Chapter 2

Ava POV:

The next morning, the smell of pancakes fills the apartment. His favorite. Buttermilk with chocolate chips. I place the plate in front of him, my smile as fake as his amnesia. It feels brittle, like a piece of glass about to shatter.

"I thought maybe this would remind you of something," I say, my voice a sugary poison.

He just grunts, his eyes on his phone as he shovels the food into his mouth. The pain in my chest is a dull, constant ache, a fist squeezing my heart. I push it down, burying it under layers of ice.

As soon as the door closes behind him, the smile drops from my face. I'm on the phone with Maya.

"You were right," I say. No preamble. The words are flat, dead.

There's a pause, then a string of Spanish curses from her end that I know are reserved for only the most heinous of betrayals. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm leaving," I say, the words feeling solid and real for the first time. "But I need to do it right. I need to disappear. He's the Don-in-waiting, Maya. If he thinks I've just run, he'll hunt me down. A Vendetta for embarrassing him. It has to look like I just... vanished."

Vendetta. Revenge. It wasn't just a word to us; it was a sacred, blood-soaked promise. An eye for an eye, a life for a life, honor restored through violence. A Don who has been publicly shamed has no choice but to declare one. I had no intention of being on the receiving end of it.

"Identity bleaching," Maya says, her voice all business now. "It's complicated but not impossible. He has eyes everywhere. We need a new name. A new life."

I look out the penthouse window at the sprawling city below. A concrete cage. "Olivia. Olivia Carter."

That afternoon, I open a new bank account under my own name, transferring the small amount of personal savings I have. I start taking on freelance graphic design work for cash, small jobs paid anonymously through online platforms. Each dollar that trickles in feels like a brick in the foundation of my escape.

Portland, Oregon. The name came to me in a dream. A city known for rain and roses, three thousand miles from the reach of the Reed family's network. A neutral territory. My anonymous destination.

That evening, I pack up every trace of our seven years together. Photos, letters, the stupid stuffed bear he won for me at a carnival. I seal the boxes and shove them into the back of my closet. It feels like burying a body. My body. I am cutting the cord, piece by painful piece.

A week later, I'm waiting for Maya at our usual coffee shop when the bell on the door chimes. My head snaps up.

Ethan walks in. My breath catches.

He's not alone. Chloe Vance is clinging to his arm, laughing up at him, her lips still swollen from his kisses. They are a spectacle. A public fuck-you to our engagement, to his family's honor. He was parading an Associate, a disposable piece of arm candy whose only value was her temporary usefulness, while his fiancée-the key to a political alliance that would secure his family's power for a generation-sat twenty feet away. It wasn't just disrespect. It was a public declaration that the rules, the very structure of our world, didn't apply to him.

Ethan's eyes find mine across the room. For a split second, I see a flicker of something-guilt? annoyance?-before his face settles back into a mask of polite confusion. He gives me a small, awkward wave, as if I'm a distant acquaintance.

Chloe, however, is not so subtle. Her eyes gleam with triumph as she deliberately detaches herself from Ethan and walks toward my table, her hips swaying.

"Ava, right?" she says, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. "Ethan's told me so much about... well, about how difficult this must be for you. I just wanted to say, if there's anything I can do to help support him through this, you just let me know."

The provocation is so blatant it's almost pathetic. She wants a reaction. She wants tears, a scene. She wants to solidify her position as the new woman in his life.

I look up at her, my face a perfect blank. I don't offer a smile. I don't offer anything.

"That won't be necessary," I say, my voice flat and cold as a morgue slab.

She blinks, taken aback by my lack of emotion. She was expecting a Caged Canary. She got something else entirely.

I watch them leave, his arm now wrapped possessively around her waist. The sight no longer causes me pain. It's just fuel. My resolve hardens into steel.

I'm not Ava Miller anymore, the Don's dutiful fiancée. I am Olivia Carter.

My only goal is escape.