Page 265 of Untamed

Enzo starts again. “She’s a ki?—”

“She’s not just some wide-eyed girl who stumbled into my life,” Ares snaps. “She’s stronger and has more heart than you’ll ever know. And while you and Luciano were busy playing kingmakers, she was the one who made me want to live for the first time in my fucking life.”

The words hit like a punch to the ribs.

“I’m not sacrificing her,” he says, lower now. “I’d rather burn this entire fucking empire to the ground than watch her become another casualty in a game I never asked to play.”

Enzo’s reply is barely audible. “I don’t want to lose you, Ares.”

“You already did,” Ares says. “The second you backed the marriage to Giana, you chose their world over mine.”

Silence.

Then more, words I wasn’t ready to hear, but ones I needed to.

“I’d rather die for her than live with a woman I don’t fucking want.”

Enzo scoffs, but Ares cuts him off with the kind of fury I can feel in my bones.

“You think I don’t know how this ends? That I haven’t run every fucking scenario in my head? I’m not stupid, Enzo, I just don’t see the point in surviving a world without her in it.”

Another pause. “And don’t talk to me about Giana like she’s a solution. She’s a cage dressed in silk and Luciano’s signature on the bars. You want to survive this war? Fine. But I’m not crawling through it just to sit on a throne built on someone else’s blood, holding someone else’s fucking hand.”

Then his voice drops, rough with devotion. “She’s my endgame,” he breathes. “Not a deal. Not a strategy. Her. I’ll protect her with my last fucking breath,” he continues. “Even if that means becoming the very monster I’ve spent my whole life trying to outrun.”

Tears stream freely, hot and silent, my hand still clamped over my mouth to muffle the sound. I fold forward slightly, forehead pressed to the stone, heart split open.

Because he loves me like that. And I… I’m about to leave him. Because if I don’t, if I stay, he’ll die for me. And now it’s not just about Ares. It’s about the tiny secret growing inside me that could change everything, or destroy us both.

Ares has to marry Giana Mancini.

My fingers tighten around the balcony rail. I don’t want to leave him. God, I don’t. But what choice do I have? If staying means this, means him becoming this ruthless, brutal version of himself just to keep me breathing, how do I live with that?

Especially now…I press a hand to my stomach. To the tiny secret I haven’t even told him.

And suddenly, I know what I have to do.

Even if it kills me.

Even if it breaks him. Even if he believes that I abandoned him after vowing I would stay by his side.

I have to disappear, before he loses himself trying to save me.

I close my eyes, chest tight, the wind catching my breath like it’s trying to carry it to him.“I’m not going to let you die for me,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Not when I’d trade every breath in my body just to keep you alive.”

The decision solidifies like stone in my chest, heavy and cold, but unyielding.

I stay out on the balcony, just breathing, staring up at the moon, trying to calm the internal battle between my heart and mind. One is telling me to stay, to trust him. The other is screaming at me to run; run before he comes back to me in a box in pieces.

The glass door slides open behind me, soft but not unnoticed. I don’t turn.

I feel him before I hear him. Ares walks up behind me, slow and quiet, like he already knows I’m slipping. His arms wrap aroundmy waist, firm and grounding. He draws me back against the solid wall of his chest, pressing a kiss to my temple.

For a moment, I let myself melt into it, into him. Into the way he always smells like heat and leather and something darker I’ve never been able to name. But it only makes the war inside me worse. Makes it harder to breathe.

“What are you doing out here, bambina?” he murmurs, “You should be sleeping.”

I close my eyes, swallowing the ache rising in my throat. “How can I sleep knowing tonight might be the last night I have with you?”

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