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."

We stood in the center of the courtyard, where the falling snow worked tirelessly to bury the bloodstains on the cobblestones-the remnants of Dante's men trying to halt Luca's entry.

Around us, the engines of the SUVs idled, a low, mechanical growl cutting through the winter air.

Luca held me securely in his arms.

He carried me because my legs refused to hold my weight.

The pain in my back was no longer just an injury; it was a living, parasitic thing, pulsing in time with every beat of my heart.

But we weren't leaving yet.

Dante stood like a sentinel by the gate.

His entire army fanned out behind him, and I could feel the eyes of snipers perched on the roof, tracking our movements.

"You don't just walk away from a marriage," Dante stated, his voice flat. "The Commission won't sanction this."

"The Commission will see the photos of her back," Luca countered, his grip on me tightening. "They will see her hand. They will grant the annulment before the ink is dry."

"I hold a debt," Dante announced.

He produced a coin from his pocket.

It was heavy gold, stamped with the Vitiello crest on one face and the Moretti wolf on the reverse.

It was an ancient obligation. A life debt owed by my father to his father.

"I am calling it in," Dante said.

Luca froze.

"You are invoking a Blood Debt?" Luca asked, incredulous. "To keep a wife you clearly hate?"

"No," Dante replied.

He looked down at Sofia, who was clinging to his arm like a vine.

"I am using the debt to buy immunity for Sofia. You cannot touch her. Not today. Not ever. The Vitiello family cannot hunt her."

Bile rose in my throat, hot and acidic.

He wasn't trying to keep me.

He was utilizing the most powerful currency in our world to ensure I couldn't get justice for my hand.

For Mia.

He was purchasing her safety with the currency of my suffering.

"Done," Luca spat, the word tasting of ash. "The debt is paid. Sofia lives. But Gianna leaves."

"Fine," Dante said.

He didn't even look at me.

"Take her. She is useless to me now anyway."

Useless.

Because I couldn't play. Because I was broken.

I let my head fall against Luca's chest.

"Wait," I whispered.

"Gianna, we need to go," Luca urged, sensing the volatility of the air.

"My cello," I rasped. "The broken one. I want it."

"It is trash," Dante called out, dismissive.

"It is mine," I insisted.

One of Luca's men sprinted back inside.

He returned a moment later, clutching the battered case.

He slid it into the trunk of the waiting SUV.

I looked at Dante one last time.

He looked powerful. Untouchable. The Ice Prince reigning over his kingdom of snow.

But to me, he looked small.

"Goodbye, Dante," I whispered, though the wind snatched my voice away before it could reach him.

He turned his back on me to comfort Sofia.

I vomited then-blood and stomach acid splattering onto the pristine wool of Luca's coat.

"Get her in the car!" Luca shouted, his voice distorting. "She's crashing!"

The world dissolved into black.

When I surfaced from the darkness, the steady hum of jet engines was the only sound.

I was hooked up to an IV, the clear fluid dripping rhythmically.

My hand was heavily bandaged.

Luca sat beside me, his eyes scanning a file.

"Mia?" I asked, my voice a ruin.

Luca looked at me.

His eyes held a profound sadness.

"We couldn't find the body, Gianna. The landfill... it's vast."

He was lying.

I could tell.

He wanted to spare me the details. Or perhaps he didn't want me to know he hadn't looked because of the immunity deal.

It didn't matter.

She was gone.

I looked out the window at the bed of clouds beneath us.

I was going to the Hamptons. To neutral ground.

I was free.

But looking down at my bandaged hand, I knew the truth.

I wasn't free.

I was just a survivor of a war I never knew I was fighting.

Dante POV

The war for the South Side raged for three months.

It was bloody. It was brutal. And it was exactly the distraction I needed.

I threw myself into the violence, sleeping in muddy trenches and surviving on cold rations. I killed men with my bare hands because the recoil of a gun felt too impersonal. I needed to feel the life leave them.

I needed the noise to drown out the silence in my head.

When we finally crushed the rival gang, I returned to the estate.

It was winter. The Chicago wind cut through my coat like a serrated knife.

I walked into the foyer.

"I'm home," I called out.

Silence.

Usually, the house had a rhythm. The shuffle of servants. The faint, haunting melody drifting from the music room.

Now, it was dead.

"Dante?"

Sofia came running down the stairs. She was wearing a silk robe. She looked beautiful, pristine, untouched by the world I had just left.

She threw her arms around my neck.

"You're back! I missed you so much."

I didn't hug her back immediately. I looked over her shoulder, scanning the top of the stairs.

"Where is she?" I asked.

Sofia pulled back, pouting. "Who?"

"Gianna."

"She left, Dante. Remember? Her brother took her."

"I know she left," I said, peeling her arms off me. "I meant, has she called? Has she sent papers?"

"No," a voice said from the drawing room.

My sister, Clara, walked out. She was holding a glass of scotch, her eyes rimmed with exhaustion.

"She is gone, Dante. For good."

"She is my wife," I said, brushing past Sofia. "She will come back when she realizes she has nowhere else to go."

"She is a Vitiello," Clara said. "She has everywhere to go."

I poured myself a drink, the amber liquid trembling slightly in the glass. "She loves me. She's just throwing a tantrum."

"A tantrum?" Clara laughed. It was a harsh, brittle sound. "You whipped her, Dante. You let your pet psycho over there slice her fingers open."

"I didn't do that," I snapped. "Sofia didn't do that. It was an accident."

Clara looked at me with pity. "You really are blind."

I slammed my glass down. "I am going to bed."

I went upstairs. I walked past Gianna's room. The door was open.

I looked inside.

It was stripped bare. No clothes. No perfume bottles. No cello stand.

It looked as if she had been erased.

I felt a sharp twinge in my chest. Indigestion, probably.

I went to my room. Sofia followed me, a shadow I couldn't shake.

"Dante," she purred, sliding her hand up my chest. "You're tense. Let me help you."

She undid my shirt. She pushed me onto the bed.

She opened her robe.

There, on her chest, was the scar. The jagged line she claimed she got from the rocks in the cave when she dragged me out.

I looked at it.

Usually, it reminded me of her sacrifice. It made me feel indebted.

Tonight, however, it looked... neat. Too neat. Almost surgical.

"Touch me," she whispered.

I reached out. My hand brushed her skin.

I felt nothing.

No spark. No heat. Just flesh.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the cave. The darkness. The voice singing that Italian lullaby.

Dormi, dormi, bel bambino...

The voice in my head didn't match the woman in front of me.

"Get off," I said.

Sofia froze. "What?"

"I said get off." I pushed her away. "I'm tired."

"But Dante..."

"Go to your room, Sofia."

She left, slamming the door.

I lay in the dark. The silence of the house was suffocating.

I missed the music.

I missed the way Gianna would look at me across the dinner table, terrified but hopeful.

I missed my shield.

"I need to go to New York," I said to the empty room.

I would go get her. I would apologize. I would buy her a new cello.

We would fix this.

We had to.