The city was a blur beneath her as Ana stood in the suite of the hotel she'd fled to—high above the streets, but still not far enough from the world she'd just walked away from.
The Moretti penthouse had felt like a fortress. A palace. A cage.
Here, in the silence of her own choosing, everything felt fragile again.
And real.
Ana stared at her reflection in the mirror. She still wore the black obsidian ring Hayden had given her. It glinted coldly on her finger—a symbol of power, yes, but also of a war she had no longer asked to fight.
She should take it off.
She couldn't.
Not yet.
---
Meanwhile, across the city, Hayden Moretti stood at the edge of the rooftop helipad, the Rome skyline stretching beneath him in a thousand flickering lights.
But none of it mattered.
Not without her.
He hadn't touched a drink. Hadn't trained. Hadn't spoken more than a handful of words to anyone in twenty-four hours.
Every second without her felt like a vein cut open.
He had tried to call.
No answer.
He had tried to track her.
Her burner phone was off. Her location, hidden. Her guards—his guards—loyal to her now.
And that was the cruelest part.
He'd given her power. And she'd used it to vanish.
Hayden clenched his jaw, the wind biting against his skin.
He wanted to rage. To destroy. To hunt.
But he didn't.
Because this wasn't about power.
It was about penance.
---
Back at the hotel, Ana received a delivery.
No name. No note.
Just a velvet box.
Inside: a necklace.
A delicate gold chain with a black diamond pendant. Familiar. Too familiar.
Her mother's.
She remembered it from her childhood—her mother wore it every birthday, every family photo. It had vanished after the fire.
Ana stared at the stone, heart clenching.
How had Hayden found this?
And more importantly… why had he returned it now?
Was it guilt?
Manipulation?
Love?
She didn't know.
But she put it on anyway.
---
Hayden sat in his study, alone, the lights dimmed low.
In his hands was a letter.
Unsent.
Unfinished.
Ana—
I have no right to ask for forgiveness. But I will say this once, because it's the only truth I haven't weaponized:
I never meant to love you.
But I do.
He stopped writing.
What was the point?
She was gone.
And this was what he'd always feared: not the death of power, but the absence of her.
The one thing he couldn't control.
The one thing that controlled him.
---
Ana visited her father's old townhouse the next morning.
It had been untouched for years. Dust thick on the floors. Shadows clinging to the corners. A single picture remained on the mantle—a family portrait.
Her. Younger. Happy.
Her mother, smiling like she wasn't living in a cage.
And her father, arms around both of them, a strange softness in his eyes she hadn't remembered until now.
The USB lay heavy in her pocket.
> "It wasn't me," he'd said in the video.
> "It was Enzo Moretti."
Could it be true?
Had she turned her life into a revenge plot based on a lie?
Or was this just one more manipulation, one more game between kings?
She didn't know.
But she needed to.
---
That night, as the city dimmed and the streetlamps flickered on, Ana stood at the crossroads of her identity.
She was no longer just Ana Nicholas.
She was Ana Vega.
Ana Moretti.
A daughter.
A lover.
A queen with blood on her hands.
And now… she had to decide if she'd rule beside a man like Hayden—or burn his world to the ground from the inside.
Her phone buzzed.
One message.
From Hayden: I don't deserve you. But I'll wait. Even if it kills me.
She stared at the screen for a long, quiet moment.
Then turned it off.
Because she wasn't ready to answer.
Not yet.