Seraphina Vitiello POV

Several weeks later.

The convoy was finally moving.

I was seated in the third SUV. The "suicide seat."

It was the car they put the decoys in. Or the expendable assets.

Dante and Isabella were in the lead armored vehicle. My parents secured the second.

We were heading to the airport.

My exile was finally happening.

I stared out the window at the unforgiving grey Chicago sky.

My back was still healing, a constant ache beneath my clothes. My leg, though no longer in a cast, throbbed with every bump in the road, a dull reminder of the fracture. I walked with a slight limp, a physical manifestation of the scars they had given me.

I hadn't spoken a word since the basement.

The driver, a low-level soldier named Rocco, looked at me in the rearview mirror.

"You okay back there?" he asked, his brow furrowed. "You look pale."

I didn't answer.

I just watched the overpass approaching.

I saw the flash an instant before I heard the sound.

An RPG.

It hit the lead car.

The explosion shook the ground beneath us.

Our driver slammed on the brakes.

The SUV swerved, tires screaming against the pavement.

Another explosion hit the asphalt directly in front of us.

The car flipped.

Glass shattered into a million diamonds. Metal groaned like a dying beast.

The world spun.

We rolled once. Twice.

We landed upside down.

I was hanging by my seatbelt, gravity dragging at my injured body.

My head was pounding. Blood dripped warm and thick into my eyes.

I looked to the front. Rocco was dead. His neck was broken at an unnatural angle.

I tried to unbuckle, but the mechanism was jammed.

Gunfire erupted outside.

A chaotic symphony of bullets.

I saw boots on the pavement through the haze.

Then I saw Dante.

He had dragged Isabella out of the burning lead car.

His face was covered in soot.

He was carrying her, shielding her body with his own.

He was running towards the backup vehicle that had pulled up alongside the wreckage.

He ran past my window.

He looked in.

He saw me.

For a heartbeat, time suspended.

Our eyes met through the spiderwebbed glass.

I saw the cold calculation in his eyes.

He had Isabella. She was the asset. She was the future.

I was the spare.

He didn't stop.

He didn't even try to open my door.

He kept running.

He shoved Isabella into the backup car and jumped in after her.

The car sped away, leaving me behind.

I watched his taillights fade into the smoke.

He left me to die.

Again.

Smoke began to fill the cabin.

I smelled gas.

This is it, I thought.

This is how it ends.

It was peaceful, in a way. No more pain. No more silence.

Then the door was ripped open.

A pair of strong hands grabbed me.

It wasn't Dante.

It was a bodyguard from the rear vehicle. Marco.

He cut my seatbelt.

I fell into his arms.

He dragged me out onto the asphalt.

We were barely ten feet away when the SUV exploded.

The heat seared my skin. The shockwave knocked us down.

I hit the ground hard.

Something inside me snapped. Not a bone this time.

Something deep in my abdomen.

Marco was shouting into his radio.

"I have the girl! She's alive!"

I looked up at the sky.

It was starting to rain.

The drops felt cool on my face.

I closed my eyes.

I didn't want to be saved.

But the universe, it seemed, wasn't done torturing me yet.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

The hospital room was blindingly white.

Everything was always white.

I had lost my spleen to internal bleeding.

Three cracked ribs had been added to the collection.

My previously fractured shinbone was now severely re-injured, threatening to set back my recovery by months.

The doctor told me I was lucky.

Lucky.

That word had lost all meaning.

My father loomed at the foot of the bed.

He looked annoyed that I had survived. My breathing complicated things.

"The flight to London has been rescheduled," he said, his voice devoid of warmth. "You leave in three weeks. No more delays."

He didn't ask how I was.

He didn't apologize for leaving me to die in a burning car.

"Dante is handling the retaliation against the Russians," he added, checking his watch. "He is very busy. Do not expect a visit."

I didn't expect anything.

I just nodded.

When he left, I waited for the nurse to change my IV and leave the room.

Then, I moved.

My body screamed in protest, but my mind was clear. Cold and sharp as a scalpel.

I retrieved the go-bag I had hidden in the ventilation shaft of the hospital bathroom during my last visit.

