Elena Vitiello POV

The air on South Mountain was thin, stripping the moisture from my lungs with every labored breath.

Dante walked ahead of me. He carried the heavy pack with the ease of a soldier, his muscles shifting beneath his shirt in a rhythmic, hypnotic cadence.

For a few hours, the world felt small. It was just the crunch of gravel under our boots and the synchronized sound of our breathing.

It was a dangerous nostalgia.

It made me remember why I had loved him. He wasn't always the Capo who broke promises. He was the boy who used to bandage my scraped knees with gentle hands.

I stepped on a loose rock. My ankle rolled.

The earth tilted violently as gravity claimed me.

"Elena!"

Dante moved faster than thought. He dropped the gear and lunged, his body hitting the dirt to break my fall before I could strike the jagged stones.

We hit the ground hard. I landed on his chest.

He groaned, a sharp, guttural sound that vibrated against my ribs.

"Are you okay?" His hands were instantly in my hair, checking for blood. His eyes were wide, frantic.

"I'm fine," I whispered. I looked down. His pant leg was torn. Blood was seeping through the denim, staining it black in the twilight. "Your knee."

"It's fine," he gritted out, sitting up. He didn't let go of me.

For a second, we were just us. The history between us hung heavy in the air, a ghost that refused to be exorcised.

He looked at my lips.

I pulled away. I stood up, brushing the dirt from my clothes to hide the tremor in my hands.

"We should go back," I said. "You're bleeding."

"No." Dante stood up, testing his weight. He winced but forced a smile. "I promised you the meteor shower. We're staying."

We set up camp at the summit. The wind whipped at the nylon tent.

The meteors came. Streaks of white fire tearing through the black canvas of the sky.

Dante lay on his back, staring up.

"Make a wish, El," he whispered.

I didn't close my eyes. I stared at the dying stars.

I didn't wish for him anymore. I didn't wish for love.

I wished for the strength to burn everything down to ash.

I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing. It used to be my lullaby. Now it was just noise.

When I woke up, the sleeping bag next to me was cold.

I crawled out of the tent. The sun was bleeding over the horizon, painting the rocks in shades of bruised purple.

Dante wasn't at the campsite.

I heard a voice. Feverish. Loud.

I followed the sound to the cliff edge, where the famous "Lovers' Tree" stood. A chain-link fence wrapped around an old oak, covered in thousands of rusting padlocks.

Dante was there. He was holding his phone up, FaceTime active.

"See?" he said, his voice triumphant. "I told you, baby. It's right here."

He zoomed in on a rusted brass lock. Dante & Sofia Forever.

My stomach dropped. It felt like I had swallowed a stone.

"Oh my god!" Sofia's voice came through tinny and shrill. "I remember! We threw the key off the cliff!"

"Yeah," Dante laughed. He looked relieved. Desperate. "We did. Nothing can break this lock, Sofia. Nothing."

He hadn't climbed the mountain to apologize to me.

He hadn't taken the hit to his knee to keep a promise to me.

He needed to verify a memory for her. He needed to prove his devotion to the ghost he was trying to resurrect.

I was just the excuse. I was the chaperone for his trip down memory lane.

He turned around, still smiling at the screen. Then he saw me.

The smile died.

"I have to go, Sof," he muttered, hanging up.

He shoved the phone in his pocket. He looked guilty. Like a child caught with his hand in the jar.

"She called," he said. "She was panicking."

"You brought me here to find the lock," I said. It wasn't a question.

"No." He stepped toward me. "Elena, don't be like that. The trip was for us. The lock was just... since we were here..."

"I'm going down," I said.

"Wait." He reached for me. "Let me pack the tent. My knee is stiff, I need a minute."

"Pack it yourself," I said.

I turned my back on him.

I walked down the mountain alone.

Every step sent a jolt of pain through my rolled ankle, but I didn't stop. The physical pain was a grounding distraction.

I didn't wait for him at the trailhead. I called a car.

I texted Matteo.

I'm sick.

