Seraphina Vitiello POV

I woke up to the rhythmic, relentless beeping of a machine.

My body felt pulverized, as if I had been dragged miles over asphalt and left to rot.

My left arm was encased in a heavy plaster cast. My ribs were taped tight enough to restrict my shallow breaths. My head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache that synced perfectly with the monitor's pulse.

I opened my eyes.

The room was white. Blindingly sterile. And completely empty.

No flowers. No cards. No parents.

A nurse bustled in, checking a clipboard. She jolted slightly when she saw me awake.

"Oh, you're up," she said. Her voice was kind, but her eyes held a heavy, suffocating pity. "You've been in a coma for two days."

Two days.

"Where is my family?" I rasped. My throat felt like I had swallowed sandpaper.

The nurse hesitated. She fiddled with the IV drip, avoiding my gaze.

"They're... down the hall," she finally admitted. "In the VIP suite."

"Isabella?"

"She's being treated for shock," the nurse said, her tone carefully neutral. "And a minor abrasion on her knee."

I almost laughed, but the spasm hurt my ribs too much.

Shock.

I had been crushed by a neon sign, and my sister was in the VIP suite for shock.

"I need to walk," I said.

"You shouldn't—"

"I need to walk."

I forced myself up. The pain was blinding, white-hot and jagged, but I welcomed it. It made me feel real.

I dragged my IV pole down the hallway, the metal wheels squeaking against the linoleum like a dying animal.

I heard them before I saw them.

Laughter. Bright, unburdened laughter.

The door to the VIP suite was open.

My mother was peeling a grape. My father was pouring wine.

Isabella was sitting up in bed, looking radiant in a silk robe, holding Dante's hand.

"Poor baby," my mother cooed. "That sign could have killed you."

"Dante saved me," Isabella said, looking at him with practiced adoration. "He's my hero."

Dante smiled at her. It was a soft smile. The kind he used to give me in the dark, back when I thought I mattered.

"Always," he said.

A waiter wheeled in a cart. A silver tureen of soup.

"Seafood bisque," the waiter announced. "With caviar."

Isabella wrinkled her nose. "I don't want it. It's too rich."

She looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, a broken ghost in a hospital gown.

Her eyes lit up with a sharp, glittering malice.

"Oh, Seraphina!" she chirped. "You're awake! Look, Dante, she's fine."

Dante turned. His expression hardened instantly, the warmth vanishing as if doused by ice water.

"You're walking," he noted, his voice flat. "Clearly not that injured."

"Isabella doesn't want her soup," my mother said, waving a hand dismissively. "Give it to Seraphina. She looks pale. She needs the protein."

I stared at the soup.

Creamy. Pink. Lethal.

"I'm allergic to shellfish," I said quietly.

The room went silent.

"Don't be ungrateful," my father snapped, slamming his wine glass down. "It's fifty dollars a bowl."

"She's always been picky," Isabella sighed, leaning back against her pillows. "Just like when she refused to eat the leftovers at Christmas."

Dante looked at me with disgust. "Your sister offers you kindness, and you throw it in her face? Eat the soup, Seraphina."

"It will kill me," I said.

"Stop being dramatic," Dante said, his jaw clenching. "You're just trying to get attention because I saved her and not you."

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

"You're right," I said, my voice hollow. "I am dramatic."

I turned and walked away.

I navigated the corridors in a haze, forcing my broken body to the pharmacy counter myself to get my pain meds.

Later, I sat by the hospital fountain in the courtyard. The water was cold and clear.

I just wanted five minutes of peace.

"You look like a corpse," a voice said.

Isabella stood there. She was wearing her silk robe, smoking a slim cigarette, looking entirely out of place against the sterile backdrop.

"What do you want, Isabella?"

"I want you to know that he's mine," she hissed. She stepped closer, smoke curling from her lips. "He chose me. He saved me. You were just roadkill."

"I know," I said. "You can have him."

"Liar," she spat. "You still want him. I see it in your eyes."

"I don't want garbage," I said.

Her face twisted, the pretty mask slipping.

She lunged at me.

She grabbed my shoulders and shoved.

I was weak. My balance was gone. I had nothing left to fight with.

I fell backward into the stone fountain.

The water was freezing.

My cast soaked it up instantly, dragging my arm down like an anchor.

My stitches tore.

A cloud of red blood bloomed in the clear water, swirling like smoke.

"Help!" Isabella screamed.

She ripped her own robe, scratched her own neck with manic precision.

