I stilled my hand and finally looked up at him. The corner of my lips curved—not quite a smile, but something close enough to unsettle.
"I will be there."
For a brief moment, he clearly froze. Whatever he had expected—protest, tears, the quiet compliance of a woman who knew her place—this was not it.
"One hour," he said at last, recovering. Then, as if the words were an afterthought: "Don't make mistakes."
I inclined my head. "You go ahead."
"We go together." It was not a request.
I tilted my head, letting silence stretch between us like wire pulled taut. The rain had begun to tap against the windows, soft and insistent.
"I said I will arrive."
He watched me for a long moment, dark eyes searching for something—defiance, perhaps, or the cracks in my composure that would give him purchase. Finding neither, he turned and left.
The moment the door closed, I slipped the blade into my bag.
The leather satchel had been waiting by the door for three days now. There was nothing extra inside—I had made certain of that. An old pendant that had belonged to my birth mother, its silver tarnished with age. A diary worn soft at the edges, filled with words I had never shown another soul. And the short blade that had been my companion since I first understood what it meant to be truly alone in a house full of people.
Nothing more.
I thought of the meeting not long ago—the one that had changed everything.
The memory surfaced unbidden: a warehouse near the old fishing quarter, the air thick with the smell of rope and sea-rot. Jeris 'The Eraser' Bianchi had spread a nautical map across a battered wooden table, his scarred fingers tracing a route that wound through waters most sailors refused to name.
"Once you leave these territories," he had said, his voice low and certain, "you'll be beyond anyone's reach. Name, identity, records—all of it will be cut clean. The Ferryman owes a debt to Hector 'The Gray.' He'll see you through."
I had not hesitated then.
What followed was only confirmation of what I already knew: that there was no place for me in this world of blood oaths and arranged alliances. Not as Elena Ashford—the overlooked daughter, the inconvenient bride, the shadow that Silvia had so effortlessly eclipsed.
But perhaps, in the Land of No Return, I could become someone else entirely.
When I arrived at the Corleone estate, the sit-down had already begun.