Elena POV

I don't know how long I was in the dark.

Time warps when your blood is turning to slush. It becomes a viscous, endless loop.

I huddled in the corner, wrapping my arms around my knees, hallucinating warmth.

I saw my mother. I saw the nightlight Dante made me years ago. I saw the fire that was coming.

Then, the door opened.

Light blinded me. Dante stood there, his silhouette framed by the harsh kitchen lights. He looked... shaken. His chest heaved, as if he had run all the way here. Maybe he thought he’d find a corpse.

"Get up," he said. His voice was rough, like gravel grinding against glass.

I couldn't feel my feet. I tried to stand and collapsed.

He cursed and stepped inside, scooping me up. His body heat was a shock to my system, a violent collision of fire and ice. I wanted to lean into it. I wanted to bite him.

"You're going to the hospital," he said, carrying me out. "Dr. Ricci will stabilize you. And then you stay there. Under guard. Until the ceremony is over."

"You... hate me," I chattered, my teeth clacking together uncontrollably.

"I don't hate you, Elena," he whispered against my hair, his grip tightening. "I mourn who you used to be."

He put me in the car.

At the private hospital, they wrapped me in heated blankets. They put an IV in my arm.

Dante stayed for ten minutes. He checked his watch, the movement jerky, agitated.

"I have to go," he said. "Sofia is terrified. She needs me."

"Go," I whispered. "Marry her."

He hesitated at the door. He looked at me one last time, a war waging behind his eyes. I memorized his face. The sharp jaw. The cruel mouth. The eyes that used to be my world.

"Goodbye, Dante."

He frowned at the finality in my tone, but he left.

As soon as the elevator dinged, the nurse walked in.

She wasn't my usual nurse. She had a scar over her eyebrow and eyes like flint, void of any professional warmth.

"Mrs. Moretti?" she asked.

"Is it time?"

"The shift change is in five minutes. The guards are distracted."

She pulled a syringe from her pocket. Not a sedative. An adrenaline blocker to slow the heart rate of the cadaver she had stashed in the laundry cart.

"The body?" I asked.

"Jane Doe. Heroin overdose. Same height, same build. We dressed her in your gown."

I got out of bed. My legs were weak, but adrenaline surged through me, artificial and electric.

I took off my wedding ring. The diamond was heavy. It felt like a shackle.

I placed it on the bedside table. It clicked against the wood—the sound of a lock springing open.

The nurse helped me climb into the laundry cart, under the pile of dirty sheets. She pulled the Jane Doe out and placed her in the bed, arranging the limbs with efficient, clinical detachment.

She doused the room in rubbing alcohol. Then she poured a canister of gasoline she had smuggled in.

"Ready?" she whispered.

"Burn it," I said.

She lit a match and tossed it onto the bed.

The fumes ignited with a concussive blast.

The heat was instantaneous. The fire alarm shrieked. Sprinklers hissed, but the accelerant was too strong.

The nurse pushed the cart out of the room, screaming, "Fire! Help! Fire in Room 302!"

I lay curled under the sheets, listening to the chaos. The shouting. The running feet. The explosion of the oxygen tanks.

We moved through the service corridors. Down the freight elevator. Out into the cool night air.

A black van was waiting.

I climbed in. I didn't look back at the hospital. I didn't look back at the smoke rising into the New York skyline.

I looked at my bare ring finger.

Elena Moretti died in that fire.

The woman sitting in the van was someone else entirely. And she was finally free.

Dante POV:

The organ music swelled, reverberating against the vaulted ceiling of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Hundreds of eyes were on me. The heads of the Five Families. The politicians on my payroll. They were all here to witness the so-called "unity."

Sofia stood at the altar. Her arm was bandaged, a calculated prop to remind everyone of Elena’s alleged madness. She looked beautiful.

But to me, she looked like a stranger.

"Do you, Dante Moretti, take this woman..." the priest began.

My chest felt tight, as if an iron band were constricting my lungs. A sense of wrongness clawed at my throat. I touched the pocket where I kept Elena’s origami crane, a habit I couldn't break—a talisman against the lie I was living.

Suddenly, a murmur rippled through the pews.

Then a gasp.

I turned.

The massive screens set up to broadcast the ceremony flickered violently. The image of our family crest vanished in a wash of static.

In its place was a video. Grainy, low-light footage.

It was Sofia. But not the demure woman standing in front of me. This woman was wearing leather, dancing on a pole in a club I instantly recognized as a Russian front.

The video cut to her sitting in a booth with a man. A known rival Capo.

"Cracking Moretti is too easy," the woman on the screen laughed, thumbing through a stack of cash. "The wife is a non-factor. And the Don? He's blinded by his own guilt. I'll have the codes in a month."

Silence descended on the cathedral. Heavy. Suffocating.

I looked at Sofia.

Her face had drained of all color. She looked like a trapped rat.

