Seraphina POV

I woke the next morning to the acrid taste of bile rising in my throat.

I barely made it to the bathroom before I emptied my stomach, heaving until there was nothing left but dry, painful spasms.

I sat on the cold tile floor, trembling as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

It wasn't the stress. Deep down, I recognized this sensation. My mother had described this specific misery to me often enough.

Dread settled in my chest, heavier than the nausea.

I got dressed and drove myself to a clinic three towns over. I didn't take the main car; I took the old sedan. I paid in cash. I used a fake name.

The doctor was a kind, older woman with gentle hands who didn't ask why I kept my sunglasses on indoors. She ran the tests efficiently.

Ten minutes later, she came back with a warm smile.

"Congratulations," she said, beaming as if she were delivering a gift. "You're six weeks along."

The room spun. The white walls seemed to close in on me.

I was pregnant.

I was carrying the Vitiello-Moretti heir. The Crown Prince. The living treaty that would cement the alliance between our warring families in blood forever.

A month ago, this would have been the happiest news of my life. I would have rushed home to tell Dante. He would have spun me around, kissed my stomach, and treated me like a goddess bearing his legacy.

Now, the thought of his blood mixing with mine made the bile rise again.

I couldn't bring a child into this darkness. I couldn't raise a son to be a monster like his father, or a daughter to be a pawn like her mother.

I walked out of the clinic in a daze. I sat in my car for an hour, my hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.

My phone jarred me from the trance. Dante.

"Where are you?" he asked. No hello. No apology for last night.

"Running errands," I managed to say, my voice sounding hollow to my own ears.

"Be ready in an hour," he commanded. "We are going to the Lake Estate. I have business to attend to there, and I want you with me. It looks better if we are seen together after last night's... incident."

The Lake Estate. It was isolated. Private. Miles away from the city, surrounded by deep woods and dark water. A perfect place to hide a secret. Or a body.

"Okay," I whispered.

I drove back to the city, my mind racing. I stopped at a pharmacy, but I didn't buy vitamins. I bought a burner phone and a prepaid card.

When I got back to the penthouse, silence greeted me-until I heard voices drifting from the study. The door was cracked open.

"I'm telling you, Dante, I can't keep doing this," Valeria's voice whined, high and grating. "She's going to ruin everything."

"She is nothing, Valeria," Dante replied, his tone dismissive. "Stop worrying about her. Focus on what matters."

"What matters? Us? Or the brat she's eventually going to pop out?"

"There is no brat yet," Dante said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "And even if there is, it's just an heir. You, Valeria, are my pleasure."

I stood frozen in the hallway, the air leaving my lungs.

He didn't know I was pregnant. He was already dismissing our child-our flesh and blood-as "just an heir." A tool. A thing.

I touched my flat stomach, my protective instinct flaring hot and fierce.

I made a promise to the tiny cluster of cells inside me.

I will not let him have you.

I went to our bedroom and pulled out a travel bag. I didn't pack for a weekend trip.

I packed my jewelry-the pieces that were mine, not gifts from him. I packed the cash I had sewn into the lining of my winter coats. I packed the burner phone.

I wasn't going to the Lake Estate to play the happy, obedient wife.

I was going there to end this.

Seraphina POV

The drive to the Lake Estate was suffocating. Above us, the sky was a bruised gray, hanging low and leaden over the highway.

Dante navigated the Maserati with a terrifying ease, one hand resting casually on the wheel, the other hovering over the gear shift. He exuded a calm, detached power, looking utterly untouched by the wreckage of our marriage.

"You're quiet," he noted, his voice slicing through an hour of heavy silence.

"I have a headache," I lied, keeping my gaze fixed on the blurring trees.

He reached into the glove compartment without looking away from the road and tossed a plastic bottle into my lap.

"Take two," he commanded. "You need to be sharp. The Russos are meeting us there for dinner."

I gripped the bottle of aspirin until my knuckles turned white. To him, my pain was nothing more than a logistical error to be corrected.

