Too Late for Sorry, My Dear Don

For stumbling upon a purge, I was taken by the city’s most dangerous don, Lucca of the Rossi family. He said it was the only way I’d survive. So he kept me in his mansion, taught me how to shoot, and drilled me in the rules of the underground world. He would stroke my hair and call me his innocent lily. Everyone knew I was his woman. Until one day, he handed me over to the enemy to secure an alliance with the Balsamo family. That was when I realized I was never his lover, just the sharpest blade in his hand. I buried all my feelings, faked my death, and disappeared. Years later, we met again at a casino. He looked at me in a backless gown, the rose tattoo on my back on full display. “Eliana, I once loved that purity of yours. Look at you now—tempting, yet cheap.” I smiled lightly, brushing his hand away. “Can’t help it, Don Rossi. The owner of this place just likes me this way.” Chapter 1 Several factions’ gazes paused briefly on me. “Who is that? I didn’t see her name on the list.” “The Moretti family’s newly risen Rose. I hear she’s ruthless.” “A woman? Don Rossi seems to know her. Their relationship doesn’t look ordinary.” Holding my wine glass, I looked calmly across at Lucca Rossi. “Lucca. It’s been a while.” His brows tightened slightly, a trace of emotion passing through his deep-set eyes. He walked straight toward me, his voice carrying the same commanding tone. “Come with me.” I didn’t move. Behind him, his consigliere produced a family ring. “Eliana, I only want to catch up.” My gaze settled on the ring. Once, it had been something I was willing to risk my life to protect, because the craftsman who forged it had been my father. Seeing no reaction from me, Lucca’s expression darkened. He reached out to touch the tattoo exposed on my back, only for a gun barrel to be immediately pressed against his wrist. Leo, Don Matteo Moretti's underboss, stood beside me. For the past three years, he had remained constantly at my side. The scene stirred an old memory. Back then, Lucca had appeared just as suddenly, ending my fear with the sound of gunfire. I was seventeen when members of the Balsamo family forced open my father’s workshop late one night. Amid the chaos, I watched my father collapse into a pool of blood, while I hid trembling inside a storage room until Lucca’s men cleared the scene. He was wearing a perfectly tailored black coat, his polished shoes spotless, as though he had stepped through hell untouched. “I can let you live. But from today on, your life belongs to me.” I tightened my grip around the cross in my hand. I wanted to tell him that I wanted to go to school, fulfill my father’s wish of becoming a designer, and live an ordinary life under the sun. However, faced with the guns aimed in my direction, I swallowed every unrealistic hope before it could be spoken. That fall, people my age were looking forward to college life. My identity, meanwhile, was erased, and I became a ghost who officially did not exist within the Rossi family estate. On my first day there, I attempted to escape, only to be captured and locked in confinement for three days. The second time, I shattered one of Lucca’s antique vases, believing punishment would follow. Lucca simply stood there, quietly observing the broken fragments. I expected anger, exile, or for him to remove the inconvenience entirely. Instead, he lifted my chin and examined me for a long moment. “Eliana, you have beautiful eyes.” I stood frozen, unable to tell whether it was praise or a warning. “Starting today, you’ll train with old Tom. If you fail to learn, you don’t eat.” Fear and the instinct to survive tightened around me. “Learn… what?” “How to survive, and how to become useful.” From that moment on, I was no longer the girl who only knew how to draw. I learned to shoot, combat, intelligence analysis, and how to take a life with composure. All that mattered was becoming the most satisfactory creation Lucca could shape. He brought me to countless private gatherings but never explained my origins. “Eliana, someone without a past survives the longest.” “Who is she?” “Lucca’s toy. Supposedly his favorite.” The whispers never stopped after I began appearing at his side, and Lucca neither denied them nor confirmed them. I simply remained in my place, playing whatever role he required of me. That was until a surveillance mission exposed my identity, and members of the Balsamo family cornered me at an abandoned dock. Chapter 2 “Pretty thing, did Lucca send you? Whatever he promised you, we’ll double it.” The man’s gun was aimed at my head, his smile careless and cruel. Gunfire erupted behind me. Lucca’s men appeared like ghosts, ending the fight almost instantly. He pressed his foot down on the leader’s face. “How dare you touch my property?” “Dispose of them.” He removed his bloodstained gloves and tossed them aside before pulling me back to the car, never once looking at me the entire time. His palm was dry and warm, the heat sinking into my chest in an instant. “Be this careless again, and you’ll handle the trouble yourself.” I wiped away someone’s warm blood splashed across my clothes. “Why?” “Because you’re my finest work.” In that moment, my heart pounded violently because of him. Only much later did I understand that those words were merely the highest praise one could give a tool. However, the younger Eliana forgot her father’s dying warning to trust no one and treated those words as the most moving promise she had ever received. I threw myself into learning everything darkness demanded, striving for perfection in every mission. Lucca