I didn't wait for the jet. I couldn't.

Instead, I hailed a cab, demanding the driver take me back to the estate. I had to get my papers, but more importantly, I had to get to the only thing that mattered-Mia.

I was shivering violently, my dress still sodden and plastering to my skin like a second, freezing layer.

I burst into the main hall.

It was silent. The kind of heavy, suffocating silence that precedes a funeral.

"Mia!" I screamed, my voice echoing off the marble.

No answer.

I sprinted to her quarters. Empty. The bed was unmade, sheets torn. A lamp lay shattered on the floor-signs of a struggle.

Fear, primal and terrifying, clawed its way up my throat.

I ran. Down the hall, past the kitchen, to the heavy door that led to the basement. To the cells.

The steel door was ajar.

I shoved it open.

The smell hit me first. The metallic tang of copper mixed with the stinging scent of bleach.

Dante stood in the center of the room. He had discarded his jacket. His crisp white shirt was rolled up to the elbows, revealing forearms tense with muscle.

In his hand, he held a whip. A thick, braided leather lash that looked heavy with cruelty.

And chained to the wall, her head hanging low, was Mia.

She was unconscious. Her face was swollen, unrecognizable. A thin stream of blood trickled from her split lip.

"No," I gasped, the air leaving my lungs. I fell to my knees, the stone floor biting into my skin. "No!"

Dante turned slowly to look at me. His face was a mask of cold, unyielding stone.

"You called Luca," he stated.

It wasn't a question. It was a sentence.

"You called the Don of New York and told him the alliance was over."

"You let me drown!" I screamed, scrambling to my feet, adrenaline overriding my terror. "You chose her!"

"Sofia cannot swim," Dante said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You can. It was a tactical decision."

"Tactical?" I laughed-a hysterical, broken sound that scraped my throat. "It was a choice, Dante! You love her!"

"I protect what is mine," he countered coldly. "And you risked the safety of this family by calling your brother. You broke Omertà. You brought outside eyes into our internal affairs."

"I am leaving you!"

"You are not leaving," Dante said, stepping toward me. The air around him crackled with violence. "You are my wife. And you need to learn your place."

He gestured to the Enforcer standing in the shadows of the corner. "Chain her up."

The Enforcer hesitated, his eyes darting between me and his Boss. "Boss... she's a Vitiello."

"Do it!" Dante roared.

The sound slammed against the concrete walls like a physical blow.

Two men grabbed me. I fought. I kicked, I clawed, I screamed until my throat was raw. But they were too strong.

They dragged me to the wooden post in the center of the room. Rough hands shackled my wrists, chaining my hands high above my head.

The back of my dress was torn open. My skin was exposed to the damp, cold air.

"This is for the betrayal," Dante said. His footsteps echoed as he walked behind me.

"Dante, please," I begged. Not for my life. But for us. For the last, fraying thread of love I still held for him. "Don't do this. If you do this... there is no going back."

"Good," he said.

The first lash hit me.

It felt like a rod of molten iron searing through my flesh.

I screamed.

The pain was blinding. It stole my breath, shattered my reality, and turned the world white.

Crack.

The second lash.

I bit my lip so hard I tasted warm, metallic blood.

Crack.

I forced my eyes open, focusing on Mia's unconscious form through my tears.

Crack.

With every strike, something inside me fractured.

Not my bones.

But the girl who had sung in a cave all those years ago. The girl who had dreamed of a dark prince coming to save her. The girl who was foolish enough to believe in love.

She died.

She died right there, on the cold concrete floor of a Chicago dungeon.

Dante didn't stop. He was breathing hard, his rage fueling every strike.

"Boss, that's enough!" the Enforcer shouted, stepping forward. "She's passing out! You'll kill her!"

Dante froze.

The silence that followed was deafening.

My back was on fire. I couldn't feel my legs anymore.

I sagged against the chains, the metal biting into my wrists.

Dante walked around to face me. He looked at my tear-stained, pale face. He looked down at the blood pooling at my bare feet.

For a second, his eyes widened. As if he was waking up from a trance.

"Gianna," he whispered. He reached out a trembling hand.

I looked at him.

My vision was blurring, darkness creeping in at the edges like a vignette.

