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Chapter 6 - The Decoy

Three days passed.

Grace vanished without a trace after her visit to Giorgio.

No calls. No notes. No blood.

Only a message on Luciano's encrypted burner:

> "If I am the noose, then cut me loose."

– G

Luciano didn't sleep after that.

Didn't eat. Didn't speak.

He just hunted.

Until Simon brought him a body.

A woman.

Burned beyond recognition.

Wearing Grace's necklace.

Shot in the back. Twice.

Luciano collapsed.

Not like a man.

Like a kingdom.

---

But Grace wasn't dead.

She was in Venice.

Hidden under a false identity, living in a crumbling inn above a black market apothecary.

Her goal was simple:

Find her mother's journal. The real one.

The one her father tried to destroy before his death.

Because if there was even a 1% chance that Luciano was involved in her father's murder…

She needed proof before she gave her heart back to a liar.

---

Back in Rome…

The funeral was private.

Luciano stood over the coffin, eyes dead, face blank.

The woman in the box wasn't Grace.

But no one dared tell him that.

Not even Simon, who had already begun searching for the truth behind the decoy.

Because someone wanted Luciano to believe Grace was gone.

Someone who needed him off the board.

And they were getting close.

Too close.

---

In Venice, Grace opened the worn leather book under candlelight.

First page: a photo.

Her mother holding her as a baby.

Luciano in the background… looking directly at the camera.

And on the back of the photo, in her mother's handwriting:

> "The Saint was never meant to love her.

But love doesn't ask for permission."

Grace's tears blurred the ink.

"I hate you for loving me," she whispered.

"But I hate myself more for still loving you back."

---

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