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.

Elena Vitiello POV

The pain was a living entity.

It perched on my left shoulder, a constant, throbbing reminder of my place in this world.

Dante sat by my bedside, looking utterly wrecked. Soot still marred the pristine white of his collar, a dark stain on his perfection.

"Elena," he whispered, his voice cracking.

He reached for my hand.

I pulled it away before his skin could graze mine.

"The doctors say it will scar," he said, refusing to meet my eyes, staring instead at the sterile linoleum floor. "But we can fix it. Later. Laser surgery. Skin grafts. I don't care what it costs. I'll pay for the best in the world to erase it."

"Why are you here?" I asked. My voice was a ruin, a dry rasp against my throat.

"Sofia... she was hysterical about her arm," he mumbled, wringing his hands. "She cares so much about beauty. I knew you were strong, El. I knew you could handle the pain."

"I am strong," I said, the words tasting like ash.

"So you let me burn."

"I didn't let you burn! I saved her because she's weak!"

"Go," I said.

"Elena-"

"Go to her. She probably needs you to blow on her boo-boo."

He stood up, the guilt hardening into defensive anger. "Fine. I'll come back when you're not being a bitch."

He stormed out.

I waited three hours.

When the coast was clear, I discharged myself against medical advice.

The bandages were thick, bulky beneath my shirt. Every movement was a negotiation with agony, the fabric pulling at raw, sensitized skin.

I didn't go home.

Instead, I took a cab to a subterranean parlor in Queens. The neon sign in the window buzzed with a dying flicker: INK.

The artist was a massive wall of a man with a viper tattooed across his face. He took one look at my bandages and raised a pierced eyebrow.

"Fresh burn," he grunted, wiping his hands on a rag. "I can't tattoo over that. It's raw meat. You'll get an infection."

"Not on it," I corrected, my voice steel. "Around it. And over the edges where the skin is intact."

He scoffed. "It'll hurt like a motherfucker. The nerves are all fired up."

"Do it."

I sketched what I wanted on a cocktail napkin.

An Old English M.

Sharp edges. Gothic curves. A letter meant to look like a blade.

I wanted it right on the shoulder blade. I wanted the ink to bleed into the burn, to frame the destruction.

He worked for two hours.

The needle was a mercy. The physical, searing pain drowned out the chaotic noise in my head. It was purifying. It was a ritual.

When I finally looked in the mirror, the burn was still there, ugly and angry red. But the M framed it. It claimed the damage.

Matteo.

Mine.

Murder.

It could mean anything. It meant everything.

I returned to the penthouse as the sun began to set.

My phone pinged in my pocket.

Matteo: Wheels down. I'll see you at the altar.

I smiled. It was a cold, sharp thing.

"Tomorrow," I whispered to the empty room.

The door to the guest suite opened.

Dante.

Again.

He had a bottle of whiskey in his hand, the amber liquid sloshing against the glass. He was drunk.

"I shouldn't have left you," he slurred, stumbling toward me. "I'm sorry, El. I'm so sorry."

He reached out, his coordination gone, and pulled the collar of my shirt down before I could stop him.

He saw the fresh bandage. He saw the black ink peeking out from the inflamed edges.

The M.

His eyes softened, glazing over with a pathetic mixture of hope and booze. He looked like he might cry.

"Mine," he whispered.

He traced the letter with a shaking finger, misinterpreting the Gothic script entirely. "You tattooed 'Mine' on you. You... you still love me."

He leaned in, pressing his clammy forehead against mine. "I know I messed up. But this proves it. We belong together. After I settle Sofia... we'll be together."

He tried to kiss me.

I placed my hand flat against his chest.

I pushed.

"Get out, Dante," I said, my voice devoid of warmth. "You have a big day tomorrow. You have to give the bride away."

He chuckled, stepping back, oblivious to the ice in my veins. "Right. Matteo's orphan. God, this is going to be a circus. Just play the part, Elena. Be the supportive sister-in-law. For me."

"I will play my part perfectly," I promised.

He left, whistling a tuneless melody.

I went to the closet.

I pulled out the garment bag.

It wasn't the modest, pastel bridesmaid dress Dante thought I had bought.

It was white. Silk. Completely backless.

It was a weapon.