personally trained my shooting, standing behind me with his arm circling my body as he adjusted my posture. His body heat seeped through the thin layer of fabric between us, turning every breath I took cautious and uneven, leaving me unable to focus. He would tap lightly against my head, his voice low. “Focus.” I would straighten immediately, though my racing heartbeat refused to calm. When I was nineteen, the Balsamo family set a trap intended to assassinate Lucca. I took the blade meant for him, the wound cutting from my lower back up to my shoulder blade. I thought I would die, but he carried me back to a hidden room within the estate instead. He stitched the wound himself, his movements clumsy yet stubborn. “Eliana…” As he looked at my pale face, his eyes held hesitation and confusion, emotions I had never seen from him before. “Don’t die.” After a brief hesitation, I endured the pain and turned to wrap my arms around him. I no longer remembered how pain and comfort became entangled that night. I only remembered that from then on, our relationship sank beyond turning back. By day, I remained his most capable subordinate. By night, he came to my room, taking the last warmth I had left to give. And I, like a gambler with nowhere left to go, wagered everything on the faint possibility that his feelings might be real. On my twentieth birthday, emboldened by the celebration drink after a successful mission, I finally asked the question. “Lucca, what am I to you?” His profile was half-hidden in the dim light, unreadable. “Why think about things like that? Isn’t staying by my side enough?” He avoided answering, and I never again found the courage to ask again. Chapter 3 The vibration of my phone pulled me back from my thoughts. It was a message from Matteo. The summit schedule had changed, and I was required to return immediately. I had no interest in lingering among these people, so I turned, ready to leave with my men. However, Lucca suddenly stepped forward, gripping my wrist and pinning me against the wall. “Eliana, what exactly are you playing at? “I had people searching for you for three years. I thought you were dead. “How could you just disappear like that? I thought you…” Bloodshot veins surfaced in his eyes, and his voice trembled slightly. I turned my face away, yet he stubbornly lifted my chin, trying to move closer. The scent that once captivated me now felt suffocating. I didn’t move, but Leo’s hand had already settled on the grip of his gun. Lucca’s motion froze midway. We stood locked in confrontation until a soft female voice suddenly broke in. “Darling, so this is where you are. I thought someone rude had kept you occupied.” Victoria Balsamo approached gracefully. She was the only daughter of the Balsamo family’s don and had married Lucca three years ago, becoming the donna of the Rossi family. She wore an expensive gown, though faint lines now marked the corners of her eyes, and her figure had grown noticeably thinner. I had once admired this woman for securing thirty percent of the Rossi family’s port interests through marriage and gaining control of two major laundering channels. Now, however, it seemed the power and status she obtained from Lucca through that marriage had not granted her a life much better than mine. Her gaze moved slowly between Lucca and me before she slipped her arm intimately through his, claiming her place beside him. With deliberate ease, her other hand brushed the black diamond ring resting on her ring finger—the custom piece forged for the alliance between the two families. It had been crafted from the Rossi family’s mineral stone using her family’s workmanship, entirely one of a kind. She intentionally let the ring remain within my line of sight, her fingers lightly tracing its surface. I stared at it. There had been countless nights in the past when I had lain in Lucca’s arms, fantasizing about him placing a ring on my finger. I had even secretly sketched designs, wondering if one day I might become the woman he would openly acknowledge. During those three years at Lucca’s side, everyone knew I was his woman. Yet he had never granted me a clear identity in any formal setting. I wore the expensive clothes he commissioned for me and attended countless occasions beside him. Still, I always remained an outsider. The looks directed at me were always mixed with desire, caution, and disdain. Even so, I believed I was different for him. Until the night before that family negotiation. I intercepted critical intelligence capable of destroying his greatest rival, and I wanted to give Lucca a surprise. Before the negotiation began, Lucca summoned me, and we shared a drink. I placed my hand over the back of his, feeling the pulse beneath his skin. It was the closest I had ever been to him; the atmosphere so gentle that it felt almost unreal. “Lucca, I obtained something that can eliminate the Balsamo family…” Before I could finish, the meeting room doors opened. His chief consigliere entered, his expression serious. “Don Rossi, the family elders have arrived. We may begin.” Lucca released my hand, adjusted his tie, and walked toward the head seat. I remained where I was, my heart gradually turning cold. “Ladies and gentlemen, today I will announce a decision concerning the family’s future.” His gaze swept across the room before finally landing on my position. My heart tightened abruptly. Then Lucca extended his hand, not toward me, but toward the seat opposite. “Victoria Balsamo. Our cooperation will usher in a new era.” Seated across from me, Victoria rose in her red gown under the crowd’s