I turned off my phone.

I didn't want to hear Dante's excuses. I didn't want to hear him tell me that he loved me while he was building shrines to another woman.

He came home four hours later.

He didn't check on me. He assumed I was sulking.

I lay in bed and listened to him whistling in the shower.

He was happy. He had secured his past.

He didn't realize he had just lost his future.

The humiliation was no longer a private affair; it had transformed into a public spectacle.

Dante and Sofia were inescapable.

They walked hand in hand through the estate gardens, parading their fabricated happiness. They sat on the patio of Dante's villa, perfectly framed by the window of Matteo's guest suite.

I watched as she fed him grapes. He laughed, throwing his head back, wearing a look of youthfulness I hadn't seen on his face in years.

My phone buzzed against the nightstand, breaking the trance.

Dante: Don't look out the window. It's just for show. She needs constant reassurance or the doctors say she'll regress.

I didn't reply. I couldn't.

Dante: I'm planning a fake proposal. Just to seal the memory. Then I can start weaning her off. Trust me.

A fake proposal.

The irony tasted like ash.

He had proposed to me in the front seat of a car, in the breathless space between hits. He had tossed a velvet ring box into my lap with trembling hands and said, "We should get this over with."

For me, it had been an afterthought. For her, he was planning theater.

"Donna Elena."

I turned. A maid hovered in the doorway, clutching a tablet.

"The Don sent this. He said you should approve the venue."

I took the device, my fingers brushing the cool screen.

It was a video file.

The interior of St. Patrick's Cathedral filled the display, but not as the world knew it.

It had been transfigured. Thousands of black roses lined the aisle, devouring the light. Candelabras as tall as men stood like silent sentinels, weeping wax onto the stone. It was Gothic. Dark. Oppressive.

It was magnificent.

It looked like a coronation for the Queen of the Underworld.

"It's perfect," I whispered.

"Who sent you that?"

Sofia stood in the doorway. She had walked right in, bypassing security with the codes Dante had undoubtedly gifted her.

She peered at the screen, her eyes widening.

"Wow," she breathed. "Is that... for Matteo's wedding?"

"Yes," I said, my voice steady.

"He must really love her," Sofia mused, a trace of envy bleeding into her tone. "Dante's proposal plans are... sweet. But this? This is power."

She didn't know the bride was me.

"Matteo returns tomorrow," I said, locking the screen and severing the image. "The wedding is in two days."

Dante appeared behind Sofia, his energy frantic.

"Why are you bothering Elena?" he snapped at Sofia, though his hand rested with practiced gentleness on her waist.

"We were just looking at Matteo's wedding venue," Sofia replied innocently.

Dante's eyes snapped to me, dark with annoyance.

"Stop obsessing over Matteo's wedding," he said to me, his voice sharp. "Focus on your role. You're supposed to be the grieving ex-fiancée who supports her sister-in-law. Don't get too lost in the fantasy of being Matteo's wife, Elena. It's creepy."

He thought I was roleplaying. He believed I was staring at the venue to torture myself with 'what ifs.'

"I know my role, Dante," I said coldly.

"Good," he clipped. "Come on, Sofia. We have to go."

"Where?" Sofia asked, blinking up at him.

"Surprise," Dante winked.

He led her away, leaving me in the silence.

The next morning, Sofia banged on my door.

"You have to come!" she cried, practically vibrating with excitement. "Dante is acting so weird. He's taking me to the Botanical Gardens. I think he's going to do it!"

"Do what?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

"Propose!" She grabbed my hand, her grip desperate. "Please, Elena. I don't have any family. You're the closest thing I have to a sister. Be there for me?"

I looked at her. The innocence was so thick it was suffocating.

"Okay," I said. "I'll come."

I wanted to see it.

I needed to witness the brutal difference between duty and desire.

We drove to the gardens.

It was a wonderland of pink peonies and white lilies, the air sweet enough to rot teeth. Soft, instrumental music drifted from hidden speakers.

It was a fairy tale.

