I sat on the cold linoleum of my dilapidated apartment, contorting my body in a desperate attempt to bandage my own back.

The burns were a mottled landscape of raw flesh, blistering and weeping serum. I couldn't reach the worst of it.

With a trembling hand, I poured cheap vodka over the wounds and bit down hard on a folded towel, stifling the scream that clawed at my throat.

The door didn't just open; it exploded inward.

The lock splintered with a sharp crack. Dante stood in the frame, his chest heaving, his face smeared with soot and unadulterated rage. He looked wild, feral.

He strode in, kicking aside a pile of laundry without breaking stride. He saw the vodka bottle. He saw the burn ointment. Then, his gaze landed on my back.

He froze.

For a second, the monster's mask slipped. His eyes widened, pupils dilating until they were black pools, taking in the raw, mangled skin across my shoulder blades.

"What is this?" he asked, his voice shaking with a tremor I hadn't heard before.

I pulled my shirt up quickly, hissing as the fabric stuck to the oozing wounds.

"It's nothing," I said, turning to face him.

"Don't lie to me, Elena! Where did you get those burns?"

I leaned against the counter, forcing a smirk onto my face. It was the only weapon I had left against his scrutiny.

"Prison fight," I lied, my voice dripping with false nonchalance. "A girl in the showers didn't like the way I looked at her. Or maybe it was from a lover. I forget. It happens when you're popular."

His jaw clenched so hard I thought a tooth might crack. "A lover?"

I shrugged, ignoring the tearing pain in my skin. "You think you're the only one who gets to have fun, Dante? Prison gets lonely."

It was the cruelest thing I could say. I was painting myself as a whore to disgust him, to make sure he never looked close enough to see the truth—that I had walked through fire for him.

He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed my throat. His hand was large, warm, and calloused. He squeezed, cutting off my air with terrifying precision.

"You disgust me," he snarled, his face inches from mine. "I thought... for a second, I thought you were in the fire. I thought you pulled me out."

I laughed, a choked, raspy sound against his palm.

"Me? Risk my life for you? After everything you've done to me? I ran, Dante. I saw the fire and I ran. I only care about myself. Just like I only cared about myself when I killed your mother."

His grip tightened. I saw the shards of heartbreak fracture his anger. He wanted me to be innocent. But I wouldn't let him.

"I hate you," he whispered against my lips, the words feeling like a curse.

"Good," I wheezed.

He released me, shoving me back against the counter. I slid down, gasping for air as oxygen rushed back into my burning lungs. He looked at me one last time, with absolute revulsion, and stormed out.

The next day, Sofia called. She needed a driver.

I arrived at the estate in my rusted sedan. She was waiting at the end of the long driveway. Dante was standing on the porch, watching like a sentinel.

Sofia walked toward the car. As I put it in gear to pull forward, she suddenly threw herself onto the hood.

She screamed—a piercing, theatrical shriek—and rolled onto the gravel in a heap.

From the porch, Dante roared.

It was a sound of pure, animalistic trauma. To him, it must have looked like history repeating itself—the woman he loved, struck down by a vehicle, just like his mother. The flashback must have seized him entirely.

He didn't run to her. He ran to his SUV.

He revved the engine, the armored vehicle roaring like a tank. I watched in the rearview mirror as he barreled toward me. He wasn't Dante anymore. He was an executioner.

I didn't try to move. I gripped the steering wheel and closed my eyes.

The impact was like a bomb going off.

Metal screamed. Glass exploded inward in a glittering shower. My car folded like paper against the force of his rage. The airbag deployed, punching me in the face, but not before I felt my ribs snap with a sickening crunch. The car spun and slammed into a tree.

Silence followed.

I hung in the wreckage, blood dripping into my eyes. Through the shattered windshield, I saw Dante sitting in his SUV, staring at me, his chest heaving.

He didn't look horrified.

He looked satisfied.

I woke up in a hospital room that reeked of antiseptic and artificial lemon.

My ribs were taped tight against my chest. My head throbbed with the dull, heavy ache of a concussion.

