Chapter 3

After delivering the final batch of Voss family accounts, I felt like someone who had finally been pulled from deep water.

For the first time in years, I could breathe.

Talia's flat sits on 70th Street, Manhattan, fitted with south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows that catch sunlight glinting off the Hudson River on bright days.

These past few days have been blissfully unhurried.

We sleep in till we wake naturally each morning, order every dish on the menu at her regular local Mexican diner for lunch, lounge by the windows sipping wine in the afternoon sunshine, and hop from bar to club after dark to soak up Manhattan's nightlife.

Talia swears I've wasted the whole of the last six years living half a life.

I didn't argue.

Because she was right.

Deep into one night, an unlabelled number flashed up on my mobile screen.

I knew that sequence of digits perfectly; only one man alive could reach me via this private encrypted line.

Talia popped her head out from the kitchen, a potato crisp clamped between her teeth, lifting one eyebrow in wordless curiosity.

I set my wine glass down on the coffee table, hesitated a heartbeat, then took the call.

"Have you closed out all the Voss financial books?" Killian's graveled voice rumbled down the line in that familiar lazy drawl of his.

"Every last entry's signed off."

"What about the three port-side trades—"

"All handed over already." I cut him short. "From the chief finance manager's paperwork down to every single key for the underground warehouses, I've passed everything to the representatives you named. I've formally resigned from every post I held."

A heavy silence settled on his end of the phone. He'd clearly never expected me to tie up loose ends so cleanly and completely.

For years on end, I'd been stuck overseeing Voss's dockside shipments, auditing endless clan ledgers, tangled up in never-ending so-called family errands that coiled around me like creeping ivy, trapping me in place with no viable escape.

Not anymore. I was no longer his disposable pawn, running his entire operation only to be publicly discarded whenever Seraphina needed his attention.

"Why didn't you warn me you planned to step down?" His tone dropped into a sharp, frigid register.

"We've had our blood-marriage contract annulled." My voice stayed flat and unemotional. "I have no obligation to handle Voss family affairs anymore."

Killian fell speechless.

The quiet hanging between us was like a blunt knife, slowly scraping at the air spanning our separate sides of the call. I could practically picture him scrambling to work out how to reel me back in, just as he'd done four times before.

"We remarry on the twentieth of next month." He paused briefly. "I'll come collect you myself."

Once, even seeing this proposal coming miles off would've stirred a storm of emotion inside me—giddy hope or aching hurt, some feeling was always bound to surface.

Now my mind and heart sat as calm as still pond water. I leant back against the sofa, watching the endless sprawl of city lights beyond the window; all that glittering bustle belonged to a world I no longer shared.

"Okay."

There was a one-second weighted pause from Killian's side.

"One more thing." He deliberately softened his tone, speaking in a gentle murmur. "The tenth is our blood-oath anniversary, falling on the same day as the annual clan gathering. I'll wait for you at our old haunt once the event finishes; I have something for you."

I froze mid-breath.

An uncanny stroke of bad luck. That was exactly the date I'd booked my travel back to Sicily.

"Elara?"

"Mm, received."

A faint feminine lilt drifted across the receiver then: Seraphina's sugary, simpering whine, pricking my ear like a fine sharp needle.

Next came a small clatter of something being knocked over, followed by the soft, unmistakable sounds of heated kissing.

Killian's voice caught for a split second before he composed himself again. "Well then—"

"I've heard all I need." I cut in and hung up instantly.

Talia leaned round the bedroom door, held my gaze but said nothing.

I tossed the phone onto the coffee table and lifted my wine once more.

I forced my thoughts onto practical logistics: drafting a confidential list to leave with Talia before I depart, sorting two unresolved administrative loose ends back in Sicily, finalising a small stack of outstanding accounts ahead of my flight.

Yet his offhand mention of a prepared present haunted my thoughts, lingering like a stubborn nightmare I couldn't shake off.

I drained the glass in one go and closed my eyes. Talia studied me with a conflicted, troubled stare.

"Do you really..." She hesitated. "Really not care anymore?"

I didn't answer. Because I wasn't entirely sure of the answer myself.

The second the phone's screen faded to black, I spotted the faint, uncontrollable tremor working its way through my own fingertips.