! That's cruel."

"It'll be hilarious," Bianca shot back, cupping a hand over the mouthpiece. "Anya's probably up there crying her eyes out right this second. We'll show her the video of Lorenzo proposing to me, and once she's completely broken, then we wheel out the roses. With contrast like that, the surprise will taste even sweeter."

Lorenzo heard every word. He rose to his feet, and his expression darkened into something ominous and terrible. The easygoing, accommodating fiancé vanished in an instant; in his place stood the feared Godfather of the Syndicate.

He strode over and snatched the phone out of Bianca's hand.

"Cancel that order," Lorenzo growled into the phone, his voice carrying a killing chill. "If that video appears on my screen, I will put a bullet in your head myself."

He cut the call and shoved the phone hard back into Bianca's arms.

Bianca flinched, tears of phony grievance welling up. "Lorenzo, I was only trying to liven things up..."

My mother rushed over at once and sheltered Bianca with her body. "Lorenzo, there's no need for such a temper. She's still just a child; it was a harmless joke. You know Anya will forgive her."

In all the years I had been with Lorenzo, this was the first time he had ever refused to yield to my mother.

"That was not a joke," Lorenzo said coldly, closing in on my mother with crushing, suffocating pressure. "This is my proposal. Today, no one embarrasses my future wife. Do you understand me?"

My mother swallowed hard and nodded quickly, utterly cowed.

I watched him stand up for me. Watched him finally draw his line in the sand and defend my dignity—this thing I had begged him for, a thousand times, while I was alive.

What a beautiful, sweeping gesture. And how utterly, hopelessly useless.

The phone in Lorenzo's pocket buzzed. He pulled it out and answered fast. It was the steward, calling back.

"Boss, something's wrong!" The man's panicked, breathless voice burst from the speaker. "I'd barely finished with the screen in the front courtyard when I ran straight back to the crane to lower the young lady as promised—but she was gone! There was nothing left in the air but the frayed end of the cable, swinging from the hook. The chair, the girl... everything was gone!"

Lorenzo's brow furrowed; confusion flooded his deep-set eyes. "What do you mean, gone? Where is Anya?"

"I searched the entire clearing, Boss. Not a soul in sight."

Bianca rolled her eyes theatrically and folded her arms.

"I knew it," she huffed. "Anya's throwing another fit. She must have cut the rope herself and dragged the chair into the brush to hide it—just to wreck the mood today."

"How petty," my father sneered, shaking his head in disgust. "She has no love for this family at all! On the most important day of her life, she carries on like a spoiled brat."

"She's deliberately humiliating us in front of the Godfather," my mother agreed, red-faced with fury. "When I find her, I'll lock her in her room for a week to reflect."

I was standing right beside her, screaming at her, hysterical. I told her I was dead. I told her I was lying in the weeds, bleeding out my last breath. And she just kept rattling on about my terrible attitude.

"Wait," Clara interjected, her voice trembling slightly. "She was hanging nearly five meters up. How could she cut the rope, land safely, and not break her legs? And how could she possibly move that heavy industrial equipment alone?"

Everyone froze at once, swallowed by a stunned silence.

"She must have found a way," Bianca shrilled, glaring venomously at Clara. "Anya's always been calculating. She's doing this on purpose—getting back at us for leaving her up there."

Lorenzo ignored all of them. He opened his messages and typed at furious speed, thumbs hammering the screen. Then he dialed my number. The phone rang and rang, shrill in his ear, until it finally clicked over to voicemail.

"Everyone. In the cars. Now." Lorenzo's command brooked no argument.

Two minutes left.

I drifted weightlessly through the window of Lorenzo's speeding SUV and settled into the passenger seat beside him. He was driving like a madman, slicing violently through gridlocked traffic.

In the back seat, my parents and Luca were still chattering.

"I can't believe she'd pull a stunt like this," my mother sighed heavily. "The ingratitude of that girl."

"Let her throw her tantrum," Luca sneered. "The second she sees that rock on her finger, she'll come crawling right back."

Lorenzo's dark eyes were locked on the road, both hands strangling the steering wheel, knuckles bone-white. Every few seconds he threw a restless glance at the phone in the cup holder, waiting desperately for a message that would never arrive.

I reached out my weightless fingers and gently traced the hard line of his jaw. I knew, with perfect clarity, that in less than two minutes, the entire world he had built for himself would shatter into billions of pieces that could never be put back together.