Alessia POV:

The call from the hospital landed the next day like a punch to the gut. My father's condition was deteriorating. They needed authorization for a new, expensive treatment immediately. The bill for his life had come due, and it needed to be paid now.

My blood ran cold. I called Dante.

"I can't talk right now, Alessia," he snapped. I could hear Isabella's laugh in the background. They were in a meeting, finalizing the alliance between the Moretti and De Luca families.

"Dante, it's my father. The hospital needs payment or they can't-"

"Handle it," he said, his voice clipped and laced with impatience. "You have an allowance. Use it."

He hung up.

My allowance wouldn't cover a fraction of the cost. My hands trembled as I dialed Marco. He answered on the first ring.

I explained the situation, my voice cracking.

"I'm wiring it now," he said, his tone immediate and absolute. "Don't worry about it, Sia. Just be with him."

Relief washed over me, so potent it nearly buckled my knees. It was followed by a wave of cold fury at my husband.

That night was the underworld summit, a tense gathering of New York's Five Families at a neutral hotel. I was supposed to attend as Dante's wife, a silent, beautiful accessory. I looked at the demure navy dress he'd had laid out for me-unquestionably Isabella's taste-and shoved it to the back of the closet.

Instead, I chose a dress of my own. A floor-length gown of blood-red silk that clung to every curve. It wasn't a dress for a quiet Mafia wife. It was a declaration.

I arrived alone.

The moment I walked into the grand ballroom, a hush fell over the crowd. All eyes were on me. Then, Dante made his entrance.

Isabella was on his arm.

He saw me across the room, and his eyes narrowed into slits of pure fury. He was enraged by my audacity, by the dress, by my solitary presence. It was a direct challenge to his control.

Minutes later, he walked over to Don Gallo, the head of the city's oldest Famiglia, with Isabella still clinging to his arm.

"Don Gallo," Dante said, his voice carrying in the suddenly silent room. "I'd like you to meet my companion for the evening, Isabella De Luca."

He had erased me. In front of the entire underworld, he had stripped me of my title, my status, my very existence as his wife. The humiliation was a physical blow, sucking the air from my lungs.

Later, clearly intending to quell the whispers his actions had started, Dante cornered me near the terrace, his hand gripping my arm, his fingers digging into the bone. He feigned a moment of affection, a husband placating his wife for the public eye.

"What game are you playing, Alessia?" he hissed, his smile a grotesque mask that never reached his eyes.

I just looked at him, my own expression a placid sea over a raging storm. "No game, Dante."

From across the room, I saw Isabella watching us. Her face, for a split second, twisted into a mask of pure, venomous fury. She saw his hand on my arm, his attention on me-however brief, however brutal-and she couldn't bear it.

She turned, walked away, and pulled out her phone. I couldn't hear her words, but I saw the cold, calculated malice in her expression as her thumb moved across the screen.

A certainty, sharp and cold as a shard of ice, pierced through me. She wasn't just jealous. She was retaliating. And I knew, with a sudden, gut-wrenching terror, exactly what-and who-her target would be.

Alessia POV:

The call came while I was standing under the shower, trying to wash the scent of the hotel ballroom off my skin. My phone rang from the marble countertop, a shrill, insistent sound that slashed through the hiss of the water.

It was the hospital.

My heart seized in my chest, a cold fist squeezing the air from my lungs. I stumbled out of the shower, grabbing a towel, my hands slick with water as I fumbled to answer.

"Mrs. Moretti?" a nurse's voice, tight with panic, crackled over the line. "It's your father. He's crashing. You need to get here now."

I don't remember hanging up. I don't remember getting dressed. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a car, urging the Moretti driver to go faster, the city lights a meaningless blur outside the window.

I burst into the hospital and into chaos. The entire cardiac wing was cordoned off. Nurses were rushing, doctors were arguing, and a line of stern-faced men in dark suits stood guard, blocking the entrance.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, you can't go in," one of them stated, his hand coming up to bar my way.

"My father is in there! Alessio Ricci!" I cried, my voice raw. "They said he was crashing!"

A harried-looking doctor overheard me. "Ricci? He's been moved to the third-floor overflow. We had to clear the wing for a VIP."

A VIP. While my father was dying.

I ran for the stairs, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I found him in a small, crowded room, hooked up to a dozen machines that beeped a weak, faltering song. His eyes were closed, his face pale and waxy.

