Panic flared in Dante's eyes for a fraction of a second.

He shoved Seraphina away—a sharp, reflexive motion. But the moment he realized who it was, the alarm vanished. It was just me. Just Elara. The quiet wife. The mouse.

He straightened his tie, the mask of cold arrogance sliding back into place.

"Elara," he said. His voice was calm, laced with danger. "What are you doing here? This area is not safe."

I stood on the cracked pavement. I was wearing jeans and an old sweater. I looked like I belonged to the ruins. He, in his bespoke suit, looked like an invader.

"I am cleaning my brother's apartment," I said. "Before you bulldoze it."

Seraphina laughed. It was the sound of breaking glass—sharp and tinkling. "Oh, look, Dante. The charity case is stalking us."

She stepped forward, linking her arm through Dante's. She was staking her claim.

"I didn't know you allowed your pets off the leash," she said to him, her eyes fixed on me.

"Seraphina," Dante warned, but he made no move to detach her. He looked at me, his jaw tight. "Go home, Elara. We will discuss this later."

"Discuss what?" I asked. "The cat? Or the penthouse you're building on top of my childhood home?"

Dante stepped toward me. "I am expanding the territory. This is business."

"Is she business?" I pointed at Seraphina.

"She is a partner," Dante said.

"I am the one he chose," Seraphina corrected. She walked toward me. Her perfume was overpowering, a cloying mix of expensive roses and rot.

"You should go," she whispered when she was close enough that Dante couldn't hear. "You look tired. Grief makes you ugly."

I didn't move. I stared at her. The silence stretched taut between us.

Seraphina hated my silence. She wanted a reaction. She wanted me to scream so she could call me crazy.

When I didn't blink, she reached out. She pretended to brush a piece of lint off my shoulder.

Her fingers dug into the soft flesh between my neck and collarbone. Her nails were sharp. She pinched hard, twisting the skin with vicious intent.

I gasped, stumbling a step back.

Seraphina threw herself backward.

She let out a high-pitched scream and collapsed onto the dirty sidewalk, sprawling in a way that looked theatrically practiced.

"Dante!" she cried. "She pushed me!"

Dante blurred into motion. He was between us in a heartbeat.

He didn't look at Seraphina to see if she was hurt. He looked at me with pure, unadulterated rage.

"What is wrong with you?" he roared.

"I didn't touch her," I said. My voice was steady, but my hands were shaking.

"I saw you lunge," Dante lied. Or maybe he believed it. He always saw what he wanted to see. "She is defenseless."

"She is a viper," I spat.

Seraphina sobbed from the ground, clutching her ankle. "My ankle... Dante, I think she broke it."

Dante knelt beside her. "Let me see."

He touched her leg with a tenderness that used to be mine.

I watched him. This man who had sworn to protect me from the world was now protecting the world from me.

"Get in the car," Dante ordered over his shoulder, not looking at me. "Now."

"No," I said.

He stood up slowly. The air around him turned frigid.

"Do not make me repeat myself, Elara."

He strode toward me, grabbing my arm. His grip was bruising. He dragged me toward the Maybach.

"You are embarrassing me," he hissed.

He opened the back door and shoved me inside.

I fell against the leather seats.

Seraphina limped to the car, smirking at me through the window before Dante helped her into the front seat.

She wasn't hurt. She was winning.

The air inside the car was suffocating.

Dante drove with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Seraphina sat in the passenger seat, fussing with her makeup in the visor mirror, her "broken" ankle miraculously forgotten as she crossed her legs comfortably.

I sat in the back, pressing a wad of tissue to the spot on my shoulder where her nails had broken the skin.

"We are going to lunch," Dante announced, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. "You will behave."

"I have boxes to move," I said, my voice hollow.

"The movers will do it," he replied dismissively.

"They will throw it away," I countered. "It's Luca's life. It's not trash."

"It's junk," Seraphina chimed in, snapping her compact shut. "Dante told me. Old comic books and plastic toys. You're hoarding garbage, Elara."

