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.

Seraphina Vitiello POV:

I exhaled a shallow breath, watching the faint plume of white mist dissipate into the absolute darkness of the underground morgue. The chill wasn't just in the air; it was a physical entity, clawing at my skin, dragging me back to the freezer they used to lock me in when I was seven. My shoulders convulsed uncontrollably.

The blood oozing from the gash on my forehead had already crystallized into dark red ice. I tried to pull my knees to my chest to preserve whatever body heat I had left, but my joints popped and ground together, screaming in stiff protest. The paper-thin hospital gown offered zero protection. The freezing air pierced straight through the cotton, sinking its teeth into my bone marrow.

My brain started playing tricks on me, starved of oxygen and warmth. The edges of my vision blurred into a gray static. Inside my chest, my heartbeat slowed to a sluggish, heavy thud. *Thump... pause... thump.* It was so faint I could barely feel it against my own ribs.

A harsh, metallic grinding noise shattered the silence. The heavy steel door of the morgue groaned open.

The sickly yellow light from the hallway sliced through the pitch-black room like a physical blade. The sudden glare stabbed my pupils. I squeezed my eyes shut, and the involuntary movement forced a single, physiological tear from the corner of my eye. The second the teardrop slid down my cheek, the freezing air caught it, hardening it into a solid bead of ice against my skin.

Heavy, muffled footsteps echoed against the frosted concrete floor. Custom Italian leather shoes. I didn't need to open my eyes to know who it was.

Dante's massive shadow swallowed my curled-up form entirely. He stopped exactly two feet away from my face. The sheer, suffocating weight of his presence pressed down on my crushed lungs.

"Do you know what you did wrong?" Dante's voice bounced off the frozen steel cabinets, devoid of any warmth, completely empty of the man I had bled for.

I tried to draw breath to answer, but the freezing air hit my lungs like I was swallowing a handful of shattered glass. A violent spasm of pain wracked my chest, stealing my voice. I forced my heavy, purple eyelids open, looking up at the man I had loved with my very life for seven years.

He looked down at me, and in his ice-blue eyes, I saw nothing but absolute disgust. There was only his fierce protection for Isabella.

Deep inside my chest, the tight, frayed string that I had labeled 'hope' made a crisp, snapping sound. It didn't stretch. It didn't fray further. It just broke.

I didn't scream. I didn't hysterically beg him to check the security cameras or look at the trajectory of Isabella's fall. I let my frozen eyelids droop, completely shadowing the last dying spark of light in my pupils.

I forced my jaw to unlock. My lips were stiff, numb pieces of meat.

"I'm sorry," I pushed the words out. My voice was a mechanical, hoarse rasp. There was no soul in it. No defense. Just an empty echo.

Dante's brow snapped together. The dead, lifeless submission in my tone seemed to irritate him instantly. His jaw clenched tight.

"Look at me when you speak," he commanded, his voice dropping an octave.

I tilted my head back numbly. I stared right into his eyes, but my gaze was entirely vacant. I looked at him with the exact same eyes as the corpses occupying the steel drawers around us.

That dead stare seemed to sting him. Anger flashed across his features. He leaned down, his large hand shooting out to grip my chin in a bruising hold.

The second his warm palm made contact with my jaw, his entire body flinched. He froze.

The extreme, corpse-like temperature of my skin shot straight through his fingertips, traveling up his arm and slamming into his spine. A violent shudder ripped through his massive frame. For a split second, a raw, primal panic seized his features—a terror that bypassed all his mafia training and struck his core.

He violently yanked me off the frosted floor, crushing my freezing body against his chest. He turned toward the open doorway, his composure completely shattered.

"Get a doctor! Now!"