Chapter 40
Mikayla
The ride down the mountain felt unreal.
Cold air pressed against the windows, fog clinging to the glass, the road twisting and dipping beneath us like it was trying to shake us loose. Dunn drove in silence, steady and focused, while I sat in the back seat with my hands folded in my lap, staring at my reflection in the dark.
He hadn’t come.
That was the part that wouldn’t settle.
Gianni had sent Dunn. He’d sent men. He’d sent fire and guns and planning and blood—but not himself.
And I told myself it shouldn’t matter. I was the one who’d walked away.
I was the one who’d told him I never wanted to see him again.
I didn’t get to be hurt by the fact that he hadn’t been the one to pull me out of that place.
And yet…
There was something about being rescued by everyone except the man you loved that left a bruise you couldn’t point to.
“Where do you want to go?” Dunn asked quietly, eyes flicking to me in the mirror.
The question hit harder than any of Archie’s threats ever had.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
I hadn’t thought past survival. Past getting out. I hadn’t imagined a world where Archie was gone, where his shadow wasn’t waiting around the next corner. And now that he was, suddenly there was all this empty space where fear used to be.
George was gone. Archie was no longer a threat.
I had no family left.
The only thing that still belonged to me was a house that clung to the past.
“Siena,” I said finally. “Take me to my family home, please.”
Dunn nodded once, sharp and final, and turned us toward the city.
When we arrived, he didn’t let me get out right away. His men checked the street. The doors. The windows. Everything. Only when he was satisfied did he step back and open my door.
“It’s clear,” he said.
I climbed out slowly, staring up at the familiar stone facade like it might vanish if I looked at it too long.
Dunn held out a phone.
It was small. Black. Unassuming. The kind of thing that could hold a whole life inside it if you let it.
“I got you a new phone,” he said. “My number’s already in there.”
I took it, my fingers stiff and cold against the smooth glass, like I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he replied. “But I’ll sleep better knowing you can call me if you need anything.”
Something in his voice made my throat tighten.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
He nodded, then glanced down the street. “We’ve relocated to Siena,” he added. “So if you need anything—anything at all—we’re close.”
I nodded. I didn’t trust my mouth not to do something stupid if I opened it.
There was a pause. One of those heavy ones that meant something was coming.
“I also…” Dunn hesitated, just for a fraction of a second. “I programmed Gianni’s number in there, too. In case you ever need to reach him.”
The words landed soft and brutal all at once.
I looked down at the phone in my hand like it had suddenly become something precious and dangerous all at the same time.
Gianni’s number.
Right there.
So close I could touch it.
A stupid, painful warmth bloomed behind my ribs, followed quickly by something sharper. Guilt. Doubt. That awful little voice that loved to whisper that I didn’t deserve him anymore.
I was the one who had walked away.
I was the one who had told him I never wanted to see him again.
He had tried to keep me. To protect me. And I had chosen to leave.
How fair was it to hold that line now and still want him?
How fair was it to call him after breaking him?
Not fair at all, I thought. Not even a little.
Dunn watched my face like he could see the war playing out behind my eyes.
“You don’t have to use it,” he said gently. “It’s just… there.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He didn’t push. That was his gift. He gave people space even when everything in him wanted to close ranks around them.
Dunn walked back to his car. The engines started. One by one, the vehicles pulled away in a smooth, silent line, like a shadow slipping out of the street.
I stood there alone on the sidewalk, the phone heavy in my hand.
Gianni’s number sat inside it like a quiet dare.
I turned back to the house.
To my house.
To my empty, fragile, half-rebuilt life.
And for the first time since everything had burned down, I felt the shape of a future pressing softly against me—uncertain, terrifying, and just a little bit hopeful.
The first thing I learned about freedom was that it was loud.
Not in the way danger was loud. This was a quieter kind of noise. The tick of the clock. The hum of the refrigerator. The way my own footsteps echoed through a house that suddenly felt too big for one person.
Back to life, back to reality.