When we finally arrived, the house loomed over the water like a fortress of glass and steel. It was cold, uninviting, and absolute. Below, the lake was black, its surface smooth as oil.

I went upstairs to unpack, needing to put distance between us. The master bedroom overlooked the water, and I stepped out onto the balcony, letting the wind whip my hair across my face.

That was when I saw it.

A car pulled up down the long, winding driveway. It wasn't the Russos.

It was a black sedan with tinted windows. A man stepped out. I didn't recognize his face, but I recognized the type instantly. He moved with the fluid, lethal grace of a predator. He wore a long coat, and in his hand, he carried a duffel bag that dragged slightly with weight.

This wasn't a dinner party.

Heart hammering against my ribs, I went downstairs.

Dante was in the kitchen, pouring a drink with his back to me.

"Who is that?" I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

Dante didn't turn around.

"Security," he said smoothly. "With the tension in the city, I wanted extra eyes on the perimeter."

He was lying. I could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders.

I walked closer, forcing myself to step into his space.

"Dante, look at me."

He turned slowly, swirling the amber liquid in his crystal glass. "What is it, Sera?"

"I know you're lying," I whispered. "I know about Valeria. I know you don't respect me. But tell me the truth now. Why are we really here?"

Dante set the glass down on the marble counter with a sharp clink. He walked over to me, his frame towering over mine, casting a long shadow.

He reached out, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear. His touch was gentle, almost tender, but his eyes were terrifyingly empty.

"We are here to fix things, Seraphina," he said softly. "We are here to make sure the Family has a future. Sometimes, to build something new, you have to clear away the old debris."

A chill, colder than the lake wind, ran down my spine. I understood.

I was the debris.

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. It felt like a benediction. Or last rites.

"Go change for dinner," he murmured against my skin. "Wear the white dress. I like you in white."

I turned and walked up the stairs, forcing one foot in front of the other even though my legs felt like lead.

Once inside the bathroom, I locked the door. My hands shook as I turned on the shower, letting the water roar to mask any sound.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the burner phone I had hidden days ago.

I dialed the number I had memorized from my father's old journals-a fail-safe from a life I thought I had left behind. A number for a man who didn't exist. A cleaner. A ghost.

"I need a hit," I whispered the moment the line connected.

"Who is the target?" a distorted, mechanical voice asked.

"Me," I said, staring at my reflection. "Make it look like an accident. Make it look like a rival family did it. But I need to disappear. Tonight."

There was a long pause on the other end.

"The price is high."

"I can pay," I said instantly.

"Done. Be ready at midnight."

I hung up and flushed the SIM card down the toilet.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I was pale. I was shaking. But my eyes were dry.

I put on the white dress. The silk draped over me like a shroud. I looked like a ghost already.

Tonight, Seraphina Vitiello would die. And from her ashes, something else would rise. Something that would make Dante Moretti wish he had never learned the true meaning of the word Vendetta.

I took a deep breath, opened the bathroom door, and walked out to meet my executioner.

Seraphina POV

The silence in the house wasn't simply empty; it was heavy, holding its breath, waiting for the scream.

I descended the floating staircase, the white silk of my dress whispering against my skin like a ghost trying to warn me. The living room was dim, lit only by the dying embers in the fireplace and the moonlight reflecting off the black lake outside.

There were no Russos. There was no dinner party.

Dante stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a tumbler of scotch in his hand. He wasn't looking at the view. He was staring at his own reflection in the glass, or perhaps looking right through it to the darkness beyond.

The man from the driveway-the one with the predator's gait-lounged on my velvet sofa, casually cleaning a fingernail with the tip of a switchblade.

"Where are the guests?" I asked. My voice was steady, a flat line on a heart monitor.

Dante turned. For a second, something flickered in his dark eyes. Regret? No. Sharks don't feel regret before they bite. They just roll their eyes back and strike.

