Elena Rossi POV

I needed air. Desperately.

I hailed a yellow taxi outside the building, my hand trembling as I reached for the door handle.

I didn't have a destination. I just needed to be away from the suffocating scent of Mia's perfume that seemed to cling to the walls of my home, choking the life out of me.

"Where to, lady?" the driver asked, eying me in the rearview mirror.

"Just drive," I said, leaning my head back against the worn vinyl. "Anywhere but here."

A flash of movement caught my eye.

Mia ran out of the lobby entrance. She wasn't wearing a coat, despite the chill in the air.

"Elena! Wait!" she shouted, waving her arms overhead like a stranded castaway.

She looked frantic. But I knew better. It was another performance.

I slammed the taxi door shut, locking out her voice.

"Go," I told the driver. "Now."

The taxi pulled away from the curb, merging into the flow of traffic.

Mia didn't stop.

With a glance back at the garage, she ran into the street.

She didn't stumble; she calculated. She threw herself directly into the path of the taxi.

The driver slammed on the brakes. Tires screeched against the asphalt, burning rubber filling the air.

The car jerked to a halt inches from her legs.

Mia collapsed onto the hood, screaming as if she'd been hit by a freight train. It was Oscar-worthy.

Then I heard the roar of an engine.

Dante's black sports car peeled out of the garage exit, like a beast released from a cage.

He saw the taxi. He saw Mia draped dramatically on the hood.

But he didn't see the brake lights.

He saw his wife in a car that had just "hit" his precious donor and was trying to flee.

The engine roared louder.

"Crazy bastard!" the taxi driver yelled, looking in the rearview mirror, his eyes widening in panic.

Dante rammed us.

The impact was deafening. Bone-jarring.

Metal crunched. Glass exploded in a glittering shower.

My head slammed against the partition.

Stars burst behind my eyelids, bright and blinding.

The world tilted sideways.

The taxi spun, careening out of control until it crashed into a parked delivery truck with a sickening thud.

Silence followed the chaos. A heavy, ringing silence.

My vision was blurry. Blood ran warm down my neck, soaking into my collar.

Through the shattered side window, I saw Dante leap from his car.

He didn't run to the taxi.

He ran to Mia.

She was standing by the curb now, miraculously unharmed, dusting off her white dress as if she had simply tripped.

Dante fell to his knees in front of her, his hands checking her face, her arms, her legs, frantic with worry.

"Did he hit you?" Dante roared, his voice shaking with rage. "Did she tell him to hit you?"

Mia was sobbing, pointing a trembling finger at the wreckage I was trapped in.

"She told him to keep going, Dante! She saw me and told him to drive!"

Dante stood up.

He turned toward me.

His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. A stranger's face.

"Don't you dare touch her," he screamed at me through the broken glass. "If you hurt one hair on her head, Elena, I will end you."

I sat there, pinned between the seat and the crumpled door.

My head was bleeding. My arm was throbbing in rhythm with my heartbeat.

And my husband was threatening to kill me for a crime I didn't commit, to protect a monster in a white dress.

A bubble of laughter rose in my throat.

It started low, a rasping sound, scraping against my windpipe.

Then it grew.

I laughed.

I laughed as the blood dripped onto my lap. I laughed until my ribs ached and tears streamed down my face.

It was the sound of a mind finally snapping under the weight of a lie.

The taxi driver looked at me in horror. "Lady, are you okay?"

I stopped laughing. The sound cut off abruptly.

I reached into my purse with shaking hands. I pulled out a stack of cash—emergency money I'd been hoarding for a rainy day. I just didn't realize the storm would look like this.

I threw it into the front seat.

"For the damage," I said, my voice eerily calm.

I kicked the door open, ignoring the protest of twisted metal.

I didn't look at Dante. I didn't look at Mia.

I walked down the street, blood dripping from my fingertips, flagging down another cab to take me to the ER.

Alone.

Elena Rossi POV

Dante didn’t come home for three days.

He claimed he was "handling the legal fallout" of the accident.

Translation: he was paying off the taxi company to bury the evidence and comforting Mia between the silk sheets of a five-star hotel.

I spent those seventy-two hours packing.

Not clothes. Not jewelry. Nothing that would be missed at a glance.

I packed the essentials: my mother’s gold locket, the first edition of *The Great Gatsby* my father gave me—bulky, but non-negotiable—and my passport.

I wedged the duffel bag deep into the ventilation shaft behind the guest closet, screwing the grate back in place with trembling fingers.

When Dante finally returned, he strolled into the bedroom as if he hadn't run my taxi off the road just days ago.

"Get dressed," he commanded, tossing a heavy garment bag onto the bed. "We're celebrating."

"Celebrating what?" I didn't look up from my book, though the words blurred before my eyes.

"Mia's donation. The surgery is scheduled for next week. We're having a private dinner at Le Coucou."

"I'm not going."

Dante moved in a blur.

He gripped my chin, his fingers digging into my jaw with bruising force, tilting my head back.

