Elena POV

The safe house was a small, nondescript cottage perched on the jagged edge of the cliffs, miles away from the reach of the Rossi territory.

I collapsed onto the sofa, my clothes heavy with rain, my body trembling violently.

An older woman entered the room.

Maria.

She was one of my father's most loyal shadows, a ghost from a life I thought I had lost forever.

She didn't ask questions.

She didn't need to.

She saw my state, saw the protective way I cradled my stomach, and the realization dawned in her eyes.

"Oh, my child," she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

She brought thick wool blankets.

She brought steaming hot broth.

She touched my forehead with a hand that felt like a mother's, not a servant's.

"You are safe here," she promised. "Don Stefano has arranged everything."

For the first time in two years, I wasn't a bargaining chip to be traded.

I was just Elena.

"He doesn't know," I told her, my voice cracking under the weight of the secret. "Dante doesn't know about the baby."

Maria’s eyes hardened, flashing with a fierce, protective light.

"Good," she said, the word sharp as a blade. "He doesn't deserve to know."

She helped me change into dry, warm clothes.

She packed my bag with efficiency.

"The plane is waiting," she said softly.

We drove in silence to a private airstrip in the middle of nowhere.

The rain had finally stopped, leaving the black tarmac glistening like oil under the harsh floodlights.

A pilot stood waiting by the sleek white jet.

He tipped his cap.

"Ms. Rossi," he said.

Not Mrs. Rossi.

Ms. Rossi.

He treated me with a deference that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with respect.

"We are ready when you are," he informed me. "The academy in Zurich is expecting you. Your father says it's time you took your place at the table."

My place.

Not standing behind a man.

But at the head of my own table.

I walked toward the metal stairs, my hand gripping the rail.

Then I heard it.

The roar of engines tearing through the silence.

Black SUVs screamed onto the tarmac, tires screeching against the wet pavement.

My heart stopped in my chest.

I froze on the steps.

Dante.

He jumped out of the lead car before it had even fully stopped.

He looked unraveled.

His hair was plastered to his forehead, his shirt unbuttoned and clinging to his chest.

He was scanning the area, his eyes frantic, wild.

He was looking for something.

Looking for me?

He turned toward the plane.

Our eyes didn't meet—he was too far away—but I saw him pause.

He felt it.

I knew he felt it. The severing of the final thread between us.

Then the back door of his SUV flew open.

Vanessa stumbled out, sobbing loudly, a performance for an audience of one.

"Dante! Please! I can't breathe!"

She collapsed dramatically onto the wet pavement.

Dante’s head snapped toward her.

He looked at the plane one last time, a look of confusion and agonizing longing etched onto his face.

Then he turned back to Vanessa.

He ran to her.

He chose her.

Again.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, the finality of it settling in my bones.

"Let's go," I said to the pilot, turning my back on the scene.

I climbed into the cabin and the door sealed shut.

The engines roared to life, drowning out the memory of Vanessa’s screams.

I sat by the window as we began to taxi.

I looked down at the scarf loosely knotted around my neck.

It was Hermès.

Dante had bought it for me in Paris, a souvenir from a trip where he spent three days in boardrooms and one single hour with me.

I opened the small window vent just as the plane gathered speed.

The cold night air rushed in, biting my skin.

I untied the silk.

I watched it flutter in my hands for a second, a ghost of a marriage that never truly existed.

Then I let go.

It whipped out into the night, a streak of color instantly swallowed by the darkness.

"What was that?" the pilot asked over the intercom.

"Just trash," I said calmly.

The plane accelerated.

I felt the force pressing me back into the leather seat.

We lifted off.

I looked down at the ground shrinking below me.

I saw the tiny dots of the cars.

I saw the tiny dot of the man who had broken me.

"Goodbye, my past," I whispered against the glass.

I closed my eyes and placed a protective hand over my stomach.

"Hello, my future."

I wasn't running away.

I was ascending.

And when I finally came back down, I wouldn't be the rain.

I would be the storm.

Dante POV:

The speedometer buried itself at 160.

The world outside my windows was nothing but a blur of neon lights and darkness.

I didn't blink.

My hands gripped the leather steering wheel so hard the veins in my forearms were throbbing against the skin.

Inside the car, the music was deafening.

Heavy bass.

Screaming guitars.

It was loud enough to make my ears ring, but it wasn't loud enough to drown out the silence.

The silence she left behind.

Three months.

Ninety-two days since Elena vanished.

Ninety-two days since the house became a tomb.

I crushed the brake pedal to the floor.

The tires shrieked against the asphalt, shredding rubber, the acrid smell filling the cabin as the car skidded to a violent halt on the shoulder of the highway.

I slammed my fist against the dashboard.

Once.

Twice.

The plastic cracked.

My phone buzzed in the cup holder.

Vanessa.

Again.

I stared at the name on the screen, and for the first time, I felt nothing but a cold, heavy exhaustion.

I answered.

