Dante POV

Three weeks.

It had been three weeks since the stabbing.

Three weeks of suffocating silence.

I had put my best men on it.

I had hired private investigators capable of tracking a ghost through a storm, men who could find a single drop of water in the ocean.

Nothing.

No credit card activity. No flight manifest matches. No ping from a phone signal.

Elena Greco had simply vanished into thin air.

I sat in my study, my gaze fixed on the empty rectangular void on the wall where her painting used to hang.

It had been a dark, abstract piece she had painted during our first year of marriage. Back then, I had told her it was depressing.

Now, the pristine white square where it used to reside was the most depressing thing I had ever seen. It looked like a scar.

"Dante?"

Sofia walked in without knocking.

She was wearing a silk robe. *Elena's* silk robe.

My fingers gripped the edge of my mahogany desk until the knuckles turned white.

"Take that off," I said.

"What?" She looked down at herself, feigning innocence. "Oh, I found it in the discard pile the maids were making. It’s high-quality silk. Why waste it?"

"Take. It. Off."

My voice was low, a dangerous growl vibrating with a rage I could barely control.

Sofia flinched, the playfulness vanishing from her eyes. "Okay, fine! You don't have to be such a bastard about it."

She stripped the robe off and let it pool on the floor, standing there in nothing but her lingerie.

She expected me to look. To want her.

I didn't even blink. My eyes dropped to the crumpled blue silk on the floor—a desecrated flag.

"Get out," I said.

"Dante, what is wrong with you?" she cried, her voice rising in frustration. "She's gone! You won! We won! Why are you acting like a grieving widower?"

"I said get out!"

She stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

I reached for the bottle of scotch on my desk.

It was 11:00 AM. I didn't give a damn.

I poured a glass and downed it in one swallow. The burn distracted me, momentarily, from the hollow ache expanding in my chest.

Slowly, I opened the top drawer of my desk.

There was one thing she hadn't taken.

A letter.

It wasn't even sealed.

It was just a piece of stationery folded in half, left tucked beneath the velvet ring box.

I unfolded it for the hundredth time, the paper growing soft under my touch.

"*Dante,*"

"*I used to think love was a war. I thought if I fought hard enough, bled enough, you would eventually surrender and see me.*"

"*I was wrong.*"

"*Love isn't a war. It's a choice.*"

"*And you never chose me.*"

"*I wish you happiness with her. I really do. Because if you aren't happy after everything I lost for you, then it was all for nothing.*"

"*Don't look for me.*"

"*Elena.*"

No hate. No curses hurled at my name.

Just indifference.

She was done fighting.

I crushed the paper in my fist, the sound crisp in the quiet room.

I walked to the window and looked down at the terrace garden.

Elena had spent hours there. She had cultivated white roses, pruning them with her own hands.

Now, the garden was a ruin.

Yesterday, Sofia had hired a landscaper to rip out the roses.

"They're too thorny," she had complained, wrinkling her nose. "I want tulips. Pink tulips."

I watched the workers digging up the rosebushes, the roots tearing from the earth.

I saw a flash of white petals being tossed carelessly into a black garbage bag.

Something inside me snapped.

I grabbed the bottle of scotch and hurled it at the window.

The glass shattered with a deafening crash.

The bottle sailed through the broken pane and exploded against the terrace railing below.

The workers looked up, terrified, freezing in place.

I sank into my leather chair and buried my head in my hands.

The penthouse was full of people. Sofia, the maids, the guards.

But it had never felt so empty.

I closed my eyes, and all I could see was Elena's back as she walked out of the hospital.

And all I could hear was the silence she left behind.

It was louder than any scream.

Dante POV

I found the leather-bound book wedged behind a loose floorboard in the guest closet. The moment my eyes landed on the first date, the air left the room, and I realized I had been sleeping next to a monster for ten years.

But the monster wasn't Elena.

It was me.

I had been digging for a stash of emergency cash I used to hide there, a habit from a lifetime of looking over my shoulder. Instead, I unearthed a graveyard of my own sins.

It was a diary. Old. The leather was worn smooth, the pages yellowed with age and brittle to the touch.

