He Sent Me Away So I Took His Crown Chapter 16
At first, Bianca only shook her head.
“They’re lying. I thought the room was empty.”
The adviser played another recording.
It was a phone call she had made from the control room to her assistant.
*“Ten minutes will be enough. She’ll feel sick. She’ll miss the statement. But she won’t die.”*
When the recording ended, Bianca stood frozen.
Then she let out a sudden, sharp laugh, which quickly dissolved into sobs.
“Why is everyone blaming me?”
She looked at Luca, her eyes wild.
“When we were children, you said there would always be a room for me in the Moretti main house. At the territorial celebrations, everyone said I would marry you someday.”
“But then Elena appeared, and you married her instead.”
“And you still wouldn’t make it public. You kept putting me at your side, letting me live in her house, wear her wife’s signet ring, and accept the leaders’ toasts in her place. You made me believe that if I just took one more step, that place would be mine.”
Luca’s lips had gone pale.
“So you wanted to kill her?”
“I didn’t want her dead!” Bianca screamed back. “I just wanted her to shut up. I just wanted her to leave like she did the first nine times!”
Two Bellandi guards came up and took her back to her seat.
She kept repeating, “Everyone always thought it would be me.”
Luca remained where he was, his shoulders finally collapsing.
Before the hearing resumed, he asked to speak to me.
The guards did not let him come close.
From several feet away, he looked at me, his eyes red-rimmed.
“Elena, I didn’t know she was going to start the fumigation.”
“I only wanted to keep you there until the statement was over. I never imagined you’d get hurt that badly.”
I looked back at him.
The old version of me might have seized on those words, separated his intent from the outcome, and searched the gap for some proof that he had, on some level, still loved me.
Now, all I felt was tired.
“But locking the door was your choice.”
“Approving the forged statement was your choice.”
“And the first nine times, giving her my place was your choice, every single time.”
I said it calmly, “Bianca pushed the harm somewhere you didn’t foresee. That doesn’t erase all the steps that came before it.”
“Luca, we’re done.”
The tears finally fell from his eyes.
He walked to the long table and picked up the document permanently relinquishing his succession rights.
The advisers did not stop him.
Luca signed his name, set the paper beneath the heir’s signet ring, and pushed both toward Vittorio’s screen.
“My place, my money, every person I could command—none of it could keep her,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I only understand that now.”
He looked at me one last time.
“If I give all of it up, will you come back?”
I looked at the signet ring that had once mattered more to him than I ever had.
“What you’re willing to give up now is what I spent an entire marriage begging for.”
“I don’t hate you anymore.”
“But I’m not coming back.”
I didn’t look at him again.
In the end, Luca was permanently stripped of his succession rights, command of the inner hall, and all tribute shares. He had to surrender all racing profits in his name, compensate those who had suffered losses from the suspended auction, and remain under supervision for twenty months at a closed Moretti estate.
This was not the sentence of an outside court.
The five district leaders swore on the spot that they would no longer obey him. For a man who had been treated as the next family head since he was twenty-one, that was more final than any barred door.
Bianca had broken the truce rules jointly recognized by three families. To preserve what territory remained, the Bellandi patriarch signed an order withdrawing all protection from her.
Vittorio asked me if I wanted blood compensation.
“Not her life,” I said. “Take away the identity and power she borrowed. Let her live long enough to understand they were never hers.”
Bianca was exiled from Chicago and permanently barred from touching Bellandi funds, personnel, or alliance business. The Bellandi family lost its underground auction privileges and was ordered to return all misappropriated data and profits.
By the time we walked out of the chamber, most of Chicago’s snow had already melted.
Elias stood at the foot of the steps. He didn’t ask if I felt free, and he didn’t rush to talk about the wedding.
He only handed me a file.
“The independent committee’s decision.”
I opened it.
*Appointment of Elena Mercer as Chief Bloodline Systems Officer of Reed Bloodline Diagnostics.*
Attached behind it were the full compensation terms, voting rights, and exit clauses.
“They approved unanimously,” Elias said. “Including the two committee members who publicly opposed your proposals twice.”
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.
“So from now on, you have to listen to me?”
“Within the scope of your authority, yes.”
He smiled back.
“Congratulations, Elena.”