Chapter 249

Giovanni

The silence was suffocating.

Not the peaceful kind that settles after battle. No, this silence had teeth. It bit into my skin and gnawed at my bones with every breath I took. The kind that told me something had shifted, permanently, and I was too late to stop it.

I stood in the center of what was once my sanctuary. The long corridor of my estate was cracked at its spine. Ash coated the marble. The chandeliers no longer flickered with power or grandeur. It was dim, like the light itself was retreating from me. Or perhaps from her.

Tatiana.

The woman who thought herself to be invincible. The woman who believed that she could own everything and that she was the strongest of them all. Little did she know, she was wrong.

I felt her before I saw her. She’d been quiet since Delilah vanished from her grasp, too quiet. But even now, when she entered the hall, dressed in that same ethereal gown that once made men fall to their knees, I saw s