Three thousand white roses.

That was the exact count required to fill the grand atrium of the Vitiello estate. I knew because I had counted the bundles myself, my fingers pricked and bloody from the thorns I hadn’t stripped fast enough.

"Move the arch to the left," I instructed the florists, my voice raspy from dehydration. "The light hits better there at sunset."

"You have a good eye for a maid," a voice drawled behind me.

I turned. Sofia stood at the top of the marble staircase. She wore a silk robe that cost more than my father’s medical practice used to make in a month. She descended slowly, her hand gliding down the banister like she already owned the place.

"It's perfect, Elena," she said, stopping a step above me so she could look down. "Dante will propose right here. He’ll kneel, just like you are kneeling in life."

"I hope you’re happy, Sofia," I said, clutching the clipboard to my chest like a shield. The LVAD pump hummed against my ribs, a constant, mechanical reminder of my expiration date. Forty-eight hours left.

"Happy?" She laughed, a brittle sound. "I’m ecstatic. But I’m also impatient. I don’t want to wait for you to die on your own schedule. I want you gone now."

She took a step closer. Her eyes darted to the security camera in the corner, then back to me.

"Dante loves a damsel in distress," she whispered.

Before I could react, she threw herself backward.

It wasn't a stumble. It was a calculated launch. She screamed, her arms flailing theatrically as she tumbled down the last six marble steps. She landed at my feet with a sickening thud, sprawling amidst the white rose petals.

"Elena! No!" she shrieked, clutching her ankle. "Why did you push me?"

The doors burst open. Dante stormed in, followed by three guards. He took in the scene instantly: Sofia weeping on the floor, me standing over her, and the accusation hanging in the air like smoke.

He didn't ask what happened. He didn't look at the security cameras.

He struck me.

The backhand connected with my cheekbone, the force of the blow knocking me into the floral arch. The structure collapsed, burying me in an avalanche of white roses and thorns.

"Get the car!" Dante roared, scooping Sofia up as if she were made of glass. "If she has a scratch on her, Elena, I will peel the skin from your bones."

*

The hospital lights were blinding.

I sat on a plastic chair in the hallway, handcuffed to the armrest. My cheek throbbed where he had hit me, but the pain in my chest was worse. My battery indicator blinked red: 15%.

Dante emerged from the private room. He rolled up his sleeves, his forearms tense with corded muscle.

"She needs a transfusion," he said. "She lost blood from a gash on her leg. She has a rare blood type. O-negative."

"So do I," I said quietly.

"I know," he said. He signaled to a nurse. "Hook her up."

"Dante," I said, panic rising in my throat. "I can't. My heart condition... I’m anemic. If you take my blood now, with the pump struggling..."

"You took five years of my life," he cut in, his voice cold and flat. "You can spare a pint of blood for the woman you tried to cripple."

He grabbed my arm, forcing it straight for the nurse. I looked at the woman, begging her with my eyes to check my chart, to see the LVAD controller at my waist, to see that draining me was a death sentence.

But the nurse looked at Dante, saw the heavy outline of the gun in his holster, and paled. She didn't argue. She swabbed my arm.

The needle slid in.

I watched the red tube fill. It was my life leaving me, flowing out to sustain the lie that was Sofia Moretti.

Dante watched the bag fill, his expression unreadable. He didn't look at my face. He only looked at the blood.

When the bag was full, the room spun. Black spots danced in my vision, and the hum of my pump seemed to grow distant, like a failing engine.

"Done," Dante said. "Now, get up."

"I... I can't," I whispered.

He hauled me up by the handcuffs. My legs were like rubber. He dragged me into Sofia’s room. She was sitting up in bed, looking flushed and healthy, scrolling through Instagram.

"Look who it is," Dante said, shoving me toward the bed. "Apologize."

I swayed, gripping the bedrail to stay upright. Sofia smirked at me behind Dante’s back.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled.