I saw a box on the floorboard of the front seat. My box. I had left it on the curb when I went inside the tenement earlier. Dante must have picked it up.

"Give that to me," I said, reaching forward.

Seraphina grabbed the box first.

She rummaged through it and pulled out a small, red model airplane.

It was cheap plastic, glued together with clumsy, childish precision. Luca had built it when he was twelve. It was the first thing he ever made with his own hands before the tremors started. It was his pride.

"Look at this," Seraphina laughed, twirling it in her manicured fingers. "Did a toddler make this?"

"Put it down," I said. My voice shook.

"It's dusty," she said. She pressed the button to roll down the window.

"No!" I screamed.

I lunged forward, scrambling over the leather center console.

Dante slammed on the brakes.

The car screeched to a halt in the middle of the empty street.

"Sit down!" Dante yelled.

Seraphina dropped the plane. Not out the window, but onto the plush floor mat.

She lifted her stiletto heel.

I watched in slow motion as the sharp metal point came down on the red plastic.

CRUNCH.

The wings snapped. The fuselage shattered.

It wasn't just plastic breaking. It was the last piece of Luca I had left.

Something inside me snapped.

I lost my mind. I clawed at her. I grabbed her hair. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to bleed like my heart was bleeding.

"Get off her!" Dante roared.

He reached back. He didn't pull me away.

He kicked.

He twisted in his seat and his heavy boot connected with my stomach.

The air left my lungs in a violent whoosh. Pain exploded in my abdomen. I was thrown back against the rear seat, gasping, curling into a ball.

"You are insane!" Dante shouted. He checked Seraphina's face, cupping her cheeks. "Are you okay, cara?"

"She scratched me," Seraphina wailed, holding up a flawless cheek.

I lay on the backseat, clutching my stomach, unable to draw a breath.

"It was Luca's," I wheezed. "You broke it."

Dante looked at the shattered plastic on the floor. He shrugged.

"It is a toy, Elara," he said coldly. "I will buy you a better one. Stop acting like a child."

He put the car in gear.

He drove fast, angry. He was barking at someone on the phone now, handling business, ignoring the wife he had just kicked in the stomach.

Seraphina reached over and fed him a grape from a bag she had in her purse. He took it, nipping at her finger playfully.

I stared at the ceiling of the car.

I felt the vibrations of the road.

Then, I felt the impact.

A truck ran the red light.

It slammed into the passenger side. The side where Seraphina was sitting. But the force spun the heavy Maybach like a top.

Metal screamed. Glass exploded. The world turned upside down.

The silence following a crash is always louder than the collision itself.

It smelled like gunpowder, ozone, and burnt rubber.

I was pinned. The roof had caved in over the rear passenger seat, crushing the space around me. My legs were trapped beneath the crumpled metal. Warm liquid trickled down my forehead, stinging my eyes.

Blood.

I blinked, trying to clear my vision through the haze.

"Dante," I whispered.

The front of the car was a mess of deployed airbags, like deflated lungs.

Dante was moving. He was groaning, pushing the white bag away from his face. He was alive.

He looked to his right.

"Seraphina!" His voice was panic-stricken. Pure, raw panic.

Seraphina was screaming. "My arm! My arm!"

She wasn't unconscious. She was loud.

Dante kicked his door open with a grunt of effort. He stumbled out onto the asphalt. He was bleeding from a cut on his head, but he was standing.

He ran to the passenger side. He ripped the door open, his strength fueled by a surge of adrenaline.

He pulled Seraphina out. She was clinging to him, wailing about a scratch on her wrist.

I tried to move. Agony shot through my spine, paralyzing me.

"Dante," I said louder, forcing air from my compressed lungs. "I'm stuck."

He heard me. He looked back into the wreckage.

Our eyes met through the shattered rear window.

He saw the blood on my face. He saw the metal crushing my legs.

He looked at Seraphina in his arms. Then he looked at the smoke rising from the hood.

