QT: I hijacked a harem system and now I'm ruining every plot(GL)
Chapter 181: Goodbye big brother

Chapter 181: Goodbye big brother

Chapter 181 – Luciano POV

I stumble.

"Antonia?" I say again, my voice rasping in disbelief, trying to catch up to what my eyes are witnessing. She’s standing there with a bloody knife, the tip still glistening red from where it sank into my flesh.

She doesn’t even glance back at me.

She walks right past me, casually, as if I’m some background extra, not the man she whispered her love to night after night. She walks straight to Raffaele—fucking Raffaele—and wraps her arms around him. Tender. Familiar.

No.

No. No.

This can’t be real.

My knees buckle, and I grab the edge of the bar for balance. It’s not just the pain in my lower back—it’s something else. The deeper kind of pain. The kind that blooms from betrayal and festers like rot.

Antonia turns her head to look at me, still half-pressed against Raffaele’s side. Her expression is unreadable at first. But then she smiles. Not soft. Not kind. No, this smile is sharp. Satisfied.

"That look in your eyes is offensive, Luciano," she says lightly.

"Was my betrayal really that unexpected?"

I can barely breathe. The air tastes metallic.

"You... you loved me," I say. It sounds like a question. A plea.

Raffaele scoffs beside her.

"Is that it?" I snap, the rage bubbling past the hurt. "Moved on to the next man? Ha! Think he’ll treat you as well as I did?"

Antonia clicks her tongue. The pitying noise cuts deeper than the knife.

"After all these years, you still don’t know me," she murmurs. Then, like a snake shedding skin, she shifts. Her whole body language changes.

Her shoulders slump. Her eyes glass over. She takes a step toward me, trembling like a doe.

"Ilove you, Luciano," she whispers, voice breaking.

"I would do anything for you. You’re my whole world. Please... don’t leave me."

I freeze.

Then—

She throws her head back and laughs. High. Sharp. Cruel. Her eyes glitter with mirth as she flips her hair over her shoulder like this is a fashion show, not a fucking betrayal.

"Did you think," she drawls, "I killed the old croak because I loved you? Because youconvinced me into doing so?"

My blood runs cold.

The room tilts slightly. Or maybe it’s just me, swaying. I’m not sure what’s worse—the knife or the realization that none of it was real.

She struts across the room now, taking her time, hands moving as she speaks.

"You spent months seducing me, right? Whispering poison into my ear. Telling me how free we’d be once he was gone. And I played my part perfectly, didn’t I? Crying in your arms. Wailing like some tragic little doll."

She smiles wide, teeth gleaming.

"God, you were so easy."

I lunge forward, rage propelling me—but the pain in my back flares white-hot and I fall to my knees.

Antonia doesn’t flinch. She tilts her head and watches me, fascinated.

"I played you. I played your father. Hell, I played the whole fucking family," she says.

"And guess what? He looked at me just like you are now. Right before I fed him that last dose. You remember that night, don’t you? When I came running to you, sobbing? ’He’s dead, he’s dead!’ "

I do remember.

She had clung to me. Shaking. Devastated.

I had held her. Believed her.

Loved her.

The room swims. The world tilts.

I grip the floor, trying to steady myself, my breathing ragged.

"Why?" I ask.

She walks back to Raffaele and shrugs. "Because I could."

Then she tosses her hair over one shoulder, gives me a cheeky wave.

"Oop, well don’t mind me," she says, and struts toward the door like it’s a fashion runway and not a battlefield strewn with betrayal.

She pauses at the frame, turns her head over her shoulder, smile sharp and mocking.

"Goodbye, Luciano. We’ll meet in hell."

And with a snicker that feels like nails on a chalkboard, she disappears into the hallway, hips swaying, taking my dignity with her.

Raffaele watches her go with an unreadable expression. Then he looks back at me, lifts his glass with a light clink.

"She’s scary, isn’t she?" he says, almost admiring.

I stare up at him from the floor, jaw clenched, fury rising despite the weakness in my limbs. "How could you do this?!"

His eyes narrow.

"What, you expected me to show up here alone?" he asks, leaning forward just slightly.

"Have a nice little chat with you like we’re two old-school gentlemen? A fight scene worthy of a bad action flick? And what then? You win, or if it looks like I’m about to win, Antonia comes in and ’saves’ you at the last second?"

He lets the words hang, slow and mocking.

"Your men outside were supposed to keep my team busy, right? Meanwhile you take my head, ride back into town a victor, and boom—crowned the next Don? Is that how it was supposed to go?"

I try to speak, but the dizziness is too much. The pain pulses up my spine, sharp and searing. I fall harder to the floor, knees slipping against blood-slicked wood.

He stands now, casual, like we’re not in the middle of a Shakespearean execution scene.

"Did you think you were the main character?" he asks, voice low.

He raises the glass to his lips. "So it really wasn’t poisoned," he says with a small, humorless laugh.

"You should’ve come at me like a real man," I mutter, breath ragged.

He tilts his head. "Like you did with the last Don?"

His gaze is amused.