complicated stares and walked to his side. I stood in the shadows as the surrounding voices grew distant and the lights blurred, while Lucca’s words carved themselves into my mind, one syllable at a time. “From this day forward, the Rossi family and the Balsamo family are joined in marriage.” “An excellent decision, Don Rossi!” “Congratulations!” Deliberate applause erupted throughout the room. When Victoria extended her hand, Lucca picked up the black diamond ring and placed it onto her finger. With the witness of everyone present, he lowered his head to kiss the back of her hand. Chapter 4 When I rushed out of the meeting room, a cold rain had already begun to fall. Raindrops struck my face, and I could no longer tell whether what slid down my cheeks was rain or something else. Lucca’s faint laughter, delivered through an encrypted line to the head of the Balsamo family, continued to echo in my ears like the cold muzzle of a gun pressed directly against my heart. “Eliana? She was the sharpest blade in my hand, but now I have a stronger alliance. “Trading her and the lives of those subordinates you hate most for your trust is a very worthwhile deal.” I sat in the muddy water of an alley, my mind completely blank. After an unknown stretch of time, a pair of polished leather shoes stopped in front of me. He stood beneath a black umbrella, impeccably dressed. His composed elegance formed a world entirely separate from my disheveled state in the mud. “Lucca, why did you do this?” He looked down at me from above, his eyes filled with unyielding indifference. “Eliana, don’t be naïve. We were never walking the same path. “Today it’s Victoria. Tomorrow, it could be someone else. But that person was never going to be you.” I suddenly laughed, my whole body trembling. “But Lucca, I obtained evidence that could destroy them.” Even then, I still held onto a faint trace of hope, wanting to prove my value. I had hoped he might reconsider for the sake of everything that once existed between us. However, his expression turned instantly cold. “Eliana, I didn’t expect you to understand the rules so poorly. “You think you can use something like this to threaten me and change my decision?” He crouched down, gripping my chin, his voice heavy with warning. “Eliana, take your men and clear out the warehouse in the west district. Handle everything cleanly. “Otherwise…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but I understood perfectly what it meant. I resisted stubbornly through the entire night until Lucca finally lost all patience. The next day, he sent me the operational route to the warehouse. On one side were the few loyal men I had left; on the other was the death order he had given that I could not refuse. He was forcing me to offer my men’s lives as the final sacrifice for his political marriage. In the end, I still led my men there. At the designated location, we were met with an ambush backed by firepower several times greater than ours. My loyalty and love were buried together with the men who fell, swallowed by the flames of that inferno. When I reported the mission’s failure to Lucca, he finally responded to my communication. His voice carried no emotion as he said, “Understood. Be cleaner next time.” From that day on, I became quieter and more efficient, and he seemed satisfied with this newfound obedience. I began quietly liquidating every asset he had given me, secretly preparing an escape route for myself and my surviving men. Just as I was about to slip beyond his control, his engagement ceremony with Victoria shook the entire city. It should have had nothing to do with me, yet Victoria personally named me to attend and offer my blessings. The incident happened at that very moment. The massive screen that was meant to display the story of their relationship suddenly began playing intimate footage of Lucca and me instead. In the video, my face flushed as my arms wrapped around his neck. “Lucca, do you love me?” Victoria’s shocked cry and sobbing echoed through the hall. Every guest present turned to look at me with horror and disgust. I didn’t understand why that video had appeared there either. Lucca said nothing, only watching me with cold eyes. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t…” Just as I stood on the verge of freedom, Victoria used a borrowed blade to turn everyone against me. “Eliana, what fantasy are you still clinging to?” “You think filthy tricks like this can scare Victoria away? How pathetic. “If you want me to spare them, then confess before all the families that you leaked the footage deliberately to sabotage the alliance.” I had no choice. Later on, I thought countless times if, given another chance, seventeen-year-old Eliana would never have followed that man out of the storage room. I kneeled before representatives of every family, humiliating myself as I confessed to ambition and betrayal. However, my surrender did not buy my men their lives. That very night, after my confession, they were secretly executed as traitors. “Eliana, who do you think you are?!” Victoria’s sharp voice dragged me back to the present. I lifted my head and met Lucca’s gaze. His expression was complicated. “Eliana, you weren’t like this before. Are you still angry with me?” Victoria shot me a venomous glare and deliberately raised her voice. “Today’s summit will decide the balance of power for the next decade. When did trash like you get the nerve to come here and cause trouble? “Guards, drag this madwoman out!” The next second, a steady, cold voice sounded from behind me. “Let’s see who dares lay a hand on my fiancée.”