Seraphina Vitiello POV

My phone buzzed against the nightstand, a harsh, insistent vibration that rattled my teeth.

I stared at the screen, the glow illuminating the dark hollow of my room.

*Dante Moretti.*

The name used to make my heart perform gymnastics. Now, it just made my stomach turn sour.

*Penthouse. Suite 1808. Now.*

A command. Not a request.

In my past life, I would have rushed over, breathless, thinking he finally wanted to talk. Thinking he had remembered the truth.

I knew better now.

But I had to play the part. The obedient little sister. The punching bag.

If I deviated too much, too fast, they would lock me up before I could ever escape.

I pulled on a simple black dress. No makeup. No jewelry.

I looked like a shadow. That’s what I was.

The building was a fortress owned by the Outfit—a mixed-use high-rise where the top floors served as private recovery suites for the elite.

I took the elevator up, watching the numbers climb.

18...

The doors slid open with a soft chime.

Two guards stood outside the suite. They didn't even check me for weapons.

After all, who fears the spare?

I pushed the heavy door open.

The suite smelled of lilies and sandalwood—the scent of expensive funerals.

Dante was there.

He was leaning against the mahogany desk, his suit jacket discarded, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the tan skin of his throat.

He was devastatingly handsome. Dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes like shattered ice.

And Isabella was in his lap.

She was giggling, tracing the line of his jaw with a manicured finger. Her dress was hiked up high on her thighs.

They looked like a centerfold for a vice magazine.

Isabella gasped when she saw me, feigning shock. She buried her face in Dante’s neck.

"Dante, you didn't tell me she was coming," she whined.

Dante didn't look at her. He looked at me.

His gaze was cold. Predatory.

"I wanted her to see," he said. His voice was a low baritone that vibrated through the floorboards.

"See what?" I asked. My voice was steady. Dead.

"This." Dante gestured to Isabella, to the luxury around them, to the power he wore like a second skin. "I wanted you to see what loyalty looks like. What perfection looks like."

He stood up, gently setting Isabella aside.

He walked toward me. He towered over me, radiating heat and suppressed violence.

"You told your father you were leaving," he said. "Going to London."

"Yes."

"Good," he sneered. "Because I'm tired of your desperate attempts to claim credit for saving me. I'm tired of your jealousy."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy cream envelope.

He shoved it into my hand. The corner dug sharply into my palm.

"The wedding invitation," he said. "Consider it a command. I want you there. I want you to watch us say our vows. I want you to understand, once and for all, that you are nothing."

I looked down at the invitation.

*Dante Moretti & Isabella Vitiello.*

The calligraphy was exquisite. Like a beautiful epitaph.

"Understood," I said.

Dante paused. He was expecting tears. He was expecting me to scream that I was Seven, the girl who had dragged him from hell.

"Understood?" he repeated, his eyes narrowing.

"Message received," I said. "I wish you a long reign."

I turned to leave.

"Wait," Dante barked.

I stopped.

"You're pathetic," he spat. "Look at you. You don't even have the fire to fight for yourself."

"Fire burns, Dante," I said softly, refusing to turn back. "I'm done burning."

I walked out.

I heard Isabella laughing behind me. A cruel, tinkling sound like breaking glass.

Dante escorted her out a moment later. They were heading to the club at the base of the tower.

I followed them out of the building, keeping my distance, a ghost haunting the living.

The Chicago wind cut through my thin dress like a knife.

They stood on the curb, waiting for the valet. Dante had his arm around her waist, shielding her from the cold.

I stood ten feet away, shivering.

Above us, the old neon sign of the jazz club flickered ominously.

*The Blue Note.*

I heard the shriek of metal before I saw it.

A rusted bolt gave way.

The heavy steel frame of the sign groaned and detached from the brick facade.

It plummeted.

"Dante!" Isabella screamed.

Dante looked up.

He had a split second.

I was standing to his left. Isabella was to his right.

The sign was wide. It was going to hit us all.

He moved with the unnatural speed of a killer.

He lunged.

But he didn't lunge for me.

He threw his body over Isabella, tackling her to the pavement, shielding her with his own broad back.

He left me standing there.

The metal crashed down.

Pain obliterated my shoulder, my back, my legs.

The world turned white, then red.

I was pinned. Crushed under twisted steel and shattered glass.

I couldn't breathe.

I turned my head against the gritty asphalt. Blood was pooling warm and sticky around my face.

I saw Dante.

He was standing up, dusting off his suit. He was unharmed.

