Page 205 of This Life of Mine

He whips his head my way.

“She died of heartbreak,” I continue. “The day you stopped coming. The day you left us exposed.”

My voice tightens despite myself. “You didn’t just leave her alone—you left herdefenseless. You think enemies killed her? No.You did. Slowly. Every year you chose distance over responsibility.”

The room goes silent.

“Our home was taken from us,” I say. “The money stopped coming, and everything collapsed. She worked herself into the ground. She lost the light you claim to have loved.”

My father opens his mouth, but I don’t let him interrupt.

“She waited for you,” I say. “She believed in you. And when you disappeared, she didn’t wrath. She didn’t retaliate. She withered.”

I feel Lina’s fingers curl tighter into my sleeve.

“You can’t reshape that,” I finish. “You can’t turn regret into redemption and call it love.”

My father looks…old. No longer the untouchable man I once remembered. Just a man who made a choice and lived too long with the consequences.

“I won’t go back,” I tell him evenly. “Not for you. Not for the name. That life cost me everything.”

I glance down at Lina—steady, strong,here.

“I already chose my family.”

That’s when I catch sight of it. It’s almost imperceptible—the iron in him giving way. His shoulders sink. The hard line of his voice dissolves into something quieter. In that moment, my father looks fragile.

“Alessandro,” he says softly—in Italian, the way he used to when it mattered.“Sto morendo, figlio mio.”

Chapter sixty-three

Alex

The air in my lungs stalls to breathe and my heartbeat pounds on overdrive, the beat echoing in my ears.

“I’m dying,” he says. “Cancer. Fast and very aggressive. It’s already everywhere.”

He exhales, slow and controlled. “A fitting end, perhaps. A long one. Painful.”

Shivers run up my spine.

Then his gaze shifts—not to me, but toward the door. Toward the men waiting outside. His voice lowers, urgency threading through it now.

“Nico is in danger,” he says. “Not from rivals. From inside.”

My jaw tightens.

He hesitates again, then adds, quieter, “There was an attempt on Nico’s life.”

For one suspended heartbeat, the world narrows to those six words.

“An extraction,” he clarifies. “Clean. Professional. Someone tried to take him off the board.”

My hands curl into fists. “And?”

“He survived,” my father says. “Barely. He’s home recovering. He would be here otherwise.”

I release a breath through my nose. “He wouldn’t come for me.”