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.

Seraphina Vitiello POV:

The music died, leaving behind a silence so heavy it felt like it could crush bones.

The guests were whispering, a low murmur of scandalized delight, like an audience watching a tragedy unfold.

Dante stepped over the broken glass. His dress shoes crunched violently on the shards, the only sound in the cavernous room.

He reached down and ripped the bracelet off my wrist.

The string snapped with a pathetic pop. Beads scattered across the floor, rolling through the puddles of spilled champagne like lost marbles.

He picked up the main strand, wiping my blood off it with a handkerchief as if my DNA were a disease he couldn't wait to scrub away.

He handed it to Isabella.

"Here," he said softly. "It's back where it belongs."

Isabella clutched it to her chest, weeping theatrically. "Thank you, my love. I was so scared I'd lost it forever."

Dante turned back to my father, his face a mask of cold indifference.

"What is the punishment for theft in the Vitiello family?" he asked.

My father adjusted his cufflinks, bored. "The whip. Ten lashes for every thousand dollars of value."

"This bracelet is priceless," Dante said, his eyes locking onto mine. "It represents my life."

"Fifty lashes," my father decided.

I went cold.

Fifty.

My back was already a map of scars from childhood beatings. Fifty lashes with the family's leather strap would strip the skin from the bone. It could kill me.

"No," I whispered. I tried to scramble back on the slippery floor, my heels sliding in the mess. "Grandmother gave me the stones. Please."

"Still lying," Dante said. He looked at the guards. "Take her to the basement."

They dragged me out.

I didn't scream then. I saved it for the dungeon.

They chained my wrists to the overhead pipe. My toes barely touched the concrete, leaving me strung up like a side of beef.

My father didn't do it himself. He had a heavy hand, but he didn't like to sweat in his tuxedo.

He nodded to the enforcer.

The first lash hit.

It felt like a molten wire slicing through my dress and into my flesh.

I bit my lip until it bled, tasting copper.

One.

Two.

Three.

The leather curled around my ribs, slicing into my arms as I tried to twist away.

By ten, my dress was in tatters.

By twenty, I was screaming.

Dante stood in the corner. He had his hand over Isabella's eyes, pressing her face into his chest so she wouldn't have to see the brutality she had orchestrated.

"Don't look, Bella," I heard him say, his voice muffled by the ringing in my ears. "It's ugly."

I was the ugly thing. I was the monster being put down.

Thirty.

I started to dissociate. I floated out of my body, hovering near the damp ceiling. I watched the girl hanging from the chains. She looked so small. So broken.

Forty.

I stopped making noise. My throat was raw, my lungs empty.

Fifty.

The enforcer stopped.

They unchained me. I crumpled to the floor, a heap of raw meat and ruined silk.

"Let her rot here tonight," my father said.

They left. The heavy metal door clanged shut, sealing me in the blackness.

I lay in the dark for an hour, waiting for the bleeding to slow, shivering as shock set in.

Then, painfully, inch by inch, I crawled.

I crawled up the stairs. I crawled to the servants' quarters, where I kept a first aid kit hidden under a loose floorboard.

I sat on the edge of a cot, needle and thread in my shaking hands.

I couldn't reach my back. It was a ruin I couldn't fix.

I had to stitch what I could reach—my arms, my shoulders, where the whip had curled around—and bind the rest tight with gauze to stop the blood.

My phone buzzed.

It was on the floor where I had dropped it.

A text from Isabella.

*Photo attachment.*

It was her and Dante. They were in the back of a limo. He was kissing her neck. She was holding the bracelet up to the camera, the diamonds catching the light.

*He says I taste like strawberries,* the caption read. *What do you taste like, sister? Blood and failure?*

I didn't reply.

I didn't feel angry.

I felt nothing.

The pain in my back was a dull roar, a wall of white noise that drowned out the last of my love for them.

I packed a single duffel bag.

The butler found me an hour later.

"Your father says you are to stay in the basement quarters until you leave for London," he said, refusing to meet my eyes. Whether out of pity or disgust, I couldn't tell. "You are not allowed in the main house."

"Fine," I said, my voice a rasp.

"And you leave in two days."

"I know," I said.

I zipped up the bag.

Two days.

I could survive two days in hell if it meant I never had to come back.