Serena didn’t leave that night.

Or the next.

The ripped marriage certificate sat on her nightstand like a severed cord… yet she remained, pacing her room, notebook untouched, heart in her throat.

Freedom was meant to feel lighter.
But she felt hollow.

Because she didn’t just walk out of his house…
She walked out of his arms.

And somehow, that felt worse.

Across the mansion, Luciano stood at his private bar, staring down a glass of whiskey he hadn’t touched.

He had given her the one thing no man had ever offered her—a choice.

But now that she was free, he was realizing… he’d never really been free from her.

He was about to go to her.

But the phone rang.

A number he hadn’t seen in years.

He froze.

Picked it up.

And the voice that spoke made his blood run cold.

“You should’ve stayed in the shadows, De Luca. Now she’s in the line of fire.”

The line went dead.

And with it, Luciano’s calm.

Serena was in the library, pen finally moving across paper, when the explosion shattered the silence.

The glass behind her blew inward, shards slicing through air and smoke.

Guards screamed. Alarms blared.

Luciano burst into the room seconds later, a gun in one hand, fury in his eyes.

“Serena!”

She coughed, vision blurred by dust, but her voice still sharp.

“I’m fine—what the hell is happening?”

He didn’t answer. Just grabbed her arm and pulled her close, checking for injuries.

His hands were trembling.

She had never seen him shake.

Not once.

“Luciano,” she whispered, “what is going on?”

He met her eyes—and for the first time, his walls cracked.

“I gave you freedom,” he said, voice hoarse. “But someone wants to punish me for it.”

“Who?”

Luciano’s jaw clenched.

“My brother.”

Later, as she sat in a safe house with blood on her shirt and smoke still in her lungs, Serena opened her notebook again.

She turned past the chapters she’d written in pain, past the ones soaked in confusion.

Then wrote:

“The villain gave her a pen instead of a cage.
And when the world set fire to their pages—
She didn’t run.
She rewrote their ending with him.”

But deep down, she knew:

The ending wasn’t safe anymore.
Because this was no longer fiction.

This was war.