Elena POV

"He’s breathing," I whispered.

The words tasted like ash on my tongue.

"That’s all that matters. Dio, he’s alive."

My hands were shaking in my lap.

I clasped them together, squeezing until my nails bit into the skin, trying to ground myself in the pain so I wouldn't fall apart.

Beside me, Rocco shifted in his seat.

He reached for the door handle, his other hand drifting toward the gun holstered beneath his jacket.

"I should go get him," Rocco growled, his voice vibrating with restrained violence. "I should drag him back to the car. The Outfit has been bleeding without him."

"No."

My voice was sharper than I intended.

"Look at him, Rocco."

We watched Dante open the passenger door of a rusted sedan for the woman.

He helped her in with a reverence that made my stomach churn.

"That isn’t the Underboss of Chicago," I said, bitterness coating my throat. "That is a man named Arthur. Or whatever she calls him."

Rocco hesitated.

"Elena, he is your husband."

Husband.

The word echoed in the suffocating silence of the car.

I closed my eyes, and the image of our wedding day flashed behind my lids.

It had been a strategic alliance.

The Vitiello crime family of New York and the Moretti Outfit of Chicago.

We were the royalty of the underworld.

I had worn white lace that cost more than this entire town.

He had worn a black suit and a look of lethal boredom.

But that boredom had turned into obsession.

He had claimed me.

He had marked every inch of my skin with his touch, possessing me completely until the day he was deployed to handle a dispute with the Russians.

They told me it was a car bomb.

They said there was nothing left to bury.

I had collapsed when the Consigliere brought me his bloodied jacket.

I had spent three years lighting candles in the family chapel.

I refused to take off my ring.

I refused to let anyone else sit in his chair at the head of the table.

Now, looking at him, I realized the cruelest joke of all.

I was dying from a heart that refused to beat without him.

And he was living a life where I didn't even exist.

A tear slipped down my cheek.

I wiped it away angrily.

"He looks... peaceful," Rocco said, his voice low.

"He looks domesticated," I corrected, spitting the word like a curse.

Dante walked around to the driver's side of the sedan.

He paused.

Suddenly, his head snapped up.

His eyes locked onto our black SUV.

Even from this distance, through the tinted glass, I felt the impact.

His gaze wasn't soft anymore.

It was cold.

Calculating.

It was the look of a predator spotting a potential threat.

For a second, hope flared in my chest, hot and agonizing.

Maybe he remembered.

Maybe he felt the pull of the bond we shared, the blood oath we took.

But then he looked away, dismissing us as passing traffic, and slid into the car with the woman who carried his child.

Elena POV

We trailed them.

It wasn’t difficult.

They drove slowly, carefully, respecting speed limits that my world ignored.

They pulled up to a small, white house with a peeling picket fence. It was the kind of house a child draws in kindergarten—simple, innocent, and utterly ordinary.

I signaled Rocco to stop.

We stepped out of the vehicle. The air here smelled like cut grass and gasoline, a sharp contrast to the expensive cologne and gunpowder that perfumed our home.

Mia—that was the name on the intel report—was getting out of the car.

She saw us standing on the sidewalk. She didn't look afraid; she looked curious.

"Can we help you?" she called out.

Her voice was sweet.

Too sweet.

Dante was at her side in a blink.

The speed was familiar. The lethal grace was unmistakable.

He stepped in front of her, shielding her body with his own. His hands were empty, but I knew the violence coiled inside him. I knew he could kill a man with a pencil if the mood struck him.

He stared at me.

I stopped breathing.

I waited for the recognition.

I waited for his eyes to widen in shock.

I waited for him to growl, "Principessa," and storm over to demand why I was so far from the safety of the compound.

I waited for the fire.

But there was only ice.

He looked at my face, my hair, my lips. His gaze dropped to the scar on my collarbone—the one he had kissed a thousand times in the dark.

And he saw nothing.

Nothing but a stranger.

"Are you lost?" he asked.

His voice was deeper than I remembered. Rougher.

But the tone was polite. It was the detached politeness of a man who just wants to be left alone.

My knees nearly buckled.

Rocco stepped up behind me, his hand hovering near my elbow, ready to catch me if I fell.