"Help! She's trying to drown me!"

Dante burst into the courtyard.

He saw me in the water. He saw the blood.

Then he saw Isabella screaming.

He didn't ask. He didn't think.

He ran to Isabella.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

The water around me was diluting into a soft, sickening pink.

The cold didn't just touch me; it seeped into the marrow of my bones, numbing the fresh, searing fire of my torn stitches.

Dante stripped off his coat and wrapped it around Isabella’s trembling shoulders.

"She tried to pull me in!" Isabella sobbed, burying her face into the solid wall of his chest. "She said if she couldn't have you, no one could!"

Dante’s gaze shifted. He looked down at me.

I was struggling to find purchase in the shallow water. My heavy cast, now waterlogged, acted like a concrete anchor dragging my broken shoulder down.

"Is this true?" he demanded. His voice was zero degrees.

"Would it matter if I said no?" I asked. My teeth chattered so hard the words were chopped into pieces.

"You're pathetic," Dante said, his lip curling. "Trying to hurt your sister? After everything your family does for you?"

"Does for me?" A wet, jagged laugh tore from my throat. "They use me for spare parts, Dante. And you... you're just blind."

The muscle in his jaw ticked.

"Get out of the water," he ordered.

I tried. I slipped against the slick tiles.

He didn't offer a hand. He didn't move. He simply watched me struggle like a drowning insect in a glass jar.

It took everything I had to drag my body over the limestone rim of the fountain. I collapsed onto the pavement, dripping wet, shivering violently.

My parents came running out, a phalanx of bodyguards flanking them.

"My baby!" My mother shrieked, rushing past me to get to Isabella.

My father stopped in front of me. He saw the blood blooming on my hospital gown. But more importantly, he saw the defiance I refused to extinguish.

He stepped into my space and slapped me.

It landed with significantly more force than the strike in his office.

My head snapped back. The metallic tang of copper filled my mouth.

"You ungrateful bitch," he roared, his face purple with rage. "Attacking your sister? In public?"

"She pushed me," I whispered through split lips.

"Liar!" Isabella screamed from the safety of Dante’s arms.

"Enough," Dante said.

The word was quiet, but it cut through the noise like a blade. He stepped forward. He was the Don here. His word was law.

"She needs to be taught a lesson," Dante said, his eyes devoid of humanity. "She needs to cool off."

My father nodded, understanding the code immediately. "The cooler?"

The cooler.

The hospital morgue. The overflow storage. It was kept at a permanent, preserving thirty-five degrees.

"No," I whispered, panic finally piercing through the shock. "Please. I'm bleeding."

"You should have thought of that before you touched her," Dante said.

He signaled the guards with a sharp jerk of his chin.

Two massive men hoisted me up by my arms.

Agony shot through my broken shoulder, blinding and white-hot. I screamed.

Dante didn't flinch. He turned his back to me, focusing entirely on wiping a stray tear from Isabella's cheek.

They dragged me through the labyrinth of basement corridors.

The air grew heavier, colder.

They hauled open a heavy steel door. The chemical stench of formaldehyde slammed into me.

Rows of body bags lay still on metal racks, waiting.

"Enjoy the quiet," the guard sneered, and shoved me inside.

The door slammed shut with a final, resounding boom.

Darkness.

Absolute, freezing darkness.

I slid down the wall, curling into a tight ball to preserve whatever heat I had left.

My wet clothes clung to my skin like sheets of ice.

My stitches were definitely open. I could feel the warm, steady trickle of blood mapping a path down my side.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

In the dark, my mind drifted back to the safe house.

I remembered Dante lying on a cot, his eyes bandaged, vulnerable.

I remembered the way he shivered from the fever.

*“I’m cold, Seven,”* he had whispered, his voice rough with pain.

I had climbed into the narrow cot with him. I had held him, pressing my body against his, whispering stories to keep him anchored to reality.

*“You’re warm,”* he had murmured into my hair. *“You’re the only warm thing in this world.”*

I laughed in the pitch black of the morgue.

A tear froze on my cheek.

You were wrong, Dante.

I'm not warm anymore.

I'm finally just as cold as you.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

Time doesn't exist in the dark. I didn't know if it had been hours or days. I just knew that the numbness had crept up from my extremities, and I couldn't feel my toes anymore.

The heavy click of the latch shattered the silence. The door swung open.

Light flooded in, violent and blinding. I squeezed my eyes shut, flinching against the intrusion.

