I loved Dante Moretti for seven years.

At eighteen, one night at a family gala changed everything. Soon after, I became his fiancee, and not long after that, he was sent to run the Chicago branch for four years.

I gave birth alone, raised our son alone, and waited for him in the house that was supposed to be ours.

What came back to New York was not a family.

He brought Claire and her son with him, and before long, that boy was sitting in Dante's car, taking my son's place in the training program, and showing up in every space that should have belonged to family.

Then, on my son's birthday, I saw a video from Chicago.

Someone asked, "Dante, when did you feel most at home?"

He lifted his glass and said, "One winter night during a blackout. Claire was in the kitchen by candlelight, and Leo grabbed my sleeve and asked me not to leave."

I didn't cry.

I ended the engagement, erased my son and myself from every Moretti family record, and left New York without looking back.

When the junior training hall blew, I was in the family medical building organizing Nico's latest physical reports.

That morning, when I dropped him off, he had tugged on my hand and asked whether his father would come watch him after training. I had straightened his collar and said maybe.

Not long after, the door to the medical building burst open.

"The hall blew. There are still kids inside."

The files slipped from my hands.

Nico was down there.

By the time I reached the training hall, the place was already chaos. The alarms were screaming. The air was thick with smoke, dust, and the sharp burned-metal smell of a drill gone wrong. I shoved through the crowd and ran inside.

I found Nico in the innermost corridor.

He was curled behind a fallen metal barrier, his face smeared black with ash. There were cuts along his arms and calves from flying debris, and one side of his shoulder had been badly burned. The moment he saw me, he stumbled into my arms, shaking so hard I could feel it through both our clothes.

I held him and looked down at his injuries. I was about to carry him out when he clutched at my shirt and refused to let go.

His voice was shaking.

"Does Dad just not want me?"

I went still.

Between sobs, he told me Dante had been the first one in. Nico thought his father had come for him. He had called out again and again, but Dante had run right past him and gone straight for Leo.

I carried him out, and when we reached the main corridor, I finally saw Dante.

He was standing near the exit with soot streaked up both arms. Claire was beside him. Leo was wrapped in a thermal blanket with nothing worse than a scrape on his forehead. Claire was still holding Dante's hand, crying as she thanked him for getting Leo out first.

Then Nico moved in my arms and lifted his head.

"Dad," he called softly.

Dante heard him.

He looked over. His eyes landed on Nico's face, stayed there for less than a second, and moved away. Then he told someone to take Leo upstairs to the private clinic and have Claire driven back to the main house.

He never came over.

He never asked how badly Nico was hurt.

I stood there with my son in my arms and felt the cold spread through me.

By the time we got to the treatment room, Nico still had not cried. He only went red-eyed and silent when I started treating the burn on his shoulder. Then he asked, "Is it because I'm not good enough that he doesn't like me?"

My hands stopped.

I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to tell him none of this was his fault.

But I couldn't say any of it.

Because I didn't believe it either.

Dante had been back in New York for less than two months, but for the four years before that, he had been running the Chicago side of the family business, and Claire and Leo had been there the whole time. He had not come back for Nico and me. He came back because Claire said she wanted to return with her son.

So he brought them home, settled them in, and put Leo into the training slot that should have belonged to Nico.

Even today, when my son had been crying for him in the smoke, he still chose another child first.

I lowered my head, wrapped the last layer of bandage around Nico's shoulder, and touched his burning forehead.

"This is not your fault," I said. "If something like this ever happens again, call for me first."

He looked up at me with wet eyes.

"Will you come?"

I held him close.

"I will always come."

Five years ago, everything began to go wrong at the Moretti coming-of-age gala.

I was eighteen. Dante was twenty-two. The Morettis threw those galas for celebration and business in equal measure, and I had been to enough of them to know better than to keep looking at Dante from across the room.

Vivian made that impossible.

While she fastened my earrings, she smiled at me through the mirror and said Dante might finally confess before the night was over. I told her to stop, but she only laughed and said he had been in love with me for years. Last winter, when he came back from the boxing gym with a split wound and a fever, he kept saying my name. She had even found a half-written letter in his study that sounded like a confession.

I told myself she was making it up.

I still spent half the night watching for him.

Dante stayed near the center of the room, moving from one conversation to the next without giving much away. At one point some rich fool tried to hand me a drink, and Dante stepped in first. He took the glass, said she's not having that, and moved on as if it meant nothing.

A few minutes after that, someone found me and said Vivian had prepared a coming-of-age gift for me in one of the sitting rooms.

The room was empty when I got there.

So was the hallway once the door shut behind me.

