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“Yes,” she says, voice shaking. “If you make me.”

“Funny,” I murmur, “I thought you already tried.”

Her hands tremble. Just enough for me to see it. Not enough for her to admit it.

“You think this is some game?” she spits. “You watched me build an army just so you could burn it down.”

“I never wanted to win,” I snap, suddenly angry. “I wanted you back.”

“By breaking me? By turning everything I built into a trap?”

I move closer. Her finger twitches on the trigger. One wrong word and she ends me.

“You walked into my house with a loaded gun, Aria. What did you expect me to do? Serve you tea?”

“I expected you to be a man,” she says, her voice cutting like glass. “Not a coward hiding behind illusions. You needed me to fall to feel powerful. That’s not love, Marco. That’s fear.”

The words hit harder than any bullet. For a moment, I don’t speak.

She blinks fast, trying to clear the tears. But they fall anyway.

“I came here ready to die,” she whispers. “Not because I wanted to kill you. But because I couldn’t live in a world where you still owned me.”

Owned.

God, that word.

I shift my weight.

Her eyes flicker.

And that’s all I need.

I knock the gun aside and grab her wrist in one fluid movement. She gasps, twisting against me as the weapon skitters across the floor. I pin her to the wall, chest heaving, my own breathing just as ragged.

In the silence that follows, I lift the gun she dropped. Point it at her.

Her eyes don’t flinch. She stares straight into the barrel.

“Do it,” she whispers.

God help me.

I lower the gun.

“No,” I say. “If you love someone, you have to know when to let them go.”

Her lip trembles.

“You’re letting me go?”

“Go, Aria. Take your people and leave. The east gate will be open. No one will follow.”

She blinks, stunned.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to destroy you. And I won’t become my father just to keep you.”