"Don't," I whispered. My voice was nothing more than a rasp. "Don't touch me."

"I had to," he said, his voice shaking for the first time. "You tried to destroy us."

"You destroyed us," I breathed.

I forced myself to look him in the eye.

"The girl in the cave," I whispered. "The one who saved you."

Dante went still.

"It wasn't Sofia," I said, the truth spilling out with my last ounce of strength. "It was me."

His face went pale. All the color drained from his skin, leaving him looking like a ghost.

"What?" he choked out.

"It was me," I repeated softly. "And you just killed her."

The darkness took me then.

And I welcomed it.

Gianna POV

Pain has a taste.

It tastes like copper and bile.

I woke because the burning across my back was louder than the oblivion I craved. It felt as though every inch of skin from my shoulders to my waist had been flayed open, leaving raw nerve endings exposed to the air.

I was lying on my stomach in my bed. Someone had moved me from the dungeon.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms trembled and gave way. I collapsed back into the silk sheets, gasping as the movement stretched the raw wounds on my back like tearing fabric.

"You're awake."

The voice was light. Airy. Like a child who had just found a new toy.

I turned my head.

Sofia was sitting at the vanity. My vanity. She was applying my lipstick, smacking her lips together to test the shade in the mirror.

"Get out," I croaked. My throat felt lined with glass shards.

"Dante said you needed rest," she said, spinning around on the stool. "But I told him I wanted to check on my sister."

"We are not sisters."

"We are now," she smiled. It was a cold, empty smile that didn't reach her eyes. "We share everything. His house. His name. His attention."

She stood up and walked toward the bed. She was holding something in her hand.

A bundle of wire.

No. Not wire.

Strings.

My steel cello strings.

My stomach lurched.

"You know," she said, twirling the metal coils around her fingers. "I always hated the sound of that thing. It was so... mournful. Like a dying cat."

She sat on the edge of the mattress. Her weight pulled the sheets tight against my flayed skin, sending a fresh wave of agony down my spine. I flinched.

"Dante is gone," she whispered. "He went to the Commission meeting. He won't be back for hours."

"What do you want?"

"I want to make sure you understand the hierarchy here."

She reached out and grabbed my left hand. The hand that pressed the strings. The hand that created the music.

"Dante broke your spirit downstairs," she said. "But you still have this arrogance about you. You still think you are better than me because you are a Vitiello."

"I am better than you," I spat. "Because I don't need to steal someone else's life to have one."

Sofia's face twisted.

She coiled the steel A-string around my index finger.

"You saved him in the cave," she said softly.

My heart stopped.

"You know?"

"Of course I know," she laughed, a hollow, tinkling sound. "I found his journal years ago. He wrote about the girl's voice. About the song. I just... adapted the story. I made it mine."

"He will find out."

"He won't. Because he believes what he wants to believe. And he wants to believe I am his destiny."

She pulled the string tight.

The steel bit into my flesh.

"Stop," I gasped.

"You use these fingers to play, don't you?" she asked.

She yanked.

I screamed.

The string sliced through the skin, grinding down to the bone. Blood sprayed onto the white duvet.

"Stop it!" I tried to pull my hand back, but she was strong. Fueled by a manic, jealous strength.

She wrapped the string around my middle finger.

"This is for slapping me," she hissed.

The wire sang.

Slice.

"And this is for trying to take him from me."

Slice.

I was sobbing now, the pain in my hand rivaling the fire on my back. My fingers were mangled, bleeding freely. The nerves were severed. I could feel the loss of sensation, the death of my music.

"Why?" I wept. "You have him. You have everything. Why take this?"

"Because you love it," she said simply. "And you aren't allowed to love anything but pain."

She dropped my bloody hand. She stood up and wiped her palms on her dress as if dusting off crumbs.

"Where is Mia?" I asked. I needed to know. "Is she alive?"

Sofia paused at the door. She looked back over her shoulder.

"Oh, the maid?" she giggled. "She was so noisy in the dungeon. Screaming your name. Begging for mercy."

Ice filled my veins.

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything," Sofia said innocently. "But Dante's men... they have rules about rats. Rats shouldn't talk."

She tapped her lips.

"So they took her tongue."

The world tilted on its axis.

