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.