"Plans changed," Dante said, his voice devoid of warmth. He downed his drink in one swallow. "Luca here brought me some disturbing intelligence. About you, Seraphina."

Luca. The Jackal. I knew the name, of course. He was a freelance cleaner, a myth made of blood and bone, the man who handled the jobs even the Vitiellos wouldn't touch.

"Intelligence?" I stepped off the last stair, my chin high. "Does this intelligence explain why your mistress is currently parking her car in our garage?"

Dante's jaw tightened, a muscle feathering in his cheek. "Valeria is here to assist."

"Assist with what? My execution?"

Luca chuckled, a dry, friction-filled sound like dead leaves scraping against concrete. "Not an execution, Mrs. Moretti. An extraction. We have proof you've been selling routes to the Irish."

I stared at him, the absurdity of the lie almost laughing in my throat. Then I looked at Dante.

The betrayal didn't sting anymore; it just rotted, turning black and necrotic in my chest. "And you believe him? You believe I would betray the Family?"

"I believe you are unhappy," Dante said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low. "I believe unhappy women do desperate things. And I believe Valeria found the wire transfers in your name."

"Valeria found them because she planted them," I countered, my voice rising. It was so obvious, so clumsy.

But Dante wasn't listening to logic. He was listening to the poison Valeria had been dripping into his ear for months. He wanted a reason to discard me. He wanted a justification to sever the Vitiello alliance without igniting a war.

A traitorous wife was the perfect casus belli.

The side door opened.

Valeria swept in. She wasn't wearing her signature red tonight. She was wearing black. Mourning clothes. She was already dressed for my funeral.

"It's all set up, Dante," she said, not even deigning to look at me. "The boat is ready. We can make it look like she tried to flee across the lake and capsized in the storm."

My hand went instinctively to my stomach. To the secret life growing there.

They weren't just going to kill me. They were going to erase me.

I glanced at the grandfather clock. 11:45 PM.

My contact-the cleaner I had arranged as a contingency-had said midnight.

Fifteen minutes. I had to stay alive for fifteen minutes.

"You're pathetic," I spat at Dante. "You're the Capo dei Capi, and you're letting a glorified secretary play you like a fiddle."

Dante crossed the room in two long strides. He grabbed my arm, his fingers digging bruisingly into the soft flesh.

"Watch your mouth, Seraphina. I am trying to give you a dignified exit."

"Dignified?" I laughed, and it sounded hysterical even to my own ears. "Drowning in a freezing lake is dignified?"

"It's better than what happens to traitors in the basement," he hissed, leaning close.

He pulled me toward the door. I dug my heels into the hardwood. I needed time.

"Dante, wait," I gasped, struggling against his grip. "There's something you don't know."

"I know enough."

"No!" I screamed. I twisted violently in his hold. "I'm pregnant!"

The words hung in the air, instantly freezing the room.

Dante stopped dead. His grip loosened, just a fraction. He looked down at my stomach, then up to my face. His eyes widened, the hard, impassive mask finally cracking.

"What?" he whispered.

Valeria let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. "Oh, please. She's lying, Dante. It's a desperate stall tactic. She's barren, remember? That's what the doctors said."

"I'm not lying," I said, my voice shaking but my eyes locking with his. "Six weeks. I went to the clinic today."

Dante looked back at me, a war raging behind his eyes-hope battling against suspicion.

"A child?"

"A lie!" Valeria shrieked. She rushed forward, grabbing Dante's free arm, her nails digging into his suit jacket. "She's manipulating you! She's stalling until her Irish contacts get here! Luca, tell him!"

Luca stood up, snapping the switchblade shut. "We're on a schedule, Boss. If we don't move now, the window closes."

Dante looked at me, then at Valeria. He was wavering. The Shark was hesitating.

And then Valeria did the one thing that sealed our fates.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.

"If you won't do it, I will," she spat, aiming the barrel at my chest. "I'm not losing everything because of a phantom brat."