I sat heavily on the floor, a half-empty bottle of whiskey beside me. The burn in my throat was nothing compared to the cold dread settling in my gut.

I opened it to a page marked by a crease.

*February 14th. Sophomore Year.*

A tremor worked its way into my hands.

*He looked so cold. His lips were a shocking shade of blue. I dragged him out of the water, and he was heavy—dead weight against my chest. I thought he was gone. I laid on top of him, pressing my body to his, trying to give him my heat. I whispered to him until his eyelashes fluttered. He looked at me, but I knew he didn't truly see me. He saw the girl he wanted to see. I hid in the reeds when the paramedics came. I couldn't let him know. He hates me enough already.*

I stopped reading.

The air rushed out of my lungs as if I’d been punched.

The lake.

I remembered the bone-crushing freeze. The darkness pulling me down.

And I remembered waking up to warmth. To the scent of vanilla.

Sofia smelled of expensive perfume and sharp ambition.

Elena... Elena had always smelled of vanilla.

My fingers felt numb as I turned the page.

*October 3rd. The Ambush.*

*They cornered him. Three of them. I didn't think; I just jumped. The knife went into my arm, but the adrenaline was so high I didn't feel it. I pulled him into the janitor's closet. I held his head in my lap while he bled, my hands slick with his blood. He kept calling for Sofia. It broke my heart, but I kept pressure on his wound. I cleaned up the blood before the principal came. I took the suspension. I took the blame. Because a Vitiello can't look weak.*

I hurled the book across the room.

It hit the opposite wall with a dull, damning thud.

I couldn't breathe. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a hydraulic press.

It was her.

It had been her. Always her.

Every time I thought I had a guardian angel. Every time I thought luck was on my side.

It was Elena.

And I had whipped her.

I had taken a leather belt to the back of the woman who had taken a knife for me.

I grabbed the bottle and took a long, desperate swig. It didn't burn enough. Nothing could burn enough to cauterize a wound this deep.

"Dante?"

Sofia stood in the doorway.

She was wearing a pink dress, looking like a doll. A plastic, hollow doll.

"What was that noise?" she asked, stepping gingerly over the piles of clothes I had ripped out of the closet in my search.

Her eyes landed on the diary on the floor.

She reached for it.

"Don't touch it," I snarled.

My voice was a low growl, something animalistic that vibrated in my chest.

Sofia froze, her hand hovering mid-air. "It's just a dusty old book. Probably some trash she left behind."

"Trash," I repeated, the word tasting like ash.

I stood up. The room swayed, but my rage centered me, grounding me in the moment.

"She saved me at the lake," I said, my voice deceptively calm.

Sofia blinked, her mask slipping. "What?"

"She saved me at the ambush."

Sofia's face paled. She took a step back, her eyes darting to the door. "Dante, you're drunk. You're imagining things. I told you, I found the diver. I—"

"You lied," I said, taking a slow step toward her. "For ten years. You let me believe it was you."

"I... I did it for us!" she stammered, her voice rising in pitch. "Because I loved you! Does it matter who pulled you out? I'm the one who stayed!"

"You stayed for the crown," I said, the truth clear and cold.

"And she stayed for what?" Sofia spat, her facade finally cracking to reveal the ugliness beneath. "To manipulate you? To trap you?"

"She stayed because she loved me," I whispered. The realization broke me. "And I broke her for it."

Sofia scoffed, crossing her arms. "Oh, please. She was a weak little—"

I snatch a ceramic vase from the side table and smashed it against the wall, inches from her head.

Shards rained down on her like jagged hail.

She screamed, covering her face with her hands.

"Get out," I said.

"Dante!"

"Get out of my sight, Sofia. Before I forget that I don't hit women who aren't my wife."

She scrambled out of the room, sobbing, the sound fading down the hallway.

I walked over and picked up the diary.

I smoothed the crumpled pages with trembling fingers.

I pressed the book to my forehead, squeezing my eyes shut.

But all I could see were the scars on Elena's back.

Scars I put there.

I was the villain in her story.

And now, I was the villain in mine.