I turned at the sound of footsteps and found Dante in the doorway. He looked wrong immediately, and by then I knew I did too. My skin was burning. My thoughts were slipping. When I tried the door, it would not open.

Dante looked at the lock, then at me.

"Don't come any closer," he said.

But by then it was already too late.

The next morning, I woke to daylight and silence.

Dante was sitting at the edge of the bed, shirt half-buttoned, face cold enough to make the room feel colder. When he saw I was awake, he stood and told me he would handle it. He said we would make it official next week and that I would be given my place properly.

For one foolish moment, I believed that meant something.

I thought maybe Vivian had been right. I thought maybe what happened between us had not been entirely one-sided.

It took three days to lose that hope.

By the time the engagement was announced, the family had already turned it into fact. That night, while the celebration was still going on downstairs, I passed the small bar off the library and heard Dante speaking to a few men from the family.

At first, I only caught my name. Then I heard the rest.

"At first, I thought she was different," he said. "But if she had a hand in what happened that night, then this is just me cleaning up a mess."

Someone said it might not have been her. Someone said the whole thing felt wrong.

Dante laughed once, without humor.

"The cameras failed on that floor. She ended up in that room. The door locked from the outside. You really expect me to believe she knew nothing?"

I stood outside the door with my hand on the knob and understood, all at once, what he thought of me.

He thought I had helped arrange it.

He thought I had used that night to force my way into his life.

When I finally pushed the door open, the room went quiet. Dante looked up at me and did not seem surprised to find me there.

I had meant to explain everything.

In the end, all I asked was, "You really think I planned it?"

He looked at me for a long moment and said nothing.

That silence was enough.

Not long after, he was sent to Chicago.

I stayed in New York, carried his child, and waited four years for something to change.

It never did.

The next morning, Nico was still running a fever.

I should have kept him home, but the incident papers from the training hall had to be signed that day. Insurance, liability, internal reports, none of it could wait. So I bundled him into his coat and took him with me to the family law office.

He was quiet most of the drive.

When we were almost there, he asked, "Do you think Dad will be around?"

I kept my eyes on the road. "We're just here to finish the paperwork."

That answer was enough to tell him not to ask again.

The secretary took us upstairs, and the moment we stepped onto the floor, I saw Dante at the counter.

Claire was beside him.

Leo was leaning against the desk, swinging one leg, looking far too pleased with himself for that early in the morning.

There was a stack of papers spread out in front of them. The one on top caught my eye at once.

Elite junior program authorization.

I stopped walking.

That spot had been mentioned for Nico weeks ago. One of the trainers had pulled me aside after practice and said that, if he stayed on track, they would move him up by the end of the month.

Dante was signing it for Leo.

Nico saw him then, and for a second everything else seemed to fall away. The fever, the bandage on his shoulder, the way he had cried himself to sleep the night before. He stepped forward with the incident file clutched in both hands.

"Dad."

Dante looked up.

Before he could speak, Leo pulled the paper toward himself and grinned.

"So this is mine now?"

Nico stopped where he was.

"That spot was supposed to be mine."

Leo gave him a slow look, starting with the file in his hands and ending at the bandage under his coat.

"You couldn't even make it through one accident."

I moved before Nico could answer and put myself between them.

"He was in a fire yesterday," I said to Dante. "And this is what you're doing this morning?"

Dante didn't even glance at the file in Nico's hands.

"Leo's paperwork was already scheduled."

"So was Nico's," I said. "Or were you too busy to notice?"

Claire stepped in lightly, voice calm, almost gentle.

"Serena, no one is trying to hurt him. He's exhausted, he's injured, and he clearly shouldn't be here. Maybe pulling him from the program for a while is the best thing."

I turned to her.

"No one asked you."

She looked stung, but only for a second. Then she lowered her eyes and said, "I'm only trying to be realistic."

Nico had gone very still behind me. After a moment, he tugged at my sleeve.

When I looked down, his face was white.

"That place really was mine, wasn't it?" he asked.

I opened my mouth.

Dante answered first.

"If one accident is enough to break him, then he was never fit to be the Moretti heir."

The whole hallway seemed to go quiet after that.

Nico didn't cry. He didn't say anything at all. He just lowered his head and tightened his grip on the file until the papers bent under his fingers.

I looked at Dante for a long moment.

Then I walked to the counter, took the incident file from Nico's hands, and placed it in front of the secretary.

"Process these," I said. "And withdraw his elite-track placement."

She froze and looked at Dante.

I didn't.

"This is over," I said. "Nico is done with the Moretti elite program, and we're done."