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.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

Pain and silence defined the next forty-eight hours.

I remained in the basement, subsisting on stale bread and tepid water because I refused to crawl to the kitchen and beg.

On the morning of my departure, my mother descended the stairs.

"We're going to dinner," she said, her voice void of warmth. "A show of unity before the wedding. You're coming."

"I can barely walk," I rasped.

"I don't care if you have to drag yourself across the pavement," she snapped. "Dante insists. He wants to make sure you understand your place before you go."

They forced me into a dress with a high back to conceal the bandages.

We took the convoy. Three black SUVs.

Dante and Isabella were in the lead car. My parents were in the second. I was relegated to the third, flanked by two bodyguards who looked at me like I was contagious.

The convoy cut a path toward a steakhouse downtown.

I stared out the window. The city passed by in streaks of grey and neon.

I closed my eyes and allowed myself a dangerous luxury: hope.

In the dream, the car stopped. Dante opened my door. He saw the blood seeping through my dress. He picked me up. He apologized. He said he knew.

*BOOM.*

The world disintegrated.

Metal screamed. Glass exploded inward like shrapnel.

My head slammed against the window.

Our SUV spun out of control, slamming into the median with bone-jarring force.

I was thrown against the seatbelt, the strap digging into my fresh wounds. I screamed, but the sound was lost in the chaos.

Gunfire.

We were being ambushed.

I looked through the shattered windshield, vision swimming.

The lead car—Dante's car—had been rammed by a heavy truck. It was crumpled on the passenger side.

Dante kicked his door open.

He stumbled out, blood trickling down his forehead.

He ran around the car.

He ripped the passenger door open with his bare hands, muscles straining against the steel.

He pulled Isabella out.

She was screaming, thrashing, perfectly alive.

"I've got you!" he roared. "Cover me!"

He carried her toward the safety of the arriving backup vehicles.

He ran past my car.

My window was gone. I was hanging sideways, trapped by the crushed metal of the door.

I reached out a hand, fingers trembling.

"Dante," I choked out.

He looked at me.

For a second, our eyes met.

He saw me trapped. He saw the smoke rising from the engine block of my car.

He looked down at Isabella in his arms. She had a mere scratch on her cheek.

He set his jaw, turned his head forward, and kept running.

He left me.

Again.

The heat from the engine was becoming unbearable.

"Get the girl!" a bodyguard shouted from outside.

Not Dante. Just a paid employee.

The guard dragged me out seconds before the fuel tank ignited.

The blast threw us to the ground.

I lay on the asphalt, watching the flames lick the sky.

Ambulances screamed in the distance.

Paramedics swarmed the scene.

"This one is critical!" a medic shouted, kneeling beside me. "BP is dropping fast. Internal bleeding."

"Wait!" my father's voice cut through the noise.

He was standing over Isabella, who was sitting on a gurney, hysterically crying about a broken nail.

"Check my daughter first," he ordered the medics. "She's the bride. She needs to be perfect."

"Sir, this woman is dying," the medic argued.

"I said check Isabella!" Dante barked. "Do as he says."

The medic hesitated, then stood up and walked away from me.

I watched them fuss over Isabella.

I watched Dante stroke her hair.

The darkness crept in at the edges of my vision.

It was peaceful this time.

I welcomed the void.