Elara POV:

In the week that followed, I moved like a ghost through a life that no longer felt like mine. Dante’s preference for Seraphina wasn’t a secret, not really. It had become a pattern, a series of small cuts that had bled me dry long before Luca died.

He bought Seraphina a new Birkin bag every season, but he forgot my birthday last month. He started a war with M Corp, a rival organization, because they’d backed out of a real estate deal that would have inconvenienced a spa Seraphina liked. For me, he couldn’t even answer his phone.

I arranged Luca’s funeral alone. A small, quiet service. I didn’t want Dante’s blood money tainting the only pure thing I had left. I took the small box of ashes to the coast and scattered them into the gray, churning sea, whispering a final goodbye to my moral compass, my only family.

Seven days after Luca’s death, Dante finally called.

“I heard about Luca,” he said, his voice a low murmur. He didn’t apologize. He offered an excuse. “The medical resources… they were tied up in a sensitive situation. It was unavoidable.”

Ice flowed through my veins. “A sensitive situation?” I repeated, my voice dangerously calm. “You mean delivering Seraphina’s kittens? Was that the life-or-death emergency, Dante?”

“Don’t be like that, Elara,” he sighed. “Luca was family to me, too. You know that.”

In the background, I heard her voice, light and musical. “Dante, darling, are you coming back to bed?”

He didn’t even have the decency to call me from another room.

I hung up. I refused to let him feed me another lie.

My hand went to the drawer of my nightstand, pulling out a crisp manila envelope. Inside were the divorce papers he’d thrown at me six months ago during a fight. *“If you’re so unhappy, then leave,”* he had snarled. I hadn’t been ready then. I was now.

My signature was firm, a black slash severing our history.

I had to go back to the old apartment one last time, the one in the slums where Luca and I grew up, where I had saved Dante. I needed to pack up Luca’s things, the last tangible pieces of him.

As I turned onto the familiar, grimy street, I saw it parked under a flickering streetlamp. Dante’s Maybach. A sleek black beast in a concrete jungle of decay.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I ducked into a dark alley across the street, my body hidden by the shadows. Through the tinted windows of the car, I could see their silhouettes. Dante and Seraphina.

He leaned over and kissed her, a long, passionate kiss that made my stomach clench. When they broke apart, she opened her door to get out. Her heel landed in a murky puddle.

“Ugh, disgusting!” she whined, pulling her foot back.

Dante was out of the car in a second. He took off his thousand-dollar suit jacket, the one I’d picked out for him, and laid it over the filth for her to walk on. The same man who couldn’t be bothered to show up for my brother’s last breath was now treating his mistress like a queen over a dirty puddle.

“Why did you even bring me to this shithole?” Seraphina asked, stepping gracefully onto his jacket and then onto the pavement.

Dante’s voice was low, but I heard every word. “I’m buying the whole block. I’m going to tear it all down and build you a shopping center. A gift.”

He was going to demolish our history. The place I saved him. The place Luca called home. He was erasing it all, for her.

A wave of nausea washed over me. I stumbled back, my foot landing on an empty plastic bottle.

*CRUNCH.*

The sound echoed in the silent alley.

Across the street, two heads snapped in my direction.

Elara POV:

Dante saw me. His eyes widened, and he immediately pushed Seraphina away from him, her hands falling from his shoulders. He took a step toward me, his face a mixture of shock and something that looked like guilt.

“Elara? What are you doing here?” His voice was laced with a false concern that made my skin crawl.

I said nothing. I just stood there, letting the cold night air fill my lungs, letting the silence stretch between us. The sight of my stillness, my utter lack of reaction, seemed to unnerve him. He faltered, his step hesitating.

That’s when Seraphina moved. She glided to his side, linking her arm through his possessively.

“Oh, look, it’s your little charity case,” she sneered, her eyes raking over me with contempt. Then her expression shifted, melting into one of fragile innocence. She turned to Dante, her voice trembling. “Dante, she’s been following us, hasn’t she? She’s jealous. Please, make her understand.”

She clung to him, pressing her face into his chest as if seeking protection from me.

“Seraphina,” I said, my voice flat and dead. “Shut up.”

The look of pure contempt I gave her must have hit its mark. She flinched, then her face crumpled, and she burst into tears.

“See?” she sobbed into his shirt. “She’s so cruel to me.”

Dante’s arms went around her, pulling her tight. He glared at me over the top of her head, his expression hardening. “Don’t push your luck, Elara.”

