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.

Elara POV:

"Dante, watch out!" I screamed, my voice tearing through my throat as I watched the out-of-control heavy truck barreling straight toward the right side of the Maybach.

My hand shot out, a desperate, ingrained reflex. He was the man who had pulled me out of the slums seven years ago. My brain was wired to seek his warmth, his protection, the absolute safety of his presence whenever death loomed. My fingertips brushed the cold leather of the seat between us.

He wasn't there.

In the millisecond before the impact, Dante lunged across the console. He threw his massive frame over the passenger seat, wrapping his arms around Seraphina. He shielded her entirely with his broad back. It was a blind, instinctual reaction to protect the woman he believed had saved his life all those years ago.

He left me completely exposed in the back seat.

The deafening crunch of tearing metal ruptured my eardrums. The impact hit like a bomb. A jagged shard of ballistic glass exploded inward and sank deep into my forehead. Hot blood gushed instantly, blinding my left eye.

The physical agony was blinding, but the image of my husband's back, curled fiercely over another woman, severed something vital in my chest.

The Maybach flipped on the slick, rain-soaked Manhattan pavement. My body was tossed like a broken ragdoll against the reinforced roof. The airbags deployed with bone-crushing force. The sheer pressure squeezed the oxygen from my lungs. A sickening crack echoed in my ears as my ribs gave way.

The world spun in a chaotic blur of shattered glass and screeching steel until the vehicle finally slammed to a halt, upside down in a puddle of dirty water.

The thick, suffocating stench of leaking gasoline filled the crushed cabin.

I forced my heavy eyelids open. Blood coated my lashes, stinging my eyes. I tried to call his name. I needed him.

Only a wet, gurgling hiss escaped my throat. I was choking on my own blood.

From the front, Dante's voice roared, frantic and cracking with a terror I had never heard from him. He was kicking the crumpled door, the metal groaning under his brute strength.

He didn't look back. Not once. He just held a limp Seraphina tight against his chest.

Sirens wailed in the distance, cutting through the drumming rain. Pedestrians were shouting, their boots splashing in the puddles outside.

I marshaled every ounce of strength left in my shattered body. I twitched my fingers, reaching through the gap in the crushed seats, trying to touch the hem of Dante's tailored suit jacket hanging near the console.

He jerked away. He kicked the door open and dragged Seraphina out into the night.

My fingers grasped empty air.

Freezing rain poured through the shattered windows, soaking my blood-drenched clothes. The flashing red and blue lights of the New York EMS ambulances arrived, casting a hellish glow over the wreckage.

Paramedics rushed the car, their boots crunching on glass. Two of them aimed their flashlights into the back, their eyes widening when they saw me pinned under the crushed roof.

"We need the jaws of life! Back seat is critical!" a medic shouted, reaching in to stabilize my neck.

Before his hands could touch me, Dante collided with him. Dante shoved the paramedic back with the force of an enraged lion.

"Get your hands off her and look at Seraphina!" Dante roared, his eyes bloodshot, pointing at the woman in his arms who had nothing but a scrape on her elbow.

"Sir, the woman in the back is bleeding out. Her vitals are—"

Dante's bodyguards swarmed the medic, pinning him against the side of the ambulance. Dante reached into his waistband, pulled his custom Glock, and pressed the cold steel barrel directly against the doctor's forehead. The Volkov syndicate heir didn't care about rules or triage. He only cared about his obsession.

"I said," Dante snarled, the hammer clicking back, "treat her first."

The crowd gasped. Cell phone cameras went up, recording the billionaire holding a doctor hostage.

Trapped in the mangled steel, I heard those words. *Treat her first.*

The final, pathetic illusion I had clung to for seven years disintegrated into dust. The naive girl who scrubbed his blood out of his shirts, who endured his family's cruelty just to be near him, died right there in the wreckage.

Through the edge of my blurred vision, I watched Dante strip off his ruined suit jacket and carefully, tenderly wrap it around Seraphina's shoulders to shield her from the rain.

The freezing cold of massive blood loss swallowed my consciousness. The darkness rushed in like a tidal wave.

Right before I went completely under, I heard his voice, cold and absolute.

"Don't worry about the back, drive to the hospital right now!"