I had been planning this for months. Long before the gala.

I pulled out the burner phone.

I logged into the offshore account.

The money I had siphoned off from the family's charity fund over the last three years sat there, waiting.

It wasn't a fortune, but it was enough.

I booked a ticket.

Not to London.

To Sydney.

One way.

I printed the boarding pass in the business center down the hall, using a stolen hospital ID, ignoring the agony in my ribs with every step. My leg, though still weak, could bear my weight with careful effort, thanks to weeks of secret, painful exercises in my room.

Then I went back to the room.

I took out the legal documents I had prepared.

Emancipation papers.

Name change forms.

I signed them. The ink looked black and final.

*Seraphina Vitiello* ceased to exist on that paper.

Then I took out the flash drive.

The recordings.

The hours of audio from the safe house.

Me reading to Dante.

Me singing to him.

Him whispering his secrets. Him telling me he loved *Sette*.

I put the papers and the drive into a small gift box.

I tied it with a pristine white ribbon.

It looked like a wedding gift.

In a way, it was.

It was the gift of truth.

And truth was the most destructive weapon I possessed.

I dressed in the clothes from my bag. Jeans. A hoodie.

I looked like a nobody.

I looked like a ghost.

I walked out of the hospital.

No one stopped me.

The guards were posted at the main entrance, watching for Russians.

They weren't watching for the girl who didn't matter.

I slid into a taxi.

"Take me to the Vitiello estate," I said.

The driver looked at me in the mirror.

"You sure, miss? That's a rough neighborhood."

"I'm just dropping off a package," I said.

"And then I'm gone."

Seraphina Vitiello POV

The Uber idled before the massive iron gates.

It was the morning of the wedding, and the air hummed with frantic energy.

Delivery trucks were lining up to gain entry. Flowers. Catering. The architects of a fairy tale I was about to ruin.

I got out of the car.

I walked to the guard booth, my spine stiff against the lingering pain in my body.

"Call Dante," I said.

The guard hesitated, his gaze flickering over me, then picked up the phone.

A minute later, Dante walked down the driveway.

He looked wrecked. There were dark, bruised circles under his eyes, like he hadn't slept in days.

He saw me and scowled.

"You're supposed to be on a plane to London," he said.

His voice was rough, a scrape of gravel.

"I missed my flight," I lied.

He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of pure exhaustion.

"Jesus, Seraphina. Do you ever stop being a burden? I don't have time for this. I have to get married in four hours."

"I know," I said.

I held out the white box.

"I just wanted to give you this."

He looked at it suspiciously, making no move to touch it.

"What is it?"

"A wedding gift," I said, forcing the title past my lips. "For my brother-in-law."

He didn't take it.

Marco, his underboss, stepped forward and took the box from my hand.

"Check it for bombs," Dante muttered.

I almost smiled.

It *is* a bomb, Dante, I thought. Just not the kind that explodes. It’s the kind that leaves nothing behind.

"I'm not going to London," I said softly.

He looked at me then. Really looked at me, his eyes searching mine for the game I was playing.

"What?"

"I'm going away," I said. "Somewhere you will never find me."

"Good," he said.

The word hung in the air between us.

Cold. Absolving. Final.

He turned his back on me.

He walked back up the driveway, moving towards the house where my sister was waiting to marry him.

He walked towards the lie he had chosen.

I watched him go until he was just a blur against the manicured landscape.

"Goodbye, Dante," I whispered.

I got back into the Uber.

"Airport," I told the driver.

As we merged onto the highway, I rolled down the window.

I took the SIM card out of my phone.

With a sharp *snap*, I broke it in half.

I threw it out the window.

I watched it bounce on the asphalt and disappear into the rush of traffic.

The wind whipped my hair across my face.

I took a deep breath.

It hurt my bruised ribs, but the air tasted different.

It didn't taste like blood or expensive cologne or fear.

It tasted like nothing.

And nothing was exactly what I wanted to be.

The girl who loved Dante Moretti died in a basement in Chicago.

The woman who landed in Sydney would be someone else entirely.

I closed my eyes and let the distance swallow me whole.