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.

Elena POV

They offered us the guest room, but sleep was elusive.

The silence of the countryside was deafening.

I craved the sirens of New York. I ached for the knowledge that armed guards were patrolling the perimeter.

Unable to bear the stillness, I walked out onto the porch.

The wooden boards creaked softly under my boots. The night air was cool, biting at my exposed skin.

I leaned against the railing, looking up at the stars. They were brighter here, unpolluted by the city lights.

Did Dante look at these same stars and wonder who he used to be?

Or was he so content in this small, simple life that he never looked up at all?

The screen door opened behind me.

I didn't turn.

"Couldn't sleep?"

It was Mia.

She was wearing a thick robe, her hand resting protectively on her belly. She moved with the heavy, careful gait of late pregnancy as she joined me.

By all rights, I should hate her.

She was the other woman. She was living the life I was supposed to have.

But looking at her face, open and guileless in the moonlight, I couldn't find the hate.

She hadn't stolen him. She had saved him.

I helped her sit on the porch swing.

"Thank you," she sighed, rubbing her lower spine. "My back is killing me."

"You're far along," I said.

"Seven months. It's a boy."

A son.

An heir.

Dante had always wanted a son. He used to tell me that our son would rule Chicago and New York.

Now his son would be... what?

A mechanic? A simple farmer?

"I don't hate you," I said suddenly.

The words slipped out before I could check them.

Mia looked surprised. "Why would you hate me?"

"For finding him before we did."

Mia looked down at her hands.

"I found him on the riverbank," she whispered. "He was... it was bad, Elena. He was shot. Three times."

I flinched at the image.

"I dragged him to my car. I stitched him up on my kitchen table because the nearest hospital is an hour away and he was bleeding out."

She looked up at me, her eyes glistening.

"He didn't speak for weeks. He just stared at the door like he was waiting for someone to come kill him."

"He was," I said.

Mia shivered.

"I didn't know who he was. I still don't, really. But I know he's dangerous. I've seen the scars. I've seen how he looks at strangers."

She paused.

"If I had known..."

She trailed off.

"If you had known?" I pressed.

"If I had known he was someone important... someone with a past like that... I might have run," she admitted. "I'm just a nurse, Elena. All I ever wanted was a quiet life."

She looked at the door where Dante was sleeping.

"But then he woke up. And he looked at me. And he wasn't a monster. He was just... lost."

I gripped the railing until my knuckles turned white.

He wasn't a monster to her. Because he had forgotten how to be one.

"You saved his life," I said. "For that, I owe you a debt."

"You don't owe me anything," Mia said. "I love him."

The words hung in the air between us.

Simple.

True.

And devastating.

She loved Arthur. And Arthur loved her.

Dante Moretti was dead.

And I was the widow who had come to drag his corpse back to the throne.

Elena POV

"Thank you for keeping him alive," I said.

The words were heavy, sitting on my tongue like river stones.

Mia looked at me, her eyes wide and searching beneath the flicker of the dim porch light.

She tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

"You said you're family," she ventured softly. "But you didn't say how."

I gripped the wooden railing until a splinter dug into the soft flesh of my palm.

The sharp bite of pain was grounding.

It was the only thing keeping me from screaming the truth that was clawing its way up my throat.

I am his wife. I am the woman he promised to burn the world for.

But looking at the closed door behind us, where Dante slept without screaming for the first time in years, I knew I couldn't say it.

The truth would shatter the fragile glass of his mind.

The doctors had warned us about the fragility of his memory, the trauma that had rewritten his very existence.

If I forced him to remember the blood, the torture, the empire he ruled, it might kill the man he had become.

And I loved him too much to kill him twice.

"I am Elena," I said, my voice steady and detached. "I am a cousin. A distant relative of the Famiglia."

Mia let out a long, shaky breath.

Her shoulders slumped as the tension left her frame.

"Oh, thank God," she whispered. "I was worried... I thought maybe you were an ex-lover."

She laughed nervously, her hand drifting to rub her swollen belly.

"I know how that sounds. Insecure. But he doesn't remember anything before the river, and when I saw you... you look like someone who belongs in a magazine. I'm just a nurse from a one-stoplight town."

She looked down at her hands.

They were rough, chapped from years of scrubbing and work.

"I was afraid he belonged to someone else."

"He doesn't," I lied.

The falsehood coated my tongue like ash.

"He belongs to you now."

Mia looked up, hope warring with fear in her expression.

"But his parents... the family you mentioned. Will they accept me? I'm nobody, Elena. I don't have money or status."

I looked at her.

She was innocent.

She was soft.

She was everything Dante used to despise.

He had once called civilians sheep waiting to be slaughtered.

Now he had become the shepherd protecting one.

"He chose you," I said. "In our world, loyalty is currency. He is loyal to you."

"But will they like me?" she pressed.

I looked away, staring into the suffocating darkness of the cornfields.

"You saved the Heir," I said. "The Family will treat you like royalty."

I didn't tell her that royalty in our world usually ended up dead or widowed.

I didn't tell her that by entering the Moretti estate, she was stepping into a cage gilded in gold and drowned in blood.

Mia smiled, a genuine, radiant thing.

"Thank you, Elena. I'm glad you found us."

She reached out and squeezed my hand.

Her skin was warm, alive.

Mine felt like ice, dead.

"We should sleep," I said, gently pulling my hand away. "We have a long drive tomorrow."

She nodded and went back inside.

I stayed on the porch.

I listened to the chorus of crickets.

I listened to the slow, steady beat of my own failing heart.

I had just given my husband to another woman.

And the worst part was, I knew he would thank me for it.