"No," I managed to say.

My voice trembled, betraying me.

I cleared my throat and forced the steel back into my spine. I was a Vitiello. I was a Mafia wife. I did not crumble.

"We are looking for... Arthur," I said.

The name tasted like poison on my tongue.

Dante's eyes narrowed.

"I'm Arthur," he said.

He didn't flinch. He didn't question it. He simply accepted it.

The intel was right. Severe traumatic brain injury. Retrograde amnesia. The Consigliere had suspected it when the rumors started, but he had hidden the extent of it from me.

He had wanted to protect me.

But you can't protect someone from a nuclear bomb.

Dante Moretti was gone.

The man standing in front of me was a ghost wearing his skin. And this ghost was in love with someone else.

"Who are you?" Dante asked.

His hand drifted back to touch Mia's arm, a subconscious check to make sure she was safe.

It was a gesture he used to do to me.

Always checking. Always possessing.

Now, I was the threat he was protecting her from.

I felt my heart crack, a physical fissure running down the center of my chest.

"We're family," I whispered.

Elena POV

Mia invited us inside.

Of course she did. She was a nurse. She was a savior by trade.

She saw two weary travelers standing on her porch and her first instinct was to offer them tea.

Dante didn't share her hospitality.

I could see the wire-taut tension in his shoulders, the predatory way his eyes tracked Rocco’s every movement.

The house was small.

The living room was a clutter of domestic life—baskets of knitting supplies, stacks of baby books, soft throws.

There were no cold marble floors here. No security cameras blinking in the corners. No guards standing like statues in the shadows.

It was cozy.

It was suffocating.

"I'm Mia," she said, beaming at us with oblivious warmth as she poured hot water into chipped ceramic mugs. "Arthur didn't tell me he had family coming to visit."

She glanced back at Dante.

"You never mentioned them, Artie."

Artie.

I nearly choked on the air in the room.

Three years ago, if anyone had dared to call the Underboss of Chicago "Artie," they would have lost their tongue before the second syllable left their lips.

Dante didn't look at her.

He was looking at me.

His gaze was intense, searching, trying to solve a puzzle that was missing its most critical pieces.

"I didn't know they were coming," he said slowly, his voice rougher than I remembered.

"We didn't want to intrude," I said.

I lowered myself onto the edge of the sofa.

The fabric was soft and worn beneath my fingertips.

"We... heard about the accident. We've been looking for you for a long time."

Mia's face softened into genuine pity.

"Oh, thank God. When I found him... he didn't remember anything. No ID. Nothing."

She sat down next to Dante.

She took his hand.

He let her.

He intertwined their fingers naturally, as if he had done it a thousand times.

His thumb rubbed the back of her hand.

Back and forth.

Soothing her.

I stared at their joined hands, unable to look away.

I was wearing his ring.

A massive diamond that signaled to the world that I belonged to the Moretti crime family. That I belonged to him.

I twisted the band around my finger, turning the stone inward until the diamond bit sharply into the flesh of my palm.

"Who are you exactly?" Mia asked.

Rocco shifted his weight by the door.

He was waiting for my command.

He was waiting for me to drop the blade and tell them the truth.

I am his wife. I am the woman he burned the world for. You are the woman sleeping in my bed.

But I looked at Dante.

He looked peaceful.

He looked sane.

If I told him the truth now—that he was a mass murderer, a kingpin, a monster—it would break his mind.

Or worse.

He would deny it.

He would choose her.

And that rejection would kill me faster than my failing heart ever could.

"I am Elena," I said.

My voice was steady.

Cold.

"I am his cousin."

Mia let out a breath she seemed to be holding.

"Oh! A cousin!"

She laughed, a nervous, tinkling sound that grated against my nerves.

"I was worried... well, never mind. It's so good to meet you."

She squeezed Dante's hand tighter.

"See, Arthur? You have people. You aren't alone."

Dante looked down at her.

He brought her hand to his lips.

He kissed her knuckles, his eyes soft and full of a devotion that made me want to scream until my throat bled.

"You are my family, Mia," he said.

His voice was absolute.

"You're the only one who matters."

I sat there, freezing in the warmth of their living room.

I had been erased.