Dante stood in the doorway, a sharp silhouette cut against the harsh fluorescent hallway lights. He stepped inside, the click of his dress shoes echoing off the steel drawers. He didn't look at the bodies stored around us. He looked only at me.

I was huddled in the corner, knees pulled to my chest, blue-lipped and shaking uncontrollably.

"Have you repented?" he asked.

His voice was calm, echoing off the cold metal. I looked up at him, squinting.

I saw the arrogance in his posture. I saw the absolute, terrifying certainty that he was righteous.

I could have spat at him. I could have screamed the truth one last time—that I was innocent, that he was a fool.

But I was tired. So incredibly tired.

"Yes," I rasped. My voice was barely a whisper, shredded by the cold. "I was wrong."

"Wrong about what?" he pressed, stepping closer.

"Everything," I said, my teeth chattering. "I was wrong to love you. I was wrong to think you were worth saving."

He frowned, his jaw tightening. That wasn't the answer he expected, but it was the submission he required.

"Get up," he commanded.

I tried. My brain sent the signal, but my legs refused to obey. They were dead weight.

He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then reached down and hauled me up by my good arm. His grip was iron, and his touch burned my frozen skin like fire.

He dragged me out of the morgue, away from the smell of formaldehyde and death.

"Go back to your room," he said, releasing me once we were in the warmer corridor. "Clean yourself up. The Gala is tonight."

"I'm not going," I managed to say, leaning against the wall for support.

"You are," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Isabella wants her sister there."

I stumbled back to my room, using the walls to keep me upright.

I took a scalding shower, scrubbing my skin until it was raw, trying to wash away the chill of the morgue and the lingering sensation of his hand on my arm.

When I stepped out, I looked at the room.

It was full of him.

Photos of us from childhood, smiling before the weight of the family business crushed him. The dried rose from the time he visited me in the hospital when I was twelve. The leather-bound diary where I wrote about "Seven."

I grabbed a heavy-duty trash bag.

I swept it all in.

The photos in their silver frames. The crumbling rose petals. The diary full of secrets he would never read.

I didn't cry. I just cleared the shelves with a robotic efficiency.

I walked out to the service elevator, avoiding the staff, and took the bag to the dumpster behind the kitchen.

I hefted it up and threw it in.

It landed with a heavy, final thud among the kitchen scraps.

"What are you doing?"

Dante. Again.

He was walking Isabella from the car to the back entrance, likely avoiding the paparazzi out front. He looked at the dumpster. He saw the silver frame of a photo sticking out from the black plastic. It was a picture of us, taken years ago at the lake house.

His eyes widened slightly, the mask of the Capo slipping for a heartbeat.

"Trash," I said, my voice flat. "Just taking out the trash."

Isabella giggled, completely oblivious to the tension crackling in the air. "Dante, come on. I need to get ready for my birthday. Stop staring at the garbage."

Dante didn't move. He stared at the photo in the filth. For a second, he looked unsettled, as if he were watching a part of himself rot.

"You're throwing away... everything?" he asked quietly.

"I'm making space," I said.

"For what?"

"For a life without you."

I turned and walked back inside before he could respond.

That night, the Gala was a spectacle of gold and velvet, a display of Moretti power disguised as a birthday party.

I stood in the shadows of the ballroom, wearing a long-sleeved black dress—high-necked and severe—to hide my bandages and the bruises blooming on my skin.

Everyone was looking at Isabella.

She wore a tiara. A literal diamond tiara.

My parents stood on either side of her, beaming with pride, ignoring the daughter standing in the dark.

"Tonight," my father announced into the microphone, his voice booming, "we celebrate not just my daughter's birthday, but the future of our family."

He gestured to the side.

Dante stepped up to the stage. In his tuxedo, under the chandeliers, he looked like a king.

He took a small black velvet box from his pocket.

The room gasped collectively.

He opened it.

A massive diamond ring caught the light, fracturing it into a thousand rainbows.

"Isabella," he said, his voice amplified by the speakers, smooth and commanding. "Will you make me the happiest man in Chicago? Will you be my wife?"

Isabella squealed, clapping her hands over her mouth. "Yes! Yes!"

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. The crowd erupted in cheers. Champagne corks popped like gunfire.

I watched them.

I dug my nails into my palms until I felt the warm slick of blood.

It was the final nail in the coffin.

Dante Moretti was engaged to the woman who stole my life.

And I was just the ghost haunting the wedding.

But ghosts have one advantage.

They can walk through walls.

And when no one is looking, they can disappear.