Chapter 30
Gianni
Mikayla was gone.
Not gone in the soft, meaningless way people said it when they meant distance. Not taking space. Not cooling off. She was gone in the only way that mattered—physically. Out of the house. Through the gates. Beyond my reach.
I stood at the window and watched her walk away.
She didn’t hesitate or slow down. And she never once looked back.
That was the part that lodged somewhere deep and brutal beneath my ribs, sharp enough to stay there.
A small backpack hung off one shoulder. That was all she took. No suitcase. No coat from the carefully chosen clothes I’d bought for her. No money. I’d tried—more than once—to push cash into her hand. She’d refused it with the same flat finality she’d used on everything else.
No car. No driver. No protection.
Nothing.
She stripped herself down to the bare minimum like she was cutting herself free. Like taking anything from me would’ve meant leaving a piece of herself behind.
Dunn stood a few feet back, arms crossed, his jaw set tight. He’d been quiet since dawn, which meant he’d been thinking too much. I didn’t turn when he spoke.
“You’re really going to let her walk away,” he said.
I let out a slow breath through my nose that was barely controlled.
“Don’t. She made her choice.”
He didn’t argue right away. Just watched her disappear past the bend in the drive.
“Not much of a choice, if you ask me,” he said.
The gates slid open with a low, mechanical hum.
Mikayla walked through them without slowing. Without looking back. No pause. No flicker of doubt. She didn’t wait for me to call her name or change my mind.
She was already gone before the steel sealed shut behind her.
The second she disappeared from view, something in me broke clean in half.
I turned from the window so fast Dunn took a step back.
“Get out,” I said.
My voice didn’t rise. He read it anyway and got out of my way. Smart man. He left without a word, the door closing softly behind him.
The quiet that followed was unbearable.
I paced the length of my office, back and forth, back and forth, blood roaring in my ears like a storm I couldn’t outrun.
My hands kept clenching, opening, clenching again—looking for something to destroy.
Every step felt wrong. Too forced. Too jagged.
Like the house itself was daring me to keep my composure.
It didn’t feel like mine anymore.
The walls were too clean. The air too still. Everything she’d touched was gone, and yet the space she’d left behind was everywhere. The house felt hollow without her—empty in a way that scraped at the inside of my skull.
The lamp went first.
I ripped it off the desk and hurled it at the wall.
It shattered on impact, glass bursting outward in a sharp, vicious crash that hit the wall with a dull thump.
It wasn’t enough. I swept my arm across the desk, sending papers and folders flying, the cigar box smashing against the floor.
The chair followed. Then the monitor. Then the solid wood paperweight—some meaningless gift from an associate whose name I couldn’t remember and no longer cared to.
I overturned the desk with a roar that tore out of me, raw and uncontrolled. The crash thundered through the room, through the house, through every careful structure I’d built my life around. The sound of order collapsing. Of control slipping.
My chest burned. My vision tunneled.
I punched the wall.
Once. Twice.
Pain flared hot and immediate, skin splitting, knuckles screaming—but it did nothing to dull the fury tearing through me. I hit it again, harder this time, because pain was easier than the truth.
She was gone.
And for the first time in years, I couldn’t fix something.
I stood there, breathing hard, blood dripping down my hand, rage curling in my chest like something feral and starving—because I knew exactly what this was.
It wasn’t anger. It was fear. And it was going to burn the world down before it let me sit with it.
This was Archie’s doing.
Not with a gun. Not with a threat whispered in the dark. He hadn’t needed to be here at all. He just existed—long enough, close enough—to destroy everything he touched. He’d reached into my house without crossing the threshold and taken the thing that mattered most.
Quietly. Softly. Without lifting a finger.
I dragged a hand through my hair and paced the destruction, boots crunching over glass and splintered wood. My chest heaved, breath coming hard and uneven, fury tearing through me in violent waves. For a moment—just a moment—I let it consume me.
Then my mind shifted.
Because men like me don’t get to fall apart.
She was out there. Alone. Exposed. And Archie would feel it soon enough. Information always found its way to him—leaked through whispers, favors, debts. He didn’t need confirmation. He’d smell her freedom like blood in the water and move on instinct.
I pressed my palms flat against what remained of the desk and bowed my head, teeth clenched hard enough to ache.
I had let her go.
Not because I didn’t want her.
Because I wouldn’t cage her just to keep her.
That choice didn’t absolve me of responsibility. It didn’t end my role in this. It just changed the rules.
I straightened, the rage inside me sharpening—reforging itself into something colder. Controlled. Lethal.
Dunn was waiting in the hall when I stepped out, his posture already braced, eyes sharp. He took one look at my face and knew.
“Get the men ready,” I said. “We’re heading back to the city.”
“Full rotation?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
He nodded once and turned, already barking orders into his phone, the machine moving before the words were even finished.
I paused at the edge of the hall and looked back toward the front of the house—toward the gates, the road beyond them, the empty space she’d carved by walking away without looking back.
“You think you won,” I murmured, Archie’s name burning on my tongue. “You have no idea what you just started.”
Then I turned away.
The war wasn’t over.
It had just stopped pretending it wasn’t real.