“Bleeding hearts don’t heal, they survive.” ??

The pain hit her like a freight train. 

Aria barely made it into Damon’s penthouse before her knees gave way. Blood soaked through her sleeve. The adrenaline was wearing off, and her body finally remembered it had been sliced by flying glass and rattled by shock. 

Damon caught her mid-fall.

“Aria!” He barked, scooping her into his arms. 

“I'm fine,” she rasped. 

“You're not,” he growled. “You're losing you much blood, you need a doctor.”

“No hospitals.”

“Then you're getting my doctor.”

She didn't argue. She couldn't. 

“Im going to kill that Russo bastard.” Damon muttered as he rushed me into his bedroom. 

The next hour blurred in flashes of antiseptic, stitches, and painkillers. Aria lay on Damon's leather couch, her pulse unsteady, her eyes half-closed. 

“You're lucky,” Damon's doctor muttered. “Another inch and that shard would've sliced into your artery. And…” he hesitated. 

“What is it Doc?” Damon asked. 

“You should be told–you were pregnant.” 

The room fell silent. 

Aria didn't move. Didn't speak. 

Damon's hand touched where it rested on her wrist. 

“Were?” He asked quietly. 

The doctor nodded, his tone apologetic. “She's no longer carrying.”

Damon looked at Aria. 

But she just started blankly ahead. Frozen. 

After the doctor left, Damon poured a glass of bourbon and brought it to her. She took it with a trembling hand. 

“I didn't know,” she whispered. “Not until now.”

Between all the things that had happened in the past month, she didn't realise that she was two weeks behind on her period. 

Damon didn't push. 

“I never had a chance to want it,” she added, her voice like glass cracking. “It was already gone.”

He sat beside her but said nothing. Silence had weight, and sometimes it was kinder than words. 

When she finally looked up, her eyes were dry. But something in them had died. 

“I should've known the moment he said ‘kill her’” she whispered. “I should've just let it be the end.”

“You didn't just survive him, Aria.” Damon said. “You rose from the grave he dug for you.” 

She turned toward him, something dark blooming behind her eyes. 

“Then it's only fair to bury him next.”

***

Meanwhile across the cuty, Dominic Russo stood in his study, facing a wall of shattered glass. 

He'd thrown his tumbler at the window the moment Aria’s name came across the security alert. She was alive, and now she was making public moves–strategic ones. The council had already called. Twice. It didn’t help that the men he sent after her didn’t get the job done, he had killed two of them earlier out of annoyance. 

Sienna appeared behind him, barefoot, wrapped in a silk robe again–always pretending innocence in the aftermath of destruction. 

“She's pushing too far,” Sienna said. “You need to strike before she makes you look like a fool.” 

“She already has,” Dominic muttered. “She contacted the council, I shouldn’t have sent those men after her. I pushed her hand. Fuck.”

Sienna moved closer, placing her band on his chest. “Then do something. We could take her out quietly. Say it was retaliation from the Vescari family.”

“I'm not scared of her though.”

“You should be.” Sienna hissed. “Someone saved her, and they are protecting her. We sent our best hitman after her today and he was cleared out including all the back-ups sent. She's not the same girl you threw away. She's a weapon now–and she's aiming at your heart.” 

***

Back in Damon's penthouse Aria sat at the edge of the bed, fingers clutched around a velvet-lined box. 

Inside were two bulltes. 

One with Dominic’s name engraved. That was the bullet she had customized for when she killed him, it would be the one shot she would send straight through his rotten heart that would lead to his demise. 

 The other blank–for whoever came next. Probably Sienna. 

She reached for her phone, dialed a number she hadn't touched in months. 

A familiar voice answered. 

“Aria.” 

She needed to do this for the child she never knew she was carrying. Because once again, Dominic had robbed her of something she was supposed to have. 

A child. 

She cleared her throat to answer. 

“I need a distraction at the northern docks.” 

“You planning something big?” Mattie her former driver and now an informant within the Russo inner circle asked. 

He was planted in the family by Damon when she got married to Dominic, apparently, Damon made sure to have eyes on her all these years. What intrigued her the most was that, she had no idea that Mattie was an informant, he gave nothing away. 

“Yes.” She said and hung up. 

***

Dominic unlocked the safe inside the bedroom wall. 

Inside sat another black box. 

He already knew who it was from. 

He opened it. 

Inside was a flash drive. 

And a single black rose, and a bullet. Just like the last time. 

When he inserted the drive into his laptop, a video began to play–grainy at first. 

But unmistakable. 

Dominic's father, in a secret meeting with the FBI? Meaning family secrets in exchange for immunity. 

If the council saw this…..

Dominic's world would implode. 

Where was she getting all these information from? Who was protecting her? He has made different attempts on her these past few days and it had fallen back on him because he found his men, dead like flies. 

Then another video started playing. It was Aria. 

“What you did to me cost you your child. What I'm about to do….will cost you your crown.” The screen cut to black. 

His phone rang and jolted him out of the reverie that the video left him in. 

“Speak.” Dominic said. 

“Sir, we have been robbed, the goods at the Northern docks have been hijacked.”