"Take her first!" Dante screamed at the approaching sirens.

He wasn't talking about me.

He turned his back.

He carried Seraphina away from the car. He walked toward the ambulance that was just arriving, shielding her body with his own.

"My fiancée is hurt!" he yelled at the paramedics. "Help her!"

Fiancée.

I watched him walk away.

The smoke was getting thicker inside the cabin, choking me. I could feel the heat licking at my skin.

He left me.

He chose the mistress. He chose the lie.

I closed my eyes.

I will burn the world to save you. That was his vow at the altar.

He burned me instead.

Darkness took me before the fire could.

I woke up to the cloying smell of lilies.

Funeral flowers.

I was in a hospital bed. My legs were casted, heavy and immobile. My head was wrapped in tight gauze.

A nurse was adjusting my IV. She smiled brightly when she saw I was awake.

"Oh, honey, you're awake," she said. "You are so lucky. Your husband is a hero."

I frowned, my throat dry as sandpaper. "What?"

She picked up the remote and turned on the TV mounted on the wall.

It was the news. A sensational headline flashed: MOB BOSS SAVES LOVE OF HIS LIFE FROM FIERY CRASH.

The video played. It was cell phone footage from a bystander.

It showed Dante carrying Seraphina out of the smoke, looking rugged and heroically desperate. He laid her on the stretcher and kissed her forehead.

The reporter's voiceover was gushing. "Dante Volkov risked his life to pull his partner from the wreckage, proving that even the city's most notorious bad boys have hearts."

There was no mention of the woman in the back seat.

I was a ghost.

The door opened.

Dante walked in. He had a bandage on his forehead and a bouquet of white lilies in his hand.

Dante placed the vase on the bedside table.

Lilies.

They were white, stark, and reeking of a funeral home.

He didn't even realize what he had done. He had brought the flowers of death to a woman who had just watched her brother turn into ash.

"Elara," he said. His voice was rough, tired. It was the voice of a man who believed he carried the weight of the world, when all he truly carried was his own ego. "You're awake."

I looked at the flowers. Then I looked at the bandage on his forehead. A small, white square. A hero's wound.

My legs were encased in plaster. My ribs felt like they were knit together with barbed wire.

"Get out," I said.

My voice was a rusty gate swinging shut.

Dante blinked, looking genuinely confused. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, gold box.

"I brought you truffles," he said. "The hazelnut ones. You like these."

He held it out as if I were a stray dog he was trying to coax out from under a porch.

I didn't look at the chocolate. I looked at his hand. The hand that had dragged me into that car. The hand that had pulled Seraphina from the wreckage while I burned.

I swung my arm.

It cost me a jagged scream of pain from my ribs, but it was worth it.

My hand connected with the vase.

Glass exploded.

Water splashed across the linoleum like a severed artery. The lilies scattered, broken and wet, mixing with the gold box of chocolates on the floor.

"Get out!" I screamed.

Dante took a step back. A drop of water rolled down his expensive Italian shoe.

His face changed. The concern vanished. The Husband vanished.

The Boss appeared.

He stepped over the broken glass and loomed over the bed, blocking out the fluorescent light.

"You are being ungrateful," he hissed.

"Ungrateful?" I laughed. It hurt. "You left me to die."

"I saved you," he corrected, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. "I pay for this room. I pay for the doctors. I pay for the very air you are breathing right now, Elara."

He leaned down, his face inches from mine. I could smell his cologne. It used to smell like safety. Now it smelled like a cage.

"Without me," he whispered, "you are nothing. You are a girl from the Outskirts with a dead brother and no skills. Do not bite the hand that feeds you."

He straightened his jacket, looking down at the mess on the floor with disgust.

"Clean this up," he commanded the empty room.

He turned and walked out.

He didn't look back.

I stared at the door.

He was right. He paid for everything.

But he was wrong about one thing.

I wasn't nothing.

I was a woman with absolutely nothing left to lose.

And that made me more dangerous than he could ever imagine.