"It's a deepfake!" she shrieked, her voice cracking. "It's Elena! She did this!"

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Then the Capo’s phone in the front row. Then everyone’s—a cascading wave of buzzing that drowned out the organ.

I pulled it out.

*URGENT: EXPLOSION AT SAINT JUDE’S HOSPITAL. VIP WING DESTROYED.*

The world stopped spinning.

The VIP wing. Room 302.

I didn't look at Sofia. I didn't look at the priest.

I ran.

I sprinted down the aisle, shoving past the confused guests. I burst out of the heavy doors and threw myself into my car.

"Hospital!" I screamed at the driver. "Go!"

We tore through the city. Smoke was already visible, a black pillar choking the stars.

When we arrived, it was an inferno. Firefighters were battling the flames, but the third floor was nothing but a skeleton of charred steel.

"Elena!" I roared, trying to push past the police line.

"Sir, you can't go in there!" a cop shouted, grabbing me.

I threw him off. "My wife is in there!"

"The roof collapsed, sir! No one survived the third floor!"

I froze.

No.

She couldn't be dead. She was Elena. She was the light. You can't kill the light.

A firefighter walked out of the smoke, soot streaking his face. He was carrying a plastic evidence bag.

"We found this in the debris of Room 302," he said to his captain, his voice grim. "It survived the heat."

I saw the glint of metal.

I snatched the bag from his hand.

Inside was a diamond ring. *The* ring. The custom setting I had designed myself. The platinum was warped, twisted by unimaginable force, but the diamond was unmistakable.

"No," I whispered.

My knees hit the asphalt.

The roar of the fire faded. The sirens faded.

All I could hear was the sound of my own heart shattering into a million pieces.

Dante POV:

The whiskey burned on the way down, a liquid fire that did nothing to cauterize the gaping wound in my chest.

Nothing hurt enough to match the void she had left behind.

I slumped in the darkness of my study, the only illumination coming from the moonlight bleeding through the blinds. The ring sat on the mahogany desk in front of me. I had been staring at the diamond for two days, waiting for it to speak, to forgive.

The heavy door creaked open.

Sofia slipped inside. She was a shadow wrapped in a black silk robe, sheer enough to tease the lace beneath. She didn't smell like mourning. She smelled of expensive perfume and opportunity.

"Dante," she cooed, sauntering toward me. "You haven't slept."

"Get out," I said. My voice was gravel, scraping against my throat.

"You need comfort," she whispered. She rounded the desk, her hands sliding onto my shoulders like cold weights. "She was sick, Dante. She started the fire. She wanted to die. You can't blame yourself for her madness."

She ran her palms down my chest, tracing the muscles.

"We are the survivors," she murmured, her voice dripping with rehearsed sympathy. "We need to live. For the Family."

She lowered herself onto my lap, straddling me. She leaned in, her lips parting to kiss me.

I snatched her wrists, halting her.

I looked at her. I scrutinized her.

There was no sadness in her eyes. Only calculation. Only a predator's hunger.

"You're glad she's dead," I said.

"I'm glad you're free," she corrected, leaning closer. The silk of her robe slipped, exposing the curve of her shoulder.

My eyes dropped to her collarbone.

Smooth, unblemished skin.

I froze.

"Where is it?" I asked, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.

"What?"

"The scar," I said, my grip crushing her wrists. "Giulia fell out of a tree when she was ten. She needed twelve stitches. She had a jagged, silver scar right here."

Sofia’s eyes widened. Panic flickered behind her mask. She tried to pull away. "I... I had it removed. Laser surgery. To look perfect for you, baby."

"Laser surgery doesn't erase deep tissue scarring," I snarled.

I shoved her off me. She stumbled back, barely keeping her balance in her heels.

"And Giulia was allergic to strawberries," I said, rising from the chair like a waking nightmare. "You ate a strawberry tart at the rehearsal dinner."

"I grew out of it!" she stammered, retreating toward the door. "People change!"

I stalked toward her. The predator in me snapped its chains. The grief was still there, but now it was fueling something darker.

Rage.

"Get out of my sight," I said, the command vibrating in the air. "Go to your room. If you try to leave the estate, the dogs will be the least of your worries."

"Dante, baby, you're just stressed..."

"GO!" I roared, snatching a crystal tumbler and hurling it against the wall.

It shattered inches from her head. She fled, slamming the door behind her.

Silence rushed back in, deafening and cold.

I looked down at my own chest, at the tattoo inked over my heart. *XY*.

Xu Yuan. Elena’s birth name. The name only I was supposed to know.

I had betrayed that name. I had tortured the woman who bore it.

And for what?

For a stranger with smooth skin and a heart full of lies.

A terrible, serpentine suspicion began to coil in my gut, turning my blood to ice.

I snatched up the phone.

"Get the car," I ordered my head of security. "We're going to the morgue. I need to see the body."