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.

(Dante Vitiello POV)

"Elena!"

The line went dead.

I pulled the phone away from my ear, staring at the black screen. My heart hammered a rhythm against my ribs that felt alien, frantic. It wasn't just a dropped call. It was a severance.

*What was that noise?* That click. That sudden, absolute silence.

"Trace the phone," I snarled at Lee, my Consigliere, who was behind the wheel. "Now!"

"Boss, she's probably just hiding," Lee said, his fingers flying across the console even as he tried to placate me. "She does this for attention."

"Trace it!"

I punched the dashboard. The expensive leather split under my knuckles with a sickening tear.

"Okay! Okay. Signal is..." Lee hesitated, his face paling in the glow of the GPS. "The cemetery. The old sector."

*The cemetery.*

A cold dread coiled in my stomach, heavy and leaden. Not anger. Dread. It was a sensation I hadn't felt since the night my father died.

"Drive," I ordered, my voice low and dangerous. "Run every red light."

The rain lashed against the windshield like shrapnel as the SUV tore through the streets of New York. In the rearview mirror, I saw Sofia in the back seat. She wasn't looking at the road; she was checking her makeup in a compact mirror, utterly unbothered.

"Dante, relax," she said, snapping the compact shut. "She's just being dramatic. She's probably sitting on her parents' grave crying for sympathy."

"Shut up," I snapped.

She froze, her mouth hanging slightly open. I never spoke to her like that. But right now, I didn't care about her feelings. I didn't care about anything but the silence echoing in my head.

We screeched to a halt at the cemetery gates, tires smoking against the wet asphalt.

I didn't wait for the car to stop completely. I shoved the door open and jumped out, my Italian leather shoes splashing deep into the mud.

"Elena!" I roared.

The rain swallowed my voice, drowning it in the relentless downpour.

I ran toward the Rossi plot, ignoring the stinging wind. My men scrambled to keep up, their flashlights cutting chaotic beams through the gloom.

I saw the caretaker first. An old man, standing by a fresh mound of dirt, holding a shovel. He was looking down into a hole, his shoulders shaking. He was weeping.

I shoved him aside and stared into the abyss.

A pine box. A cheap, unfinished pine box.

And inside, Elena.

She was lying on her back, her hands folded over her chest. Her dress was torn, her skin pale, illuminated by the harsh, unforgiving beam of the flashlights.

"Get her out!" I yelled at my men. "Get her out now!"

Two guards jumped into the grave, slipping in the mud. They lifted the box awkwardly. I couldn't wait. I reached down and grabbed the handles, hauling it up onto the wet grass myself, my muscles straining, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Elena," I said, shaking her shoulder. "Wake up. The game is over. You win. Wake up."

She didn't move. Her head lolled to the side with a terrifying weightlessness.

I touched her cheek.

Ice.

It wasn't the cold of the rain. It was the deep, permeating cold of an object that no longer held a soul.

"Call the medic!" I screamed, turning to Lee.

"Boss..." Lee shone his light on the device strapped to her waist. The cord was disconnected. The screen was black.

I grabbed her wrist. I pressed my fingers into her skin, searching for a pulse, for a flutter, for anything.

Nothing.

Silence.

"No," I whispered. I shook her harder. "No. You don't have permission. I didn't give you permission!"

I put my ear to her chest. I expected to hear the mechanical whir of the machine she always wore. The machine I mocked. The machine I threatened to turn off.

Silence.

I pulled back, looking at her face. Her eyes were closed. Her expression was... peaceful. It was the first time I had seen her look peaceful since the day I tore her dress in the penthouse.

She was gone.

The realization didn't hit me like a bullet. It was worse. It felt like the earth had opened up and swallowed the world whole. The colors turned gray. The sound of the rain faded into white noise.

"She's dead, Boss," Lee said softly.

"Liar," I breathed. I stood up, backing away from the box. "She's faking. She's doing this to punish me."

I looked at Sofia. She had gotten out of the car and was standing under a black umbrella, looking at the body with a mixture of disgust and relief.

"Finally," Sofia muttered.

The word was quiet, but it roared in my ears louder than the storm.

*Finally?*

I looked back at Elena. My Elena. My enemy. My obsession.

Dead in a pine box in the mud.