"Like you mean it," Dante commanded. He placed a hand on the back of my neck, his fingers tightening. "Kneel."

I sank to the floor. The humiliation was absolute. I was the donor, the savior, the victim, and yet here I was, kneeling before the thief.

"I am sorry, Sofia," I said, my voice breaking. "I am sorry I exist."

Dante released my neck. He looked at me for a second, his gaze lingering on the fresh bruise on my cheek, then on the bandage on my arm where he had stolen my blood. For a heartbeat, something flickered in his eyes—a question, perhaps, or a memory.

Then Sofia groaned. "Dante, my leg hurts."

He turned away from me instantly. "I'm here, baby. I'm here."

I used the bedrail to pull myself up. I walked out of the room. Neither of them watched me go. I was a ghost before I was even dead.

Smoke spiraled from the rusted metal trash can, drifting listlessly into the slate-gray sky.

I watched the edges of the photograph blister, turn black, and finally crumble away.

It was a picture of Dante and me from three years ago, captured while we were eating gelato in Rome. He had been smiling then—a genuine, unguarded smile that I hadn't seen in a lifetime.

I dropped the last photo into the flames. It was the only thing I had left of him. Now, I had nothing.

One day left.

I turned away from the dying fire and began the trudge toward the cemetery. My steps were slow, heavy with exhaustion. The blood loss from yesterday had left the world tilting on its axis, and the LVAD alarm had chirped once this morning—a mechanical warning that the motor keeping me alive was straining.

I needed to say goodbye to my parents.

The Rossi family plot was located in the older, overgrown section of the cemetery, banished far from the manicured lawns of the Vitiello mausoleum. As I crested the hill, fighting for breath, I saw a figure standing by my parents' graves.

It was Sofia.

She was holding a shovel. Two of Dante’s guards stood behind her, leaning casually against the hood of a black SUV, the smoke from their cigarettes mingling with the mist.

"What are you doing?" I screamed, the sound tearing raw from my throat.

Sofia turned. She smiled, bright and sharp. "Oh, good. You're here. I thought you might want to see this."

She jammed the shovel into the soft, rain-soaked earth of my father's grave.

"Stop!"

I ran. I didn't care about my failing heart. I didn't care about the agony in my chest. I ran until my lungs burned like acid.

Sofia laughed and dug deeper. The urns weren't buried deep; we couldn't afford a concrete vault, only the dirt. Her shovel hit something hard. Metal.

She reached down into the mud and pulled out the bronze urn containing my father’s ashes.

"You killed Dante's father," she said, addressing the urn as if it were a living thing. "It's only fair you don't get to rest either."

"Give that to me!" I lunged at her, desperation fueling my weak limbs.

She sidestepped effortlessly, and I collapsed into the mud. She unscrewed the lid.

"Dante said he wanted justice," she taunted. She whistled sharp and loud.

From the back of the SUV, two massive Dobermans leaped out. They were Vitiello guard dogs, muscle and teeth, trained to kill on command.

Sofia tipped the urn, pouring the gray ash onto the wet grass.

"Dinner time."

The dogs rushed forward, sniffing the remains of the man who had taught me to ride a bike, the man who had saved hundreds of lives as a doctor. They began to lick the ashes, mixing the sacred dust into the mud.

"NO!"

I scrambled up, blind with rage, grabbing Sofia by the hair. I didn't think. I just wanted to hurt her. I slapped her, my nails raking across her perfect face.

"Get her off me!" Sofia shrieked.

Strong hands clamped around my waist and threw me backward. I flew through the air and slammed against a granite tombstone. My head cracked against the stone, and warm blood instantly trickled down my neck.

Dante stood over me.

He looked at Sofia, who was clutching a thin scratch on her cheek, wailing like a child. Then, his gaze shifted to the dogs eating my father.

He didn't call the dogs off.

"She scratched me, Dante! She's crazy!" Sofia cried, playing the victim.

