I spun around and fled back into the storm before the scream clawing at my throat could tear free.

The image of his hand claiming her skin seared itself onto the back of my eyelids.

I collapsed onto the cold stone bench in the garden, letting the rain hammer against me, hoping it would wash away the last of my pathetic illusions.

I remembered our first night together.

He had worshipped my body as if it were a holy temple.

Now, he knelt at another altar entirely.

I remained there until the lights in the villa flickered and died, and until my shivering escalated into violent, uncontrollable tremors.

Stumbling back to the servants' quarters, I collapsed onto the narrow mattress.

The fever didn't just hit me; it crushed me like a collapsing building.

I burned.

I hallucinated.

In the haze of my delirium, Dante's deep voice floated through the air.

He was reading.

"And the little rabbit ran all the way home..."

It was the story. The one he had promised to read to our children.

I dragged my heavy limbs to the door, cracking it open just an inch.

He was there in the hallway, standing outside Sofia's room, reading to the closed wood, or perhaps to the unborn life inside.

He turned, and his gaze landed on me.

He took in the sweat slicking my forehead, the glassy, fever-bright sheen of my eyes.

He crossed the distance, placing a hand on my forehead.

It was cool, professional, and utterly devoid of affection.

"You're sick," he stated, his tone clinical.

He offered no comfort. No softness.

Instead, he pulled a key from his pocket.

"I have to quarantine you," he said, stepping back.

"We can't risk the heir getting infected."

He pushed my door shut.

I heard the lock click.

It was the sound of a coffin lid sealing shut.

I screamed silently, my throat too raw and swollen to produce a sound.

I wasn't his love anymore. I was a biological threat.

Hours bled into days.

Sofia ordered the staff to stop bringing me food.

She claimed the trays were a "vector for disease."

I survived on tap water from the bathroom sink, fading in and out of a gray consciousness.

Through the thin walls, the sounds of life drifted in.

Laughter.

The delicate clinking of silverware against china.

I dragged myself to the window, bracing against the sill to look down into the courtyard.

They were having a candlelight dinner.

My favorite meal. Risotto with white truffles.

Dante was smiling.

He looked happy.

He looked... complete.

They were talking, their voices carrying clearly on the crisp night air.

"We need a name for the boy," Sofia said, idly twirling her wine glass by the stem.

Dante paused.

He looked up toward my dark window, though I knew he couldn't see me in the shadows.

"Luca," he said.

My heart stopped beating.

Luca.

That was the name we had chosen.

We had whispered it to each other between sheets, dreaming of a boy with his storm-gray eyes and my smile.

"He calls him Luca," Sofia repeated, testing the weight of it on her tongue. "I like it. A strong name."

She reached across the table, covering his hand with hers.

Dante didn't pull away.

He squeezed her fingers.

"To Luca," he toasted, lifting his glass.

I slid down the wall, curling into a tight, trembling ball on the floor.

He hadn't just stolen my freedom.

He hadn't just stolen my dignity.

He had stolen the future we built in our dreams and gifted it, wrapped in a bow, to the woman who destroyed us.

The gnawing hunger in my stomach was nothing compared to the vast, echoing emptiness in my soul.

I closed my eyes and whispered into the darkness.

"Goodbye, Dante."

And for the first time, I truly meant it.

My fever broke just in time for me to be paraded like a show pony.

Isabella threw a garment onto the foot of my bed.

It was red.

The color of the sins they were forcing me to swallow.

"Get up," she commanded, her voice leaving no room for argument. "Tonight is the celebration of the heir. You will stand in the back. You will smile. And you will look grateful that we let you breathe our air."

I pulled the dress over my head.

It hung loosely on my frame, failing to cling to the curves I no longer possessed.

I had lost ten pounds during the quarantine, surviving on tepid tap water and the echoes of Dante playing house with another woman.

The gala was held in the grand ballroom of the Pierre Hotel.

Crystal chandeliers dripped artificial light onto men who killed for a living and women who looked the other way for the sake of diamond necklaces.

I clung to the shadows near a marble pillar, invisible to everyone but the security detail assigned to ensure I didn't run.

Dante stood at the center of the room.

He looked devastating in his tuxedo, the King of New York holding court.

Sofia was by his side, glowing in white silk, the baby resting in her arms like a prop.

Isabella stepped forward, a microphone in hand.

She snapped open a velvet box.

A diamond ring the size of a quail egg glittered violently under the lights.

"To my daughter-in-law," she announced, her voice booming. "For giving the Moretti family its future."

The room erupted in polite, thunderous applause.

Dante took the ring.

He slid it onto Sofia's finger.

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

The camera flashes went off like strobes, blinding me, burning the image of their union into my retinas.

I felt nothing.

My heart was a dried leaf, crumbling to dust inside my chest.

Then, Sofia saw me.

Of course she did.

She handed the baby to the nanny and waved me over with a manicured hand.

"Come, Elena!" she called out, her voice dripping with a sweetness that tasted like saccharine. "Get in the photo. We are all family here."

The guests murmured, their gazes sliding over me-the mistress, the fish girl, the charity case.

Dante stiffened.

He looked at me across the crowd, his eyes pleading.

_Just do it,_ his gaze seemed to say. _Just play along._

I walked forward, my legs moving on autopilot.

I took my place next to Sofia.

She leaned in close, smiling radiantly for the cameras.

"You look like a corpse," she whispered through her teeth. "Try not to bleed on the floor."

I stared straight ahead, focusing on the flashbulbs.

Then the world groaned.

The heavy velvet backdrop behind us, laden with thousands of roses and supported by a massive steel frame, gave way.

It tipped forward with the screech of tearing metal.

Dante moved before anyone else.

He didn't think.

He lunged.

