---- Chapter 20 Giovanni POV: The world became a blur of airports and cheap hotels. My global search was a fool's errand, a bottomless pit | threw my money into. Con artists and opportunistic private eyes took me for everything | had left, feeding me false leads and doctored photos. | became a joke. The disgraced Don chasing a phantom. Women who looked a little like her would approach me in bars, hoping to become the next Mrs. Moretti. | sent them all away with a snarl. There was only one. The money eventually ran out. My family, my parents, tried to help, but | pushed them away. This was my penance. My solitary path. | was found in a squalid apartment in Madrid, having not eaten in days. | had tried to end it. | had failed at that, too. The doctors gave me a grim diagnosis. My heart, they said, was giving out. Broken, they called it, in a moment of unprofessional poetry. My father, a proud, powerful man reduced to a desperate parent, made one last public plea. He bought time on television, his face aged and weary. "Isabella," he begged, "if ---- you have any mercy, please. Come home. He's dying. He's asking for you." But in Portugal, Isabella Rossi didn't watch the news. She was preparing for a new exhibition, her life vibrant and full. She was blissfully unaware that the man whose name she had shed was fading from the world. She sat on her terrace, sipping wine with her friend Elena, the setting sun painting the ocean in hues of gold and rose. She was at peace. She was whole. Elena received a call from her brother, Luca. He had seen the news report from America. He told her everything. Elena walked out to the terrace, her face etched with a sad, gentle concern. "Isabella," she said softly. "There is something you need to know about Giovanni." Isabella looked up from her sketchbook, her eyes calm and clear. She was no longer the woman who flinched at his name. She was a fortress, built on a foundation of her own strength. She listened as Elena told her about his decline, his health, his father's plea. She listened to the story of the man who had become a ghost, a man whose life had become a singular, obsessive search for her. When Elena was finished, Isabella simply nodded. She looked out at the ocean, at the endless horizon. "l used to be Isabella Moretti," she said, her voice quiet but firm. ---- "But that woman died a long time ago."