Elara POV:

The broken pieces of the bird lay scattered on the pristine white marble. It was more than wood. It was my father's last promise, a symbol of a loyalty that had gotten him killed and me trapped.

"Oh, my god, I'm so sorry!" Sienna gasped, but her eyes held a triumphant glint she barely concealed. She bent down, pretending to gather the pieces, and then let out a sharp cry. "Ow! I cut myself."

She held up her finger, a tiny, almost invisible bead of blood welling up.

Dante's entire demeanor shifted. The cold indifference he showed me vanished, replaced by a dark, protective fury. He knelt beside Sienna, taking her hand as if she were made of glass.

"Are you okay?" he murmured, his voice softer than I had ever heard it.

Something inside me, something that had been silent and broken for three years, finally snapped.

"She's lying," I said, my voice trembling, raw with a fury I hadn't realized was coiled inside me. "She did it on purpose. Check the security cameras, Dante."

I took a step forward, and Sienna flinched back against him, her eyes wide with fake fear. "Dante, she's scaring me."

That was all it took.

I slapped her. The sound was like a gunshot in the silent penthouse.

Dante's head whipped toward me. His face was a mask of disbelief that quickly hardened into pure menace. He saw my defiance. An insult to his authority, in his home, in front of his future bride.

"You dare?" he whispered, the word a low growl.

He rose to his full height, a towering shadow of rage. He stalked toward me, and I braced myself. He raised his hand-the same hand that had held me and hurt me and promised me a future. For a second, I saw the blow coming. A public, final humiliation.

But he stopped, his hand hovering inches from my face. The violence in his eyes was worse than any physical strike.

"Don't you ever touch her again," he snarled, his voice laced with a lethal promise. "Get out."

I didn't need to be told twice. I grabbed my bag and fled, not even looking back at the wreckage of my father's memory on his floor. Out in the hallway, the elevator doors slid open. As I stepped inside, I caught a final glimpse of him, his back to me, gently dabbing Sienna's finger with his handkerchief.

The cold Chicago rain hit me the moment I stepped outside. Soaked in seconds, I dragged my suitcase down the street, the memory a cruel twist in my gut. I remembered being thirteen, when a group of older boys from a rival territory had cornered me. Dante, only sixteen himself, had appeared out of nowhere. He'd broken one boy's nose and another's arm, standing over me like a guardian devil. "Nobody touches what's mine," he had growled then.

Now, I wasn't his anymore.

The next few days were a blur of grief and grim determination. I stayed in the small apartment my father's pension had paid for and booked a flight. One way. To Australia. To Julian.

The door to my apartment crashed open, splintering the frame.

Dante stood there, his face a mask of cold fury. Rain dripped from his black coat onto the worn floorboards. He advanced on me, backing me up against the wall until my head hit the plaster.

His hand closed around my throat, not enough to choke me, but enough to hold me captive. His eyes were wild.

"Where is she?" he demanded, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.

I stared back, bewildered. "Who?"

"Don't play dumb with me," he snarled, his grip tightening. "Sienna. She's gone. Left a note saying you threatened her, that you told her to disappear if she knew what was good for her."

He leaned in, his face inches from mine. "So I'll ask you one more time. Where is she?"

Elara POV:

Dante's soldiers were brutally efficient. Silent. They dragged me from my apartment and shoved me into the back of a black SUV without a word. The city lights blurred into streaks as we sped toward the industrial expanse of the Chicago docks.

They pulled me out onto a private pier where a sleek Moretti yacht bobbed in the black, churning water. And there, on the deck, the world fell out from under me.

My mother, Elena, was tied to a chair. A gag was stuffed in her mouth, her eyes wide with terror.

Dante stood beside her, a silhouette against the dim lights of the distant city-the devil himself, cloaked in shadow and absolute power.

"I asked you a question, Elara," he said, his voice deceptively calm. "Where is my fiancée?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I choked out, my eyes fixed on my mother.

He laughed, a short, ugly sound. He pulled a phone from his pocket and shoved it in my face. On the screen, a string of text messages gleamed. Sent from a burner phone to Sienna, filled with threats. And signed with my name.

"You're pathetic," he spat. "You couldn't stand being replaced, so you kidnapped her out of jealousy." He leaned in closer, his breath hot against my ear. "I told you. You were always just a convenience. You will never be my wife."

Every word landed like a physical blow.

"I didn't do it, Dante. I swear." My pleas were lost to the wind.

He straightened and gave a curt nod to his Capo, a burly man named Rocco. Rocco and another soldier untied my mother from the chair. They forced her frail body into a heavy burlap sack.

"No!" I screamed, lunging forward, but two soldiers grabbed my arms, their grips like vices.

"Dante, please, her heart... she's not strong!"

"Then you'd better start talking," he said, his face impassive.

Rocco tied a weight to the bottom of the sack and, with a grunt, heaved it over the side of the yacht. It hit the freezing water with a sickening splash and began to sink.