Dante looked down at me. His eyes were void of anything human—cold, empty, abyssal.

"You attack my fiancée?" he asked, his voice flat. "While she is paying her respects?"

"Respects?" I choked out, pointing a trembling finger at the dogs. "She fed my father to the dogs, Dante! Look!"

Dante glanced at the desecration on the grass, his expression unchanging.

"Your father was a dog. It seems fitting."

The cruelty was so absolute, so heavy, that it crushed the last ember of fight within me. I looked at him, the man I had sacrificed my heart for, the man I had loved more than my own life.

I started to laugh.

It was a wet, gurgling sound. Blood bubbled past my lips.

"You're right," I wheezed, the hysteria taking over. "It's fitting. Everything is fitting."

I wiped the blood from my mouth and looked up at the gray sky. The rain began to fall harder, washing the ashes into the earth, mixing them inextricably with the mud.

"Let's go, Sofia," Dante said.

He took off his jacket and draped it tenderly over her shoulders to protect her from the rain.

He didn't look at me again.

"Leave her," he told the guards. "She can walk home."

They got in the car. I watched them drive away through a blur of rain and blood.

Slowly, painfully, I crawled over to the spot where the dogs had fed. I gathered a handful of the wet, ash-streaked mud, pressing it desperately to my chest.

"I'm coming, Daddy," I whispered into the silence.

"I'm coming home."

I never went back to the estate.

Instead, I dragged myself to the funeral home, just three blocks from the cemetery gates.

I looked like a monster—mud-caked, blood matting my hair, my dress torn to ribbons. The director looked ready to turn me away until I slammed my diamond earrings on the counter. They were the last things of value I possessed.

"I need a box," I said. "Pine. Simple."

"For whom, Miss?" he asked, his eyes lingering on the diamonds.

"For me."

He hesitated, but avarice won out. He took the earrings.

I didn't have money for a plot, but I knew the cemetery caretaker. He had always liked my mother. I gave him my phone—an iPhone 15 that Dante had forced upon me specifically to track my every move.

"Just dig a hole next to her," I told him. "Please. It doesn't have to be deep. Just enough so the dogs don't get me."

He cried when he saw me, but he took the shovel.

It was sunset when the hole was ready. The pine box sat at the bottom, the lid thrown open.

I climbed down the ladder.

The box was hard and smelled sharply of resin. I lay down. It was narrow, like a hug that wouldn't let go. Above me, I could hear the rain drumming on the earth.

My LVAD controller was clutched in my hand. The battery indicator was flashing red. *Critical. Replace Power Source immediately.*

I didn't have a replacement. I had left the spare batteries at the estate, dumped in the trash can with the photos.

My phone buzzed in the caretaker's pocket. He lowered it down to me with a trembling hand.

"It's him," the caretaker whispered.

I answered.

"Where the hell are you?" Dante’s voice was a growl. "Sofia needs her dinner. If you aren't here in ten minutes, I'm locking you in the Cooler for the night."

"I'm not coming back, Dante," I said. My voice was calm. It was the first time in five years I hadn't been afraid of him.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm done," I said. "The debt is paid."

"You don't get to decide when you're done!" he shouted. "I own you. You die when I say you die."

"Then say it," I whispered. "Say goodbye."

"Elena, I swear to God—"

I yanked the power cord from the battery pack.

The humming stopped.

The silence was deafening.

"Elena?" Dante asked. "What was that noise? Why is it quiet?"

My chest tightened instantly. It felt like a cement block had been dropped onto my lungs. The circulation halted. The oxygen stopped reaching my brain.

"Elena!"

"You... can't... hurt... me..." I gasped, the darkness closing in from the edges of my vision.

I dropped the phone. It landed on the wood beside my ear. I could hear his voice, tiny and tinny, screaming my name.

*Elena! Answer me!*

I closed my eyes. I thought of white roses. I thought of the lake.

And then, I thought of nothing at all.