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.

Seraphina Vitiello POV:

The diamond on Isabella's finger was the size of a quail egg.

It caught the fractured light of the crystal chandeliers, sending aggressive little rainbows dancing across the ballroom ceiling.

The crowd erupted.

Men in five-thousand-dollar suits clapped Dante on the back, while women in silk gowns dabbed at dry eyes, feigning emotion.

"To the union of Chicago's finest!" someone toasted, their voice booming over the applause.

I stood by a marble pillar, my hands clasped tightly behind my back to hide the trembling.

I wasn't shaking from sadness.

I was shaking from the sheer, exhausting effort of existing in this room without screaming.

Isabella was glowing. She held her hand up, admiring the ring, preening like a peacock displaying its feathers.

Then, her eyes found me in the shadows.

Her smile sharpened into something predatory.

"Seraphina!" she called out, her voice cutting through the din. The room quieted instantly. "Don't be shy. Come wish us well."

Dante turned. His face was impassive, a beautiful mask of stone.

I forced my legs to move. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, but instead of awe, their eyes held a mixture of pity and amusement.

The spare. The failure.

"Happy birthday, Isabella," I said, willing my voice to remain steady. "Congratulations on the engagement."

"Where is my gift?" she asked, extending her manicured hand. "You didn't forget, did you?"

I reached into the small, unassuming clutch I was allowed to carry.

I pulled out a velvet box. Inside sat a pair of pearl earrings. They were simple, elegant, and had cost me three months of saving from the pittance of an allowance my father granted me.

Isabella snatched the box. She didn't even glance at the earrings.

Her eyes dropped immediately to my wrist.

My heart stopped.

I had forgotten.

In my desperate haste to dress, to hide the bandages on my arm, I had left the bracelet on.

It was nothing to look at. Just a string of rough, unpolished lava stones. Cheap. Ugly.

But in the safe house, in the dark, Dante used to run his thumb over those stones. He used to count them when the pain of his injuries threatened to pull him under.

*One, two, three... you're here, Seven. You're here.*

Dante's eyes followed Isabella's gaze.

He froze.

The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees, sucking the warmth right out of my lungs.

He reached out and seized my wrist. His grip was like a vice, crushing the healing bones underneath.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded. His voice was low, vibrating with dangerous intent.

I flinched, trying to pull back. "It's mine."

"Liar!" Isabella shrieked.

She dropped the earrings to the floor. She clutched her chest, her face twisting into a practiced mask of distress.

"That's mine!" she cried, looking around for sympathy. "Dante, that's the bracelet I wore when I took care of you! I told you I lost it! She stole it!"

The room gasped.

The thief. The jealous sister.

Dante looked from Isabella to me.

He didn't see the truth. He didn't see that the bracelet was worn down by my fingers, that it fit my wrist perfectly, that it smelled of my skin.

He saw a thief.

"You stole from her?" Dante snarled, his eyes dark with disgust. "Is nothing sacred to you? You try to steal her life, and now her memories?"

"I didn't," I whispered, the words choking me. "I am Seven. This is mine."

My father stepped forward.

He didn't ask for an explanation. He didn't look at the evidence.

He swung his hand.

The slap connected with the side of my head with the force of a sledgehammer.

I stumbled back, the world tilting on its axis.

My heels caught on the hem of my dress.

I fell backward, crashing directly into the champagne tower.

Glass shattered.

The sound was deafening as hundreds of crystal flutes came crashing down around me.

Shards sliced into my arms, my back.

Sticky, golden champagne soaked my hair, stinging the fresh cuts like acid.

I lay there in the ruin, gasping for air, tasting blood and expensive wine.

My mother walked over. She held a glass of red wine in her hand.

She poured it over my face.

"Disgrace," she spat, the red liquid dripping down my cheeks like false tears. "You are a stain on this family."

I wiped the wine from my eyes, blinking through the stinging burn.

Through the red blur, I saw Dante.

He wasn't moving toward me. He wasn't helping me up.

He was holding Isabella, checking her hands with frantic tenderness to make sure none of the flying glass had touched her.