"What happened?" I asked the young resident who was checking his vitals.

"We don't know. His heart just gave out. He needs the specialist, Dr. Evans, but..." He trailed off, looking nervously toward the hallway. "The entire senior staff is with the VIP."

"Who?" I demanded, my voice low and dangerous. "Who is the VIP?"

The resident wouldn't meet my eyes. "A... a Miss De Luca. From a prominent family. It's just a routine check-up, but she insisted."

Isabella.

The name was a block of ice in my veins. This wasn't a coincidence. It was her. That phone call I'd seen her make. This was her cruelty-a calculated strike to block the very people who could save my father's life.

"Then we move him," I said, a desperate plan igniting in my mind. "There's a private cardiac center two miles from here. I'll pay whatever it costs. Get an ambulance. Now."

It was a frantic, desperate scramble. But for a moment, there was hope.

We got him into the ambulance, the paramedics working on him as we sped through the city streets, sirens wailing. I held his hand, whispering to him, begging him to hold on.

We were five blocks away when it happened.

A black truck appeared out of nowhere. It didn't ram us. It just... sideswiped us. A sharp, brutal jolt sent the ambulance careening into a row of parked cars. It wasn't a devastating crash, but it was enough. A classic mob tactic. A delay, not a kill.

The engine died. The sirens cut out.

"We're stuck!" the driver yelled. "It's going to take a few minutes to get clear!"

Inside the back, the paramedic's face was grim. The rhythmic beep of my father's heart monitor faltered. It sped up, then slowed.

And then it stopped.

Replaced by a single, long, unbroken tone.

The ten-minute delay had been fatal.

I don't remember the ride back to the first hospital. I remember a doctor, his expression a mask of practiced pity, delivering the verdict. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Moretti. He's gone."

I didn't cry. I felt nothing. A vast, cold, empty space had opened up inside me where my heart used to be.

I walked back to the cardiac wing. The guards were gone. The floor was quiet. I found a young nurse cleaning up.

"The VIP," I said, my voice flat, devoid of all emotion. "Was it Isabella De Luca?"

The nurse looked terrified, but she nodded. "Yes. She left about twenty minutes ago. Said she was bored."

That was it. The final, damning piece.

This wasn't neglect. This wasn't a tragic accident.

This was murder. A meticulously planned execution. A vendetta aimed directly at my soul.

And in that moment, in the silent, sterile hallway, the grief inside me didn't just harden. It froze, then fractured, and from the pieces came a single, diamond-hard point of purpose.

I took out my phone. My hand was perfectly steady.

I sent a message to the lawyer Marco had given me.

"Liquidate everything. Burn it all to the ground."

Dante POV:

I returned to the fortress just after two in the morning, the scent of Isabella's perfume still clinging to my suit jacket. The house was silent. Too silent.

Usually, there was a light on in the library, or the soft sound of the television from the living room. Alessia was always up, waiting.

Tonight, there was only darkness.

An unfamiliar irritation prickled at me. I strode through the empty rooms, the echo of my own footsteps the only sound. Her absence was a tangible thing, a tear in the fabric of my world.

I found her room empty, the bed untouched.

She disobeyed me.

I assumed this was some childish tantrum. A dramatic response to the incident at the summit, or because I'd left her on the street corner. She was probably holed up in one of the guest rooms, sulking, waiting for me to come find her. Waiting for an apology.

She would be waiting a very long time.

My jaw tightened as I loosened my tie. I'd always believed she was too weak, too utterly dependent on me to ever actually leave. Where would she go? What would she do? She was a painter, not a survivor. She needed me.

I pulled out my phone and sent her a curt message.

Stop playing games. Come to bed.

I expected a reply. An argument. Something.

I got nothing.

An hour passed. Still nothing. The irritation began to curdle into something else, something unsettling that I refused to name. I stalked back to her room, then to the library, the art studio. Every space was empty. It was as if she had simply vanished into thin air.

She was playing games to get my attention. That had to be it. She was jealous of Isabella, and this was her pathetic attempt to make me feel guilty.

I was the Don. No one left me. They didn't dare.

I poured myself a whiskey, the heavy silence of the house pressing in on me. I'd handle this in the morning. She'd come crawling back, full of apologies, and I would be magnanimous. And then I would forgive her.

Of course she would. I was sure of it.