He tackled me.

He threw his body over mine, driving me into the carpet as the steel frame crashed down exactly where we had been standing.

Dust and crushed petals filled the air, choking the light.

Silence fell over the room.

Dante lifted his head, his hands checking me frantically.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded, his voice rough. "Elena?"

I shook my head, stunned.

He had saved me.

In the moment of pure instinct, he had chosen me.

Then a scream pierced the silence.

Sofia.

She was trapped under the edge of the frame.

Blood was pooling rapidly on the white carpet.

Dante's face went white.

He scrambled off me, leaving me in the dust, and ran to her.

"Sofia!" he roared.

He lifted the steel beam with a strength born of sheer panic.

She was pale, gasping for air, clutching her abdomen.

The ambulance arrived in minutes.

We were rushed to the private wing of Lenox Hill.

I sat in the waiting room, covered in dust, forgotten.

A doctor burst out of the operating doors.

"She is hemorrhaging," he told Dante urgently. "We need O-negative blood. The blood bank is low. We don't have time to wait for a transfer."

Dante turned to me slowly.

He knew my blood type.

He knew everything about me.

"Give it to her," he said.

It wasn't a question.

I looked at him, disbelief washing over me like ice water.

"You want my blood?" I asked, my voice trembling. "The same blood you called dirty?"

"She carries the spare heir," Dante said, his voice shaking with a terrifying intensity. "If she dies, the alliance dies. If the alliance dies, war starts."

"I don't care about your war," I spat.

I stood up to leave.

Dante grabbed my arm.

His grip was iron.

"You will do this," he snarled.

"You owe the Family. You caused the accident with your bad luck."

I stared at him.

This wasn't the man who had saved me from the bomb.

This was the Don who would grind bones to make his bread.

"Strap her down," he ordered the guards.

"No!" I screamed as they grabbed me.

They dragged me into the prep room.

They held my arm down on the table.

The needle pierced my skin.

Dante stood in the doorway, watching.

He didn't look away.

"Take what you need," he told the nurse coldly.

I watched the bag fill with red.

They took one pint.

Then two.

I started to get dizzy, the room tilting on its axis.

"Stop," I whispered, my strength fading. "Please."

"She needs more," Dante said, his voice void of emotion.

The room spun.

Black spots danced in my vision.

He was draining me dry to keep his lie alive.

I looked at him one last time before the darkness took me.

_I hope it chokes her,_ I thought.

Then I passed out.

Elena POV

I woke to the sterile beep of monitors and the sharp scent of antiseptic.

But beneath the hospital smells, the air felt wrong.

It was suffocating, heavy with the weight of an unspoken accusation.

Dante was sitting in the chair next to me, his elbows on his knees, his head buried in his hands.

He looked up the moment I stirred.

There was no relief in his dark eyes.

Only a cold, burning fury.

"You rigged it," he said, his voice a low rumble.

I blinked, my brain sluggish and swimming from the blood loss.

"What?"

"The backdrop," he spat. "You loosened the bolts. You wanted to kill her."

I stared at the ceiling, watching the cracks in the plaster.

I didn't have the energy to defend myself.

I didn't have the energy to tell him I had been locked in a room for a week, prisoner in my own home.

I didn't have the energy to remind him that he was the one who saved me.

"Think what you want, Dante," I rasped, my throat dry as sandpaper.

My indifference snapped something inside him.

He stood up violently and kicked the chair. It flew across the room and crashed into the wall with a deafening clatter.

"Why do you defy me?" he shouted, his chest heaving.

"Why can't you just submit? Why do you make everything a battle?"

I closed my eyes, shutting out his rage.

"I release you," I whispered.

The room went dead silent.

Dante walked to the side of the bed.

He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his breath hot against my cheek.

"What did you say?"

"I release you," I repeated, my voice hollow. "Go be a family. Be with Sofia. Be with your heirs. I am done."

He grabbed my face, his fingers digging into my jaw.

"You never leave," he hissed, his pupils blown wide. "You belong to me. You are mine until I put you in the ground."

He let go of me as if I burned him.

"The marriage is a sham," he said, pacing the room like a caged animal.

"But we have to make it look real. For the Commission."

He stopped at the foot of the bed, gripping the rail until his knuckles turned white.

"We are doing a Vow Renewal. Tomorrow. To legitimize the children."

I laughed. A dry, cracking sound that hurt my chest.

Another wedding. Another lie.

"Sofia has forgiven you for the sabotage," he said, ignoring my laugh.

"She is generous. You will be grateful."

He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.

"I'll send the nurse. Get your strength up. You have a long life of penance ahead of you."

He slammed the door, leaving a ringing silence in his wake.

I lay there for a long time, staring at nothing.

Then the door opened again.

It wasn't a nurse.

It was Don Lorenzo.

He walked in with a cane, looking old and tired, the weight of the empire pressing down on his shoulders.

He placed a plain white envelope on the bedside table.

"A plane ticket," he said softly. "One way. To Seattle."

I looked at the envelope.

"The Vow Renewal is tomorrow at noon," the Don said.

"Dante will be distracted. The guards will be at the church."

He looked at me with something resembling pity, his eyes weary.

"My son is a fool," he said. "He thinks he can have it all. He thinks he can keep the crown and the girl."

He tapped the envelope with his cane.

"If you stay, he will destroy you. If you go, he will destroy himself looking for you. But at least you will be free."

I took the envelope.

It felt light, yet it held the weight of my entire future.

"Thank you," I said.

The Don nodded and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

I didn't pack.

I didn't take the clothes Dante bought me.

I didn't take the jewelry.

I stood up, my legs shaking beneath me, and walked to the window.

I looked at the city skyline, glittering like a cage of lights.

I was already gone.