"You are going. You will sit there, you will smile, and you will thank her for saving your father's life. Do you understand?"

I searched his dark eyes for a flicker of the man I once knew.

There was no love left there. Only possession. Only control.

"I understand," I whispered.

The dinner was a torture chamber disguised in velvet and crystal.

Mia sat at the head of the table—my place—surrounded by Dante's captains and their wives.

She was glowing, radiant with false modesty. She held court like a queen, recounting the "accident" with dramatic flair, painting herself as the brave survivor who had endured so much stress.

Dante hand-fed her an oyster, a slick, intimate display that made my stomach turn.

I sipped my ice water, trying to numb the phantom ache radiating from my fractured arm.

"Let's play a game," one of the wives suggested, her voice slurred by expensive vintage. "Truth or Dare."

The empty wine bottle spun on the crisp white tablecloth, a dizzying blur of green.

It slowed, wobbled, and stopped.

Pointing directly at me.

"Truth or Dare, Elena?" Mia asked, her eyes gleaming with predatory delight.

"Truth."

The chatter at the table died instantly.

"What's the best gift you've ever given Dante?" Mia asked, leaning forward, a challenge in her smile.

Dante smirked, swirling the red liquid in his glass. He expected me to say my virginity, my unwavering loyalty, or some other pathetic offering he felt entitled to.

I looked him dead in the eye, my gaze steady and cold.

"I haven't given it yet," I said.

"Oh?" Dante raised a dark eyebrow. "Is it a surprise?"

"You could say that." I forced a smile. It felt like a blade between my lips. "I am giving you a very large, very permanent gift soon."

The table murmured in approval. They thought I meant a Ferrari. Or maybe a child—an heir to his empire.

Dante looked pleased, his ego sufficiently stroked. "I look forward to it."

I picked up my glass.

"To gifts," I toasted.

I drained the wine in one swallow.

It tasted like freedom.

He didn't know the gift was my absence.

And by the time he unwrapped it, I would be nothing more than a ghost.

Elena Rossi POV

The champagne had barely settled in my stomach when the first shot rang out.

Glass shattered.

Screams erupted.

A drive-by. A rival family sending a message.

The bullets tore through the front window of the restaurant, shredding the velvet curtains into ribbons.

"Get down!" Dante roared.

High above, I saw the massive crystal chandelier sway violently. A stray bullet had severed the main cable.

It was falling.

Directly over the table.

Time slowed down, stretching into an agonizing eternity.

I looked at Dante.

He looked at me.

His eyes locked with mine for a fraction of a second.

Then, he looked at Mia.

He didn't hesitate.

He dove across the table, tackling Mia to the floor, covering her body with his own.

He shielded her.

Then gravity took over.

The chandelier crashed down.

Metal slammed into my legs with bone-crushing force. Crystal shards sliced through the silk of my dress, biting deep into my skin.

The weight was crushing.

Dust and debris filled the air, choking the screams around me.

"Clear! Sector clear!" Mark, the head of security, shouted somewhere in the haze.

Dante scrambled up from the floor. He was covered in dust, but unhurt.

"Mia!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Are you hit?"

Mia was curled in a ball, wailing. "My finger! I cut my finger!"

A tiny paper cut from a piece of glass.

Dante scooped her up, his face pale with a terror he had never shown for me. "Medic! Get the medic for the girl!"

I tried to move.

A jagged piece of metal was pinned across my shin. Blood was soaking the carpet beneath me, turning the beige wool crimson.

"Dante," I choked out.

He didn't hear me.

He was already running toward the back exit, carrying Mia like she was made of fragile porcelain.

He stepped right over the pool of my blood.

"Get her to the safe house!" he ordered his men, ignoring the wife buried under the rubble.

Mark pulled the metal off me. His face was grim.

"Mrs. Vitiello," he said, his voice low and laced with pity. "Can you walk?"

"I can walk," I lied.

I dragged myself up. My legs screamed in protest, shaking violently.

I refused the ambulance. I took a cab to the hospital.

While the doctor stitched the gash in my calf, my phone buzzed against the plastic bedside table.

A text from Dante.

*Mia is in shock. I'm staying with her tonight. Handle yourself.*

I stared at the screen until the pixels blurred.

Numbly, I opened Instagram.

Mia had posted a story ten minutes ago.

A selfie from a hospital bed. She looked perfectly fine, pouting at the camera.

Caption: *My hero saved me. <3*

But it wasn't the caption that made my blood turn to ice.

It was what she was wearing around her neck.

Green jade beads. An antique silver crucifix.

My father's rosary.

The one Dante had sworn to keep safe in the family vault while my father was in treatment.

The one my grandmother had smuggled out of Italy during the war.

He gave it to her.

He gave a whore my dying father's most sacred possession to wear as a fashion accessory.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry.

I stood up, ripping the IV out of my arm.

Blood dripped onto the linoleum.

I didn't care.

I was done bleeding for him.

Now, I was going to take back what was mine.