Dante POV

The morgue reeked of antiseptic masking the sweet, cloying scent of decay. It was a perfume I knew well—the smell of my life, distilled into one sterile room.

The coroner looked nervous, shifting his weight from foot to foot. I paid him enough to be nervous. I paid him enough to be invisible.

"Show me," I ordered, my voice sounding like grinding stones.

He hesitated, then pulled the metal slab from the wall.

The body was... a ruin. Unrecognizable. Charred beyond any hope of identification. A blackened husk of what was once a human being, curled inward by the heat.

I gagged, the bile rising in my throat, but I forced myself to look. To witness.

"Height and weight match," the coroner said quietly, his eyes fixed on the floor. "Dental records were inconclusive due to the intensity of the heat damage, but the ring... the ring was found fused near the left hand."

I reached out. My hand trembled, a traitor to my composure. I brushed the sheet covering the remains.

"Elena," I choked out, the name scraping my throat. "I'm so sorry. *Tesoro*, I'm so sorry."

Tears, hot and foreign, burned my eyes and spilled down my face. I hadn't wept since the day they lowered my father into the earth.

Then, a sound broke the silence. A dull vibration against the metal tray.

I frowned, wiping my eyes. I looked closer.

Wedged beneath the charred remains of the hospital gown, shielded by the density of the body itself and pressed against the cold metal of the slab, was a small, black object.

A phone. A burner.

It was a miracle of physics that it had survived, wrapped tightly in layers of fire-resistant insulation tape that had fused into a protective shell.

I picked it up. It was still warm—from the body, or the fire, I didn't know.

I pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life, cracked but functional. One battery bar remained, blinking like a dying heartbeat.

There was a single video file saved.

I pressed play.

Elena’s face filled the small, fractured screen. She was pale, sitting in the hospital bed, the background unmistakably the room she had occupied before the fire.

Her eyes. They weren't the eyes of a madwoman. They were hollow. Cold. Already dead.

*"Dante,"* she said. Her voice was terrifyingly steady.

*"If you are watching this, then I succeeded. You broke me. You took my memories, you stripped away my dignity, and you tried to take my sanity."*

She leaned closer to the camera, the lens losing focus for a second before sharpening on her resolute expression.

*"You chose her. You chose the lie. So keep her. She is your punishment."*

She held up a match. The flame danced in her pupil.

*"I am not killing myself because I am weak. I am killing Elena Moretti because she loved a monster. And I never want to see you in the next life. If there is a hell, Dante, I hope you rot in it alone."*

The video cut to black.

The silence that followed was heavier than the grave.

"She... she hated me," I whispered. The words felt like glass in my mouth.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a psychotic break. It was a calculated escape.

She would rather burn alive than spend another heartbeat as my wife.

Pain exploded in my chest, a supernova of agony tearing through my ribs. My vision blurred into gray static.

I doubled over, a violent cough ripping through me. Liquid splattered onto the pristine white floor.

Blood. Bright, crimson blood.

"Mr. Moretti!" the coroner shouted, his voice distant, underwater.

The room spun on a tilted axis. I fell to my knees, clutching the phone to my chest like a holy relic, like it could save me.

I screamed.

It was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. It echoed off the steel walls, a requiem for the man I used to be.

Dante Moretti died on that cold morgue floor.

And in the hollow space he left behind, the devil took his throne.

Dante POV

The screen of the burner phone went black.

Silence rushed back into the morgue, heavy and suffocating. It pressed against my eardrums, tasting of ash and formaldehyde.

I stared at the device in my hand. My reflection was distorted in the dark glass—I looked like a man who had been hollowed out, gutted by his own hand.

She hated me.

The realization did not pierce me like a knife, nor did it burn like fire. It was heavier than that. It was a mountain collapsing on my chest.

Elena hadn't died because of an accident. She did not die because she was weak. She died to get away from me.

I looked at the charred remains on the metal slab. The body was small. Fragile. Just like she had been when I first brought her home at twelve years old.

I remembered the nightlight. I remembered the way her small hand used to clutch my jacket when it thundered.

