My Ex-Fiancé Severed My Finger to Please His Lover Chapter 09
Epilogue
Marco never appeared before me again.
The De Luca family erased his name from every formal dinner invitation, every internal meeting
list, and every business ledger.
To the outside world, he was still alive.
To the family, he had already been buried.
Sofia Ricci vanished from New York’s social circles overnight.
Some said she was sent to a private facility somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Some said she was handed over to the people she had once used and humiliated.
Some said she had gone mad, still calling herself Mrs. De Luca to anyone who would listen.
I never asked.
The world I lived in had never been clean.
But I had learned long ago that kindness without claws was only an invitation for others to tear you
apart.
That afternoon, our daughter climbed onto Salvatore’s lap with a picture book in her arms.
“Daddy, why does the princess always wait for the prince to save her?”
Salvatore looked at me.
I looked back at him.
Then he lowered his head and said seriously, “Because that princess hasn’t met your mother.”
Our daughter blinked.
“So Mommy saves herself?”
“Yes,” I said, walking over and tapping her little nose. “And sometimes Mommy saves the prince
too.”
Salvatore coughed lightly.
“Sometimes the prince also tries very hard.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Does he?”
Our daughter giggled and hugged both of us at once.
The golden retriever barked from beside the couch.
For a moment, the sunlight, laughter, and warmth in the room felt almost unreal.
I had once believed my life ended the night Marco died.
Then I learned that some deaths were mercy.
Some betrayals were liberation.
And some monsters, if you chose carefully, would stand in front of you and bare their teeth at the
world.
That night, after our daughter fell asleep, I stood alone on the balcony.
New York glittered below like a field of cold stars.
Salvatore came up behind me and draped his coat over my shoulders.
“Cold?”
“No.”
He stood beside me, silent for a long moment.
Then he said, “If you ever want to leave, I won’t stop you.”
I turned to look at him.
He was not joking.
The man who controlled half of New York’s underworld was standing in front of me, offering me
the one thing no one else had ever truly given me.
Choice.
I smiled.
“Salvatore, if I wanted to leave, you couldn’t stop me.”
He stared at me for a second, then laughed softly.
“That’s true.”
I leaned against his shoulder.
Below us, the city was bright and dangerous.
Behind us, our daughter slept peacefully in a room guarded by the most loyal men in the De Luca
family.
And beside me stood the man who had once calculated everything.
Everything except love.
“Elena,” he said quietly.
“Hm?”
“Thank you for staying.”
I closed my eyes and let the night wind pass over my face.
“I stayed because I wanted to.”
Not because I was someone’s abandoned fiancee.
Not because I was someone’s substitute.
Not because I had nowhere else to go.
I stayed because in this darkness, I had chosen my own home.
And this time, no one would ever take it from me.