He was pulling Isabella to her feet.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her, his voice frantic. "Bella, look at me."

"I... I think I scraped my knee," she sobbed.

He hugged her tight. "I've got you. You're safe."

He didn't look left.

He didn't look at the pile of debris five feet away.

He didn't look at me.

I closed my eyes as the darkness took me.

The boy I saved in the safe house was truly dead.

And this time, I hoped I was too.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

I woke up to the rhythmic, relentless beeping of a machine.

My body felt pulverized, as if I had been dragged miles over asphalt and left to rot.

My left arm was encased in a heavy plaster cast. My ribs were taped tight enough to restrict my shallow breaths. My head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache that synced perfectly with the monitor's pulse.

I opened my eyes.

The room was white. Blindingly sterile. And completely empty.

No flowers. No cards. No parents.

A nurse bustled in, checking a clipboard. She jolted slightly when she saw me awake.

"Oh, you're up," she said. Her voice was kind, but her eyes held a heavy, suffocating pity. "You've been in a coma for two days."

Two days.

"Where is my family?" I rasped. My throat felt like I had swallowed sandpaper.

The nurse hesitated. She fiddled with the IV drip, avoiding my gaze.

"They're... down the hall," she finally admitted. "In the VIP suite."

"Isabella?"

"She's being treated for shock," the nurse said, her tone carefully neutral. "And a minor abrasion on her knee."

I almost laughed, but the spasm hurt my ribs too much.

Shock.

I had been crushed by a neon sign, and my sister was in the VIP suite for shock.

"I need to walk," I said.

"You shouldn't—"

"I need to walk."

I forced myself up. The pain was blinding, white-hot and jagged, but I welcomed it. It made me feel real.

I dragged my IV pole down the hallway, the metal wheels squeaking against the linoleum like a dying animal.

I heard them before I saw them.

Laughter. Bright, unburdened laughter.

The door to the VIP suite was open.

My mother was peeling a grape. My father was pouring wine.

Isabella was sitting up in bed, looking radiant in a silk robe, holding Dante's hand.

"Poor baby," my mother cooed. "That sign could have killed you."

"Dante saved me," Isabella said, looking at him with practiced adoration. "He's my hero."

Dante smiled at her. It was a soft smile. The kind he used to give me in the dark, back when I thought I mattered.

"Always," he said.

A waiter wheeled in a cart. A silver tureen of soup.

"Seafood bisque," the waiter announced. "With caviar."

Isabella wrinkled her nose. "I don't want it. It's too rich."

She looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, a broken ghost in a hospital gown.

Her eyes lit up with a sharp, glittering malice.

"Oh, Seraphina!" she chirped. "You're awake! Look, Dante, she's fine."

Dante turned. His expression hardened instantly, the warmth vanishing as if doused by ice water.

"You're walking," he noted, his voice flat. "Clearly not that injured."

"Isabella doesn't want her soup," my mother said, waving a hand dismissively. "Give it to Seraphina. She looks pale. She needs the protein."

I stared at the soup.

Creamy. Pink. Lethal.

"I'm allergic to shellfish," I said quietly.

The room went silent.

"Don't be ungrateful," my father snapped, slamming his wine glass down. "It's fifty dollars a bowl."

"She's always been picky," Isabella sighed, leaning back against her pillows. "Just like when she refused to eat the leftovers at Christmas."

Dante looked at me with disgust. "Your sister offers you kindness, and you throw it in her face? Eat the soup, Seraphina."

"It will kill me," I said.

"Stop being dramatic," Dante said, his jaw clenching. "You're just trying to get attention because I saved her and not you."

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

"You're right," I said, my voice hollow. "I am dramatic."

I turned and walked away.

I navigated the corridors in a haze, forcing my broken body to the pharmacy counter myself to get my pain meds.

Later, I sat by the hospital fountain in the courtyard. The water was cold and clear.

I just wanted five minutes of peace.

"You look like a corpse," a voice said.

Isabella stood there. She was wearing her silk robe, smoking a slim cigarette, looking entirely out of place against the sterile backdrop.

"What do you want, Isabella?"

"I want you to know that he's mine," she hissed. She stepped closer, smoke curling from her lips. "He chose me. He saved me. You were just roadkill."

"I know," I said. "You can have him."

"Liar," she spat. "You still want him. I see it in your eyes."

"I don't want garbage," I said.

Her face twisted, the pretty mask slipping.

She lunged at me.

She grabbed my shoulders and shoved.