Pain, sharp and familiar, lanced through me. It wasn’t just about this moment. It was about all the moments that came before. I remembered high school, when Seraphina Gallo and her friends had made my life a living hell. They’d cornered me in the locker room, stripped me, and taken pictures, all because Alessandro De Luca, the quiet boy from a powerful family, had shown me a moment of kindness. The memory of their laughter was a scar on my soul.

And I remembered Dante, years later, holding me as I cried about those old wounds. He’d kissed my scars and promised me, his voice a low growl of protective fury, *“I’ll make them all pay for what they did to you, baby. Every last one of them.”*

Now, he was holding my tormentor in his arms, protecting her from *me*. He hadn’t just forgotten his promise. He had fallen in love with the very person who had scarred me.

He misread my silence as guilt. He sighed, a weary, put-upon sound. “Just get in the car, Elara. We’ll talk at home.”

Seraphina lifted her tear-streaked face from his chest. “Yes, get in,” she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. She moved toward me, and as she passed, her fingers dug cruelly into my side, right over my ribs. “We have so much to talk about.”

I flinched away, a sharp gasp of pain escaping my lips.

It was all she needed. Using my movement as a catalyst, Seraphina stumbled backward dramatically, letting out a small, theatrical cry as if I had shoved her with all my might.

Dante’s head snapped up. His eyes, cold and furious, locked onto me. He instantly assumed the worst. He instantly assumed it was my fault.

Elara POV:

Dante rushed to Seraphina’s side, his hands hovering over her as if checking for injuries. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice thick with concern.

She nodded weakly, leaning against him for support.

He turned his glare on me. “That’s enough, Elara. You can’t let the past go, can you?” He gestured vaguely at Seraphina. “So she watched while her friends did some stupid shit in high school. It was years ago. Get over it.”

He trivialized it. He dismissed years of trauma, the scars both seen and unseen, as “stupid shit.”

Seraphina, feigning a desire for peace, gave me a triumphant, mocking smile over Dante’s shoulder. The message was clear: *I won. You lost.*

I ignored them both. My eyes fell to the ground where Luca’s box had fallen, his few precious belongings scattered across the filthy pavement. I knelt silently, my fingers trembling as I reached for his favorite model airplane, a wooden Spitfire he’d spent months building.

As my fingers brushed against the delicate wing, a red-soled heel slammed down on it.

*CRACK.*

The balsa wood splintered, the model shattering into a dozen pieces under Seraphina’s deliberate weight.

Something inside me snapped. A raw, primal scream of rage tore from my throat. I lunged at her, my only thought to rip that smug smile off her face.

I never reached her.

A hard kick connected with my stomach, sending me flying backward. The air rushed out of my lungs, and I hit the ground hard, landing on a sharp piece of plastic from the broken model. It pierced the skin of my back, a searing, white-hot pain.

Dante stood over me, his face a mask of cold fury. “You keep going after her,” he snarled, completely ignoring the blood that was already starting to soak through my shirt.

Tears streamed down my face, hot and furious. “That was Luca’s,” I sobbed, the words choked with grief. “That was all I had left of him.”

Dante scoffed, his expression dismissive. “It’s a toy. I’ll buy him a more expensive one.”

The world stopped. The sounds of the city, the cold wind, the pain in my back—it all faded away.

He had forgotten.

In the seven days since my brother died, the man who claimed Luca was “family to him, too” had forgotten he was dead. He had forgotten everything.

The fight drained out of me, replaced by an emptiness so vast it felt like a black hole had opened in my chest. My heart, my love, my hope—it was all gone, consumed.

I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pain, and turned to leave. I just wanted to disappear.

Dante blocked my path, his car idling like a growling beast. He leaned out the window, his anger suddenly replaced by a semblance of concern. “You haven’t eaten, have you? You’re too thin.”

He was inviting me to lunch. After everything.

Numbly, I got in. What else was there to do?

I slid into the back seat, a prisoner in my own life. Up front, Dante and Seraphina chatted intimately, their voices a low murmur. He peeled an orange for her, feeding her the segments one by one.

I closed my eyes, remembering every cut, every humiliation Seraphina had inflicted since she’d reappeared in our lives. Each one was a fresh wound, and Dante had held the knife every single time.

A violent jolt threw me forward. The sound of screeching tires and shattering glass filled the air.

A massive truck had smashed into the side of the car.