I remembered the origami cranes she folded for me, thousands of them, promising a love that would outlast the stars.

I had taken that love and fed it to the dogs.

I reached out, my fingers hovering over the sheet covering her. My hand was shaking so hard the fabric rippled.

"I am sorry," I whispered. The words scraped my throat. "I am so sorry, *Tesoro*."

My knees gave out.

I hit the cold tile floor. The impact jarred my spine, but I felt nothing.

I curled forward, pressing my forehead against the metal leg of the table. A sound ripped out of me. It was not a cry. It was a howl. A primal, animal noise that belonged in a slaughterhouse.

My stomach convulsed. Bile and acid surged up my throat. I retched, spitting blood onto the pristine white floor.

My body was rejecting the reality. It was trying to purge the guilt that was poisoning my blood.

I clutched the phone tighter. It was the only piece of her I had left. The only truth I had been given in months.

*You chose her*, Elena had said. *You chose the lie.*

I closed my eyes, but I could still see her face on the screen. Cold. Dead. Resolute.

*If there is a hell, I hope you rot in it alone.*

"I am already there, Elena," I choked out into the silence.

"I am already there."

Dante POV

I woke up in my bed.

The sheets were cool silk against my skin. The air was conditioned to a perfect sixty-eight degrees. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city of New York hummed with its indifferent morning rhythm.

For a second—just a split second—I was allowed to forget.

Then I turned my head, instinct seeking the warmth that should have been there, and saw the empty pillow beside me.

The memory of the morgue hit me like a sledgehammer.

I sat up, gasping for air as the room spun into a sickening blur.

I needed to see her things. I needed to smell her perfume. I needed to touch the books she read, to prove she had been here, that she was real.

I stumbled out of bed, my feet tangling in the sheets, and ran to her vanity.

It was bare.

No perfume bottles. No silver hairbrush. No stack of dog-eared fashion magazines.

I ripped open the drawers. Empty.

I ran to the closet, tearing the doors open. Her side was cleared out. Her dresses, her coats, her shoes. Gone.

Panic tightened around my throat like a noose.

"Giovanni!" I roared.

The heavy oak doors burst open. My head butler, Giovanni, rushed in. His face was pale, but as he took in the scene—the open drawers, my heaving chest—his expression settled into a mixture of pity and fear.

"Where are her things?" I demanded. I grabbed him by the lapels of his suit, hauling him close. "Who took them? Was it Sofia? Did that bitch touch her things?"

Giovanni did not flinch. He looked me dead in the eye.

"You did, sir."

I froze. My hands went slack on his jacket, the fabric slipping through my fingers.

"What?"

"Three weeks ago," Giovanni said quietly, his voice steady despite the chaos. "You ordered the staff to box up Mrs. Moretti's belongings. You said her presence was disturbing Miss Sofia's recovery. You said... you said you wanted the house clean of the past."

I stepped back, as if struck. My legs hit the edge of the bed, and I nearly collapsed.

"I did that?"

"Yes, sir."

I looked around the room. It wasn't a sanctuary. It was a tomb. I had erased her before she was even dead. I had prioritized the comfort of a liar over the existence of my wife.

"Where are they?" I whispered.

"Storage, sir. In the basement."

"Bring them back," I said, my voice breaking into a jagged shard. "Bring everything back. If a single hairpin is missing, I will kill everyone in this house."

Giovanni nodded. He turned to leave, then hesitated at the threshold.

"Sir."

"What?"

"The coroner delivered the urn this morning."

He gestured to the small table by the door.

I hadn't seen it. A simple marble box. Cold. Heavy.

I walked over to it, my movements stiff, mechanical. My hands hovered over the lid.

This was Elena now. Dust and bone fragments.

I fell to my knees. I pulled the urn against my chest, curling around it as if to shield it from the world. The marble was freezing against my bare skin.

I rocked back and forth. I whispered her name into the stone. I begged the dust for forgiveness.

But the dust did not answer. The room remained silent. And in the corner, Giovanni watched me, his eyes judging the monster who was weeping over the destruction he had caused.