I was weak. My balance was gone. I had nothing left to fight with.

I fell backward into the stone fountain.

The water was freezing.

My cast soaked it up instantly, dragging my arm down like an anchor.

My stitches tore.

A cloud of red blood bloomed in the clear water, swirling like smoke.

"Help!" Isabella screamed.

She ripped her own robe, scratched her own neck with manic precision.

"Help! She's trying to drown me!"

Dante burst into the courtyard.

He saw me in the water. He saw the blood.

Then he saw Isabella screaming.

He didn't ask. He didn't think.

He ran to Isabella.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

The water around me was diluting into a soft, sickening pink.

The cold didn't just touch me; it seeped into the marrow of my bones, numbing the fresh, searing fire of my torn stitches.

Dante stripped off his coat and wrapped it around Isabella’s trembling shoulders.

"She tried to pull me in!" Isabella sobbed, burying her face into the solid wall of his chest. "She said if she couldn't have you, no one could!"

Dante’s gaze shifted. He looked down at me.

I was struggling to find purchase in the shallow water. My heavy cast, now waterlogged, acted like a concrete anchor dragging my broken shoulder down.

"Is this true?" he demanded. His voice was zero degrees.

"Would it matter if I said no?" I asked. My teeth chattered so hard the words were chopped into pieces.

"You're pathetic," Dante said, his lip curling. "Trying to hurt your sister? After everything your family does for you?"

"Does for me?" A wet, jagged laugh tore from my throat. "They use me for spare parts, Dante. And you... you're just blind."

The muscle in his jaw ticked.

"Get out of the water," he ordered.

I tried. I slipped against the slick tiles.

He didn't offer a hand. He didn't move. He simply watched me struggle like a drowning insect in a glass jar.

It took everything I had to drag my body over the limestone rim of the fountain. I collapsed onto the pavement, dripping wet, shivering violently.

My parents came running out, a phalanx of bodyguards flanking them.

"My baby!" My mother shrieked, rushing past me to get to Isabella.

My father stopped in front of me. He saw the blood blooming on my hospital gown. But more importantly, he saw the defiance I refused to extinguish.

He stepped into my space and slapped me.

It landed with significantly more force than the strike in his office.

My head snapped back. The metallic tang of copper filled my mouth.

"You ungrateful bitch," he roared, his face purple with rage. "Attacking your sister? In public?"

"She pushed me," I whispered through split lips.

"Liar!" Isabella screamed from the safety of Dante’s arms.

"Enough," Dante said.

The word was quiet, but it cut through the noise like a blade. He stepped forward. He was the Don here. His word was law.

"She needs to be taught a lesson," Dante said, his eyes devoid of humanity. "She needs to cool off."

My father nodded, understanding the code immediately. "The cooler?"

The cooler.

The hospital morgue. The overflow storage. It was kept at a permanent, preserving thirty-five degrees.

"No," I whispered, panic finally piercing through the shock. "Please. I'm bleeding."

"You should have thought of that before you touched her," Dante said.

He signaled the guards with a sharp jerk of his chin.

Two massive men hoisted me up by my arms.

Agony shot through my broken shoulder, blinding and white-hot. I screamed.

Dante didn't flinch. He turned his back to me, focusing entirely on wiping a stray tear from Isabella's cheek.

They dragged me through the labyrinth of basement corridors.

The air grew heavier, colder.

They hauled open a heavy steel door. The chemical stench of formaldehyde slammed into me.

Rows of body bags lay still on metal racks, waiting.

"Enjoy the quiet," the guard sneered, and shoved me inside.

The door slammed shut with a final, resounding boom.

Darkness.

Absolute, freezing darkness.

I slid down the wall, curling into a tight ball to preserve whatever heat I had left.

My wet clothes clung to my skin like sheets of ice.

My stitches were definitely open. I could feel the warm, steady trickle of blood mapping a path down my side.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

In the dark, my mind drifted back to the safe house.

I remembered Dante lying on a cot, his eyes bandaged, vulnerable.

I remembered the way he shivered from the fever.

*“I’m cold, Seven,”* he had whispered, his voice rough with pain.

I had climbed into the narrow cot with him. I had held him, pressing my body against his, whispering stories to keep him anchored to reality.

*“You’re warm,”* he had murmured into my hair. *“You’re the only warm thing in this world.”*

I laughed in the pitch black of the morgue.

A tear froze on my cheek.

You were wrong, Dante.

I'm not warm anymore.

I'm finally just as cold as you.