"And then they realized she was useless without it," she continued. "So they put a bullet in her head and dumped her in the landfill south of the city."

A sound tore out of me. It wasn't human. It was the sound of a wounded animal realizing it was cornered and dying.

Mia. My Mia.

She was dead. Mutilated and discarded like trash because of me.

"Sleep tight, Principessa," Sofia said.

She closed the door.

I lay in the pool of my own blood.

The tears stopped. The sobbing stopped.

Something inside my chest, the frantic, beating thing that had hoped for salvation, finally stopped moving.

It died.

And in its place, something cold and sharp began to grow.

I was still paralyzed, my gaze locked on the ruin of my hand, when the door exploded inward.

Splinters of mahogany became shrapnel, showering the room.

Men in tactical gear swarmed the suite like a tide of black oil. They wore combat armor, but the crest on their chests wasn't the Moretti wolf.

It was the Vitiello lion.

"Clear!" a voice shouted.

Then he walked in.

Luca.

My brother. The Capo dei Capi.

He looked like war personified. He held an assault rifle at the low ready, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on me.

His expression didn't change, but the air in the room seemed to freeze, the temperature plummeting.

He strode to the bed. He saw the blood soaking the sheets. He saw the flayed skin of my back. He saw my hand.

He gently touched my wrist, his calloused fingers hovering over the deep cuts where the bone gleamed white.

"Who did this?" he asked. His voice was terrifyingly quiet.

"Sofia," I whispered.

"And the back?"

"Dante."

Luca closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, they were voids devoid of light.

"Get the medic," he ordered his men. "Prepare her for transport."

"Mia..." I grabbed his tactical vest with my good hand, desperate. "Luca, Mia is dead. They killed her. They cut out her tongue."

Luca's jaw tightened until the muscle feathered. "We will find her."

"She's in the landfill," I choked out. "Sofia told me."

"Luca!"

Dante's voice roared from the hallway.

He appeared in the doorway, his own men behind him, guns drawn. The hallway became a powder keg. Vitiello soldiers against Moretti soldiers.

Dante looked at Luca, then at me.

He saw the blood dripping from my hand. He frowned.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dante demanded. "You do not storm my house."

"You broke the treaty," Luca said. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. "You tortured a Vitiello. You maimed her."

"I disciplined my wife," Dante snapped. "It is an internal matter."

"Look at her hand," Luca commanded, pointing the barrel of his rifle toward my injury. "Is that discipline?"

Dante looked closer. He saw the sliced fingers. The specific, cruel nature of the wounds.

"I didn't order that," Dante said, his voice faltering. He looked confused. "I ordered lashes."

"Sofia did it," I said. My voice was hollow. "She came in. She used cello strings. She told me she had Mia killed."

Dante looked at me, then back at the hallway where Sofia was cowering behind his legs.

"That isn't true," Sofia cried. "I was in the kitchen! I was making tea!"

"She is lying," Luca said. He raised his rifle, aiming it directly at Sofia's head. "She dies. Now."

"No!" Dante stepped in front of her.

He put his body between the bullet and the girl.

"Move, Dante," Luca warned. "She mutilated my sister. She executed a made guy's daughter. She dies."

"She is under my protection," Dante said. "If you shoot her, you start a war."

"Then let it be war," Luca said.

He disengaged the safety with a loud click.

"Gianna is my wife," Dante said, his voice hard. "But Sofia... Sofia is my blood. She is everything to me. You will not touch her."

I watched them.

My husband, shielding the woman who had just crippled me. Shielding the woman who murdered my best friend.

He knew. Deep down, he had to know she did it. The evidence was written in my blood.

But he didn't care.

His obsession was stronger than his honor. Stronger than the truth.

"Take me home, Luca," I said.

The silence in the room was heavy, suffocating.

"I am taking her," Luca said to Dante. "And I am killing the girl."

"You can take Gianna," Dante said. "But if you fire that gun, none of you leave this estate alive."

Luca looked at Dante with pure disgust.

"You are a fool, Moretti. You are trading a queen for a whore."

"I am trading a contract for a soul," Dante replied.

I closed my eyes.

He really believed that. He believed she was his soul.

"Pack her up," Luca ordered his men, turning his back on the man who was supposed to protect me. "We are leaving."