Chapter 266

Giovanni

She thought she could sever me cleanly.

That she could break me simply because she wanted to.

She thought I’d kneel, that I’d shatter, that I’d fade into mist like the rest of them.

She believed that I would fall into her own lies.

But I built empires from blood. I carved my place into the bones of this world, and no woman, no wolf, was going to erase me.

If she had done it once, it was because I was in love with her. It was because I allowed myself to fall for her lies, but not again. Not after I remembered everything that she had done. Not after I made sure to fight back, to teach myself how to fight back mentally, as to stop her from whatever it was that she wanted to do.

I stood at the window of my estate, the one she hadn’t yet burned to the ground. The air was thick with ash and treachery. Below, my remaining men regrouped in silence, shaken, eyes cast downward.

They saw it.

They saw what she did.

We a