---- Chapter 16 Giovanni POV: The moment | was in the elevator, | made a single call to my head of security. "Clear out the penthouse," | ordered. "Everything. The woman, her belongings. She's to be given a severance check and an escort out of the state. | never want to see her face or hear her name again." | went back to my empty house, the silence no longer screaming at me, but pressing in with a heavy, suffocating weight. An hour later, my security chief called back. "It's done, Don Moretti. The asset has been neutralized." | felt nothing. No satisfaction. No relief. Getting rid of Sofia was like removing a splinter. It stopped the immediate, sharp pain, but it didn't heal the gaping wound underneath. The only thing that mattered was finding Isabella. | retreated into myself, into the hollow shell of my life. | didn't go to the office. | didn't take calls. | sat in the dark, scrolling through the ghost of her social media, memorizing the face of the woman | had destroyed. | realized how much | had depended on her, not just as a hostess or a beautiful accessory, but as the moral compass of my life. She was the one who remembered birthdays, who ---- sent condolences, who performed the small acts of kindness that gave my brutal world a thin veneer of humanity. Without her, | was just a monster in a nice suit. A new plan began to form in my mind, born of pure desperation. If | couldn't find her in the shadows, | would drag my shame into the light. | would make a spectacle so large, so public, that she couldn't possibly ignore it. | called my PR team, the best fixers money could buy. "| need to go on television," | told them. "A national news network. A sit-down interview. No questions off-limits." They were shocked, but they were professionals. "What's the narrative, Mr. Moretti?" "The narrative is repentance," | said, the word tasting strange and foreign. "The narrative is a man who lost everything, and deserves it. The narrative is a public apology to my wife." It was the ultimate gamble. A Don does not show weakness. A Moretti does not air his dirty laundry. | was about to violate every code | had ever lived by. But the old rules no longer applied. | was a king without a kingdom, and | would do anything, suffer any humiliation, to get my queen back.