I thrashed against the men holding me, a raw, animal sound tearing from my throat. I could see the sack disappearing into the darkness. My mother. My whole world.

Dante watched me, his expression unreadable. He was waiting for me to break.

Just as I was about to scream out a confession to a crime I didn't commit, a phone rang. It was Dante's.

He answered it, listened for a moment, a flicker of relief crossing his face. "Found? Where?" He listened again. "Good. I'm on my way."

He hung up and turned to his men. "Let's go. They found her."

They released me and followed him off the pier without a backward glance. They didn't cut the rope. They just left her there, sinking in the icy depths of Lake Michigan.

For a heartbeat, I was paralyzed. Then, adrenaline surged through me. I scrambled onto the yacht, found a knife in a utility box, and hacked at the thick rope. It finally snapped.

Without a second thought, I dove into the black, frigid water. The cold was a physical blow, a vise grip on my lungs, but I kicked frantically, my hands searching in the dark. My fingers brushed against the rough burlap. I grabbed it, pulling with all my strength, my lungs burning.

I dragged her to the pier, hauling her dead weight out of the water. She was unconscious, her skin a deathly blue.

I tore the gag from her mouth and started CPR, my movements clumsy and desperate. As I pressed on her chest, one thought burned with terrifying clarity: This was the line. He had tried to murder my mother to punish me.

Her body convulsed, and she coughed up a lungful of water. She was breathing. Barely.

My fingers shook so badly I could barely unlock my phone. There was an unspoken rule in Dante's world. A code. You don't call outsiders. You handle things internally. You call a Moretti doctor. But he had left her to die.

I broke the code.

My voice was a raw whisper when the operator answered. "9-1-1, what's your emergency?"

Elara POV:

My mother survived, but only just. The doctor at the public hospital said the shock and icy water had blossomed into severe pneumonia. She was fragile, tethered to a web of tubes and monitors. The rhythmic, anxious beep of the heart monitor was the only sound in the sterile room.

I sat by her bedside, holding her hand, consumed by a guilt so heavy it felt like I was still at the bottom of that dark water. This was my fault. My stupid, blinding love for Dante had brought this upon her.

My mother's eyes fluttered open. She looked at me, her gaze clear and sharp despite her weakness.

"It wasn't your fault, tesoro mio," she whispered, her voice a raspy thread. "I knew what he was. I just hoped... I was wrong." She squeezed my hand, a flicker of her old strength returning. "We leave. As soon as I can walk, we leave this city and never look back."

The door opened and Dante walked in. He looked utterly out of place in his thousand-dollar suit against the backdrop of peeling paint and scuffed linoleum floors. He carried a bouquet of lilies, their cloying, funereal scent instantly filling the small room.

"I'm sorry about what happened to your mother," he said. The words were a formality, hollow and cold. His gaze held no remorse, only the cold calculus of suspicion, as if he were still weighing how I was to blame.

I didn't answer.

Later that day, desperate for a reprieve from the antiseptic quiet, I went to the hospital cafeteria for coffee. As I rounded a corner, I heard a familiar, saccharine voice. It was Sienna, talking on the phone in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. I ducked behind a large potted plant, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs.

"Grandma, it worked perfectly," she chirped. "He thinks she's a jealous psycho. The kidnapping story was genius. He'll put a ring on my finger, and the Moretti empire will be ours."

My blood turned to ice. Every piece clicked into place with sickening clarity. She had orchestrated everything.

Sienna ended her call and turned, her eyes landing directly on me. A smile of pure venom bloomed on her face. She knew I'd heard.

Her gaze flickered past me to her grandmother, an elderly woman I hadn't noticed, sitting in a wheelchair a few feet away. In a flash, Sienna's expression morphed into one of theatrical panic. She rushed forward, grabbed my hand, and yanked it toward her grandmother's wheelchair. With my hand forced onto the handle, she gave the chair a violent shove.

The wheelchair tipped, sending the old woman tumbling into a decorative fountain in the center of the lobby.

"Help!" Sienna screamed, her voice shrill with manufactured terror. "She pushed my grandmother! Somebody help!"

Dante appeared as if summoned, his face a thundercloud. He saw Sienna sobbing over her drenched, sputtering grandmother, and he saw me, standing frozen, my hand still outstretched from where Sienna had forced it.

He didn't ask. He didn't hesitate.

He strode over to me, his rage absolute.

"You venomous bitch," he hissed.

The first slap cracked across my face, snapping my head to the side. The sting was sharp, electric. Before I could recover, the second one came, just as hard. The public humiliation was a brand, searing itself into my soul. The lobby had gone silent, all eyes on us-a jury of strangers.

"Apologize to her," he commanded, his voice low and shaking with fury.

I met his gaze, the taste of blood on my tongue. Something inside me, something that had been drowning, broke the surface.

"No."

A nurse who had been watching from the reception desk discreetly slipped a folded piece of paper into my hand as Dante dragged a hysterical Sienna away. On it was a phone number. Below it, two words: I have video.