"Where are you?" Her voice was grating. "Dinner was served an hour ago. The Capos are asking questions, Dante. You can't just disappear."

"I am the Don," I said, my voice sounding like gravel grinding together. "I don't answer to them. And I sure as fuck don't answer to you."

"What is wrong with you lately?" she demanded. "Ever since... ever since she left, you've been a ghost. It's weak, Dante. It's not like you."

*Weak.*

I laughed.

It was a dry, humorless sound.

"Stop calling me," I said.

I hung up.

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat.

It landed where Elena used to sit.

I looked at the empty seat.

I remembered the way she used to fold her hands in her lap, trying to take up as little space as possible.

I remembered the way she looked out the window, her reflection haunting and beautiful in the glass.

I had never asked her what she was thinking.

Not once.

Now, that empty seat felt like a black hole.

It was sucking the air out of the car.

It was sucking the life out of me.

Vanessa thought I was grieving Marco.

The family thought I was stressed about the expansion.

They were all wrong.

I wasn't grieving a brother.

I was starving.

I was starving for the sight of a woman I had ignored for two years.

A woman whose absence was deafening, louder than her presence ever was.

I put the car in gear.

I wasn't going home.

I couldn't handle the perfume.

I couldn't handle the lies.

I needed to find her.

Or I was going to burn the whole world down just to see by the light of the fire.

Dante POV

I tore through the study like a man possessed.

Books flew off the shelves, crashing onto the floor.

Papers scattered across the Persian rug like fallen leaves.

I was hunting for the contract with the Russians, but in my blind haste, my hand struck a loose panel in the back of the antique desk.

It gave way with a sharp *click*.

A hidden compartment.

I froze.

I didn't put this here.

Slowly, I reached in and pulled out a manila envelope.

It wasn't mine.

It smelled like her.

Vanessa.

I opened it.

Inside was a medical report from four months ago.

*Elena Rossi.*

*Paternity Test.*

My heart seemed to stop beating for a full second.

I scanned the numbers.

I scanned the conclusion.

Probability of Paternity: 99.9%. Father: Dante Rossi.

The room tilted on its axis.

\ The air turned to ice in my lungs.

Vanessa walked in then.

"Dante, what is all this noise? You're scaring the maids."

She stopped dead when she saw what was in my hand.

The color drained from her face, leaving her skin the shade of ash.

"Dante," she stammered, her hands trembling. "That... that is a fake. She forged it. I hid it to protect you from her lies."

She was lying.

I could see it in the pathetic tremor of her lip.

I could smell the fear on her, acrid and sharp.

"You knew," I whispered.

The rage didn't come like a wave.

It came like an explosion.

"You knew she was carrying my child!"

I roared the words, the sound tearing at my throat.

I grabbed a crystal vase from the desk—a gift from the Prime Minister—and hurled it at the wall.

It shattered into a million diamond-like shards with a violent crash.

Vanessa screamed and covered her head.

"Get out," I said.

My voice was deadly calm now.

"Dante, please—"

"Get out of my sight before I forget who you are."

She ran.

I stood alone in the wreckage.

My child.

My blood.

And I had treated her like a nuisance.

I grabbed my keys and stormed out of the house.

I needed to know who she was.

I needed to know who I had destroyed.

I drove to the university she had attended before we married.

I walked through the campus like a wraith, seeing nothing but her face.

I found the Dean of Economics.

He looked terrified when I barged into his office, my suit rumpled, my eyes wild.

"Elena Rossi," I said. "Tell me about her."

"Mrs. Rossi?" he stuttered, adjusting his glasses with shaking fingers. "She... she was our brightest student. A prodigy. She published a paper on international trade logistics that is still cited today."

I stared at him, stunned.

"She did?"

"Yes. We begged her to stay for her doctorate. She said she had a duty to her family."

I walked out of the office feeling like I had been punched in the gut.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know she wrote.

I didn't know she was brilliant.

I thought she was just a pretty face to warm my bed and wear my ring.

I walked past the dorms.

An old janitor was sweeping the leaves.

He saw me staring at her old building.

"Looking for the Rossi girl?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Haven't seen her in years," the old man said, leaning on his broom wistfully. "Shame. She was a sweet kid. Always talking about her father. Said he was the only one who understood her."

"Her father is dead," I said, my voice hollow. "Don Rossi died ten years ago."

The janitor laughed, a dry, rasping sound.

"Not that one. The other one. The one she called every Sunday. Stefano. She called him Don Stefano from the North."

My blood ran cold.

Don Stefano.

The Ghost of the Alps.

\The most elusive, dangerous man in Europe.

Elena wasn't just a Rossi.

She was royalty.

And I had treated a Queen like a servant.

I pulled out my phone.

"Find Stefano," I ordered my Chief of Security. "Burn every favor. Call every contact. Find him."

I looked up at the grey sky.

"I'm coming, Elena," I whispered into the wind.

"I'm coming."