That was what I kept telling myself as I walked through the front door of my family home in Siena, dropped my bag on the floor, and stood there staring at nothing. No guards. No cameras. No velvet cages parading as bedrooms. Just old tiles, faded wallpaper, and the faint smell of lemon cleaner.
It felt wrong to be safe.
I didn’t sleep much the first night. Or the second.
I lay in my old bed listening to every sound the house made, heart leaping at the scrape of a branch against a window, the groan of the pipes, the whisper of wind through the shutters.
Trauma does not respect geography. It just follows you home and waits.
So I stayed busy.
I cleaned.
I stripped the house of everything that reminded me of before and after, until all that was left was now.
I filled trash bags with old clothes, broken dishes, half-forgotten decorations.
I ripped down curtains Archie had once touched.
I scrubbed fingerprints off doorframes that only existed in my head.
I left one thing.
A framed photograph, tucked into the corner of the living room shelf.
Me, my mother, and George, taken when I was fifteen.
We were standing in the garden, all three of us squinting into the sun, Mum laughing mid-sentence, George with one arm around her waist, me leaning into them like the world couldn’t touch us.
I told myself he hadn’t always been bad.
That losing her had cracked something in him and grief had made him strange. I convinced myself that whatever he became later was not the man in that photograph, because it was easier than hating a ghost.
Dear Diary,
I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe because if I don’t put it somewhere, it will keep rattling around inside me, demanding to be felt over and over again. Maybe because George is dead, and the story of him shouldn’t die without the truth attached to it.
George Gregory wasn’t my father. But he wasn’t nothing either.
My mother married him when I was fifteen. Eight months later, she was gone—just like that. Cancer doesn’t negotiate. It just takes. And when it did, George was still standing in the doorway of our house, holding a face I couldn’t quite read.
He didn’t throw me out.
That sounds like a low bar—and it is—but at the time, it felt like mercy.
I was a grieving teenager with no other family and a house full of echoes.
George stayed. He took my mother’s last name, which I thought was romantic back then.
I told myself it meant commitment. That he wanted to be a family.
What it really meant was convenience.
George liked being needed. He liked being seen as generous, as long as generosity didn’t cost him anything he wasn’t already willing to lose. He taught me early how to take up less space. How to be useful. How to be grateful for the scraps he threw me.
I cooked. I cleaned. I kept the house running while he gambled away nights and money and promises. I had a stepfather who smiled while he took everything and told me it was for my own good.
I loved him anyway.
Not the way daughters are supposed to love their fathers, but in the way abandoned children cling to anyone who doesn’t leave. I kept thinking if I could just be good enough—quiet enough, helpful enough—maybe he’d stop making such terrible choices. Maybe I could save us both.
But I couldn’t.
By the time Archie Popovich entered our lives, George was already drowning. Archie didn’t threaten me. He never had to. He put a metaphorical gun to George’s head and let me do the math.
Marry him, and the debt disappears.
Don’t, and George dies.
It wasn’t a difficult choice. I told myself I was sacrificing something small for something bigger.
That marriage was survivable. That I could endure anything if it meant keeping the only family I had left alive.
I told myself love meant sacrifice, because that’s what I’d been taught my entire life.
What I didn’t realize was that George had already decided my worth long before Archie ever looked my way.
I didn’t want to humiliate Archie. I didn’t want to make a statement or start a war. I just wanted to live. I wanted to breathe without fear sitting on my chest. I wanted a future that didn’t feel like a slow execution.
And now George is dead.
I feel relieved.
That truth is ugly and sharp and impossible to dress up, but it’s real. His death feels like the end of a long, quiet hostage situation. And the fact that I can feel that relief at all makes me feel like a terrible person.
But I also feel sad.
Because once—just once—I thought he might choose me over himself. I thought he might stop. I thought love would be enough.
It never was.
George didn’t trap me because he hated me. He trapped me because he loved himself more. And I let him, because I didn’t know how not to.
I don’t know what happens now. I don’t know who I am without the weight of his expectations or the fear of his debts. I only know that running didn’t make me weak. It kept me honest.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to understand that survival isn’t betrayal—even when it costs you someone you once loved.