Dante was waiting under a gazebo draped in lush vines.

He looked handsome. Nervous.

When he saw me, his jaw tightened. He hadn't expected Sofia to bring an audience.

But he couldn't break character.

Slowly, with the weight of a thousand lies pressing down on him, he lowered himself onto one knee.

Elena Vitiello POV

The diamond was a pear-shaped monstrosity that caught the sunlight, fracturing it into a thousand mocking rainbows.

"Sofia," Dante said, his voice trembling with a depth of emotion I had never heard directed at me. "You are my life. My breath. Marry me."

Sofia burst into tears. "Yes! Yes!"

She threw her arms around him, sobbing into his neck.

Then, she pulled back, looking at me with wide, expectant eyes. "Elena! Give us your blessing! Please!"

Dante looked at me over her shoulder. His eyes were pleading. Just say it. End the scene.

"I wish you eternity," I said.

The words tasted like ash.

Then the world turned orange.

A boom shook the ground, vibrating through the soles of my shoes.

Someone had rigged the gazebo. Or maybe it was a gas line. It didn't matter what the cause was; the effect was immediate devastation.

Fire erupted from the base of the structure. The dry vines caught instantly, turning the romantic archway into a cage of flame.

Heat blasted my face, singeing my eyelashes.

Panic erupted. The guests screamed, a collective wail of terror.

I was standing right next to Dante.

The fire roared, a living beast consuming the oxygen. A beam from the gazebo roof cracked and swung down with a groan of splintering wood.

Dante lunged.

He grabbed the arm of the woman next to him.

Me.

He pulled me hard, dragging me two steps toward the exit, his grip bruisingly tight.

Then Sofia screamed. "Dante!"

He froze.

He looked at me. He looked at his hand gripping my arm.

Realization dawned in his eyes-a flicker of horror. He had grabbed me by instinct.

But instinct wasn't love.

He shoved me.

It wasn't a gentle push. He planted his hands on my chest and thrown me backward, away from safety, back toward the collapsing structure as if my touch burned him.

"Sofia!" he roared, diving back into the smoke.

I stumbled. My heel caught on a root. I fell hard.

My ankle twisted with a sickening pop.

I tried to crawl, clawing at the dirt.

The crowd was stampeding. Panicked guests trampled my legs, my back, their shoes digging into my flesh.

A piece of burning wood fell from the ceiling. It struck my left shoulder blade.

I screamed, but the sound was lost in the roar of the fire.

The smell of burning fabric choked me. The smell of burning skin followed.

I looked up through the smoke, tears streaming down my face from the heat.

I saw Dante. He had Sofia in his arms. He was shielding her face with his jacket, carrying her through the wall of fire, running toward the light.

He didn't look back.

He left me to burn.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, the light was blindingly white and the air smelled of antiseptic.

I was moving. A gurney.

"Trauma One is prepped!" a nurse shouted. "We have two victims from the fire."

"We only have one sterile suite available for immediate grafting!" a doctor yelled back. "The other is occupied."

I turned my head. It was agony, a spike of white-hot pain shooting down my neck.

Dante was running alongside the other gurney. Sofia was crying, holding her hand. A small burn marred her forearm.

"She needs the suite!" Dante screamed at the doctor. "She's an actress! Her skin is her life! No scars! Do you hear me? No scars!"

"Sir, the other patient-" the doctor pointed at me, his expression frantic. "She has third-degree burns on her back. She needs the sterile environment more or she could go into shock."

Dante looked at me.

I met his gaze.

I saw the hesitation. I saw the guilt.

But I also saw the decision.

"Save Sofia first," he said. His voice broke, but the order stood. "Fix her."

The doctor hesitated, cursed under his breath, then nodded. They wheeled Sofia into the main trauma room.

They pushed me into a curtained bay.

I didn't scream. I didn't fight.

A single tear leaked from the corner of my eye. It tracked through the soot on my face.

It was the last tear I would ever shed for Dante Moretti.

I let the darkness take me.