"I’m just being poetic. Father and son—both taken down by the same woman."

He finishes the drink in one long, easy swallow.

Then sighs.

"You know, I was nervous on my way here. Seriously. My stomach was doing flips. I kept thinking—what if there are bombs? An ambush? Poison gas pumped through the vents?" He chuckles dryly and sets the glass down with a soft clink.

"I even wore a bulletproof vest, brought a mask, had an injector with antivenom, and a neutralizer for airborne toxins."

He spreads his hands, almost wistful.

"And it ends like this? Kind of anti-climactic, you know."

His voice fades into the fog that’s slowly overtaking me. My vision’s blurring, my limbs heavy and cold. But I won’t—I won’t—accept this.

This is not how I die.

Not me.

Not Luciano Castellano.

Firstborn son of Valentino Castellano. The heir. The one who was raised for this, bred for this, sharpened by blood and fire. I’ve earned this title more than anyone else. I was made to wear the ring.

This can’t be how it ends.

I force my arms to push up from the floor, but they shake uncontrollably. My palms slip in my own blood. I grit my teeth, try again, but the pain spikes like fire up my spine and drops me instantly. The floorboards creak under the weight of my useless defiance.

And then—darkness.

Just for a moment.

When I open my eyes again, I’m barely clinging to consciousness.

"I’m telling you, that’s it," Raffaele says, somewhere above me, his voice casual.

Then another voice crackles through—muffled at first, like it’s coming through a phone.

"I shouldn’t have been worried," says the voice. Smooth, precise, and unmistakable.

Daphne.

"See? Told you it was nothing to worry about," another voice adds—a feminine voice, accented, flirtatious.

There’s a laugh.

"Honestly, it makes all the precautions I took feel... unnecessary."

"Oh wait," Raffaele says, looking down at me. He blinks.

"You’re still alive?"

He sounds amused.

There’s a pause.

"He’s still alive?

"Yeah, apparently. His eyes were closed, I thought it was over."

"Switch to video call," Daphne demands, a cruel edge to her voice.

"I need to see my dear big brother in his last moments. It would be rude not to say goodbye."

Raffaele crouches in front of me, casual, like this is some backyard chat and not my death scene. He tilts the phone so the camera catches my face—sweat-slicked, bloodied, pale. I look like a man drained of everything except spite.

The screen lights up, and there she is.

Daphne Castellano.

Her hair is shorter now—messy, windswept, curling a bit from the breeze. She’s lounging back against what appears to be a pillow... until I realize, with slowly dawning horror, that the "pillow" is actually a pair of obscenely large breasts.

Silicone, probably. Attached to some sunbathing woman in a nude bikini who is entirely unbothered by the video call taking place against her cleavage.

Daphne’s shirt is hideous—orange and patterned with pineapples, baggy and loose like she’s decided to cosplay a midlife crisis.

A straw pokes out of a neon cup in her hand. She takes a long sip, watching me over the rim.

"Wow," she drawls with faux concern. "You look like shit, brother."

I don’t answer. I close my eyes instead. I won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me like this, of watching my pride bleed out with my body.

She laughs, unbothered.

"Oh, don’t be like that."

I hear her shift. Probably repositioning against the human chest pillow.

"It’s unfortunate, really," she goes on, almost breezy. "Hunting down our half-brother Valentino for months left me in need of a long, relaxing vacation, you see. So I couldn’t be there in person to bid you farewell."

Her tone dips into mock sympathy.

"No hard feelings, yeah?"

I grit my teeth. My breath rattles.

"I must say," Daphne’s voice crackles through the phone, syrup-smooth and amused, "I’d love to gloat. I mean, surprise surprise—your downfall was a woman. Who could’ve guessed?"

Raffaele huffs a short laugh, but he doesn’t add anything. He just holds the phone steady, letting her enjoy her moment.

"But," she continues, her voice taking on that saccharine mock-gentle quality she reserves for twisting the knife, "seeing as you’re, you know... bleeding to death and all... I’ll be the bigger person."

My fists clench weakly. I can’t even lift them. Rage pulses inside me, potent.

"I won’t gloat," she finishes, sweetly. "Not much, anyway."

My face twists with shame. Not just from the blood pooling beneath me, or the realization that everything I fought for—every maneuver, every alliance—meant nothing. But from her voice.

Because she sounds happy.

The heat in my chest burns hotter than the pain.

"Anyway," she says, voice distant like she’s turning her head to watch the waves, "in your next life? Maybe try not to be such an asshole."

There’s laughter in her tone. Not cruel, exactly. More like someone giving up on a bad joke.

"Who knows, Luciano?" she muses. "Maybe next time, we’ll have a great brother-sister relationship. Share secrets. Go to brunch."

My eyelids flutter. I can barely hold on anymore.

Daphne lets out a final sigh. "Ah well. Goodbye, big brother."

The screen goes black as Raffaele ends the call.

Silence.

Only the faint ringing in my ears and the soft creak of wood as Raffaele stands.

He steps over me, deliberate.

He leaves me there like roadkill.

Like history.

Humiliating.