The doctor told me I was lucky to be alive, but he didn't know about the cancer quietly rotting my pancreas, so his definition of luck was severely skewed.

Dante never came.

I was discharged three days later. The moment I stepped out of the hospital doors, Matteo was waiting by the curb.

"The Boss wants you at the estate," he said, not meeting my eyes. "Wedding preparations."

Of course.

I was put to work immediately.

I had to address the invitations. Hundreds of cream-colored envelopes, my pen carving the names of the people who would celebrate the union of Dante and Sofia.

My hand cramped, locking into a claw, but I didn't stop.

Then came the anniversary.

It was five years to the day since Lucrezia died. The family gathered at the private cemetery on the estate grounds.

I was ordered to attend, to stand at the back like a spectre—a living reminder of what happens to traitors.

It was raining. A cold, gray drizzle that soaked through my thin coat and settled into my bones.

Dante stood at the front, holding a black umbrella over Don Salvatore. The old Don looked frail, leaning heavily on a cane topped with a silver wolf's head.

Sofia stood next to them, dabbing at dry eyes with a lace handkerchief.

When the priest finished, the family began to place roses on the grave. I waited until everyone had retreated to the cars—or so I thought.

I approached the tombstone.

*Lucrezia Vitiello. Beloved Mother and Wife.*

I had no flower. Instead, I placed a small, smooth stone on the marble.

"I kept your secret," I whispered to the cold earth. "I kept them safe."

"You dare?"

The voice was a thunderclap.

I turned. Don Salvatore had returned. He stood ten feet away, shaking with a rage that seemed too big for his withered frame. Dante was behind him, his face an unreadable mask.

"You dare touch her grave?" Salvatore screamed. "You murderer! You poison!"

He lunged at me. He was old, but his grief gave him a terrible strength. He swung the heavy cane.

I didn't dodge. I deserved this. Not for killing her, but for leaving her son alone in this cruel world.

The silver wolf's head struck my temple.

Pain exploded in my skull. I fell to the muddy grass, warm blood instantly blinding my left eye.

"Father!" Dante shouted, stepping forward.

"No!" Salvatore yelled, raising the cane again. "She killed my Lucrezia! She took my light!"

He struck me again, on the shoulder, right over the old burns. I cried out, curling into a ball in the mud.

*Let him,* I thought. *Let him kill me. It would be faster than the cancer.*

Dante caught his father's arm before the third blow could land.

"Enough," Dante said. His voice was tight, strained. "Not here. Not in front of Mother."

Salvatore spat on me.

I lay in the mud, my body mixing with the rain and the blood. I looked up at Dante.

He was looking at his father with concern, checking the old man's heart rate. He didn't look at me.

"Get her out of here," Salvatore wheezed. "Before I finish it."

Dante looked down at me then.

For a second, I saw something flicker in his eyes. Guilt? Regret?

No. It was just disgust.

"Go, Elena," he said coldly. "Before I let him kill you."

I dragged myself up, using a tombstone for support.

I limped away into the rain, leaving a trail of blood on the pristine grass, walking toward a death that couldn't come fast enough.

Elena POV

The rain had turned into a relentless downpour by the time Dante shoved me into the back of his armored SUV.

My temple throbbed where Don Salvatore had struck me, the blood drying sticky and cold against my skin. I didn't wipe it off. I wore it like the mark of Cain he seemed to believe I deserved.

"Drive," Dante ordered the driver.

He didn't look at me. He stared out the window at the gray blur of New York, his jaw set so hard a muscle ticked rhythmically in his cheek. The silence in the car was suffocating, heavy with five years of unsaid words and a lifetime of broken promises.

We didn't go to the estate. We went to the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Get out."

I stumbled out into the gale. It whipped my wet hair across my face, stinging my eyes. Dante walked ahead, his long coat billowing behind him like a dark wing.

He stopped at a section of the railing cluttered with rusted padlocks.

Lovers locked them there. They wrote their initials, locked the shackle, and threw the key into the river below. It was a promise of forever.

We had done this. Ten years ago. Before the blood. Before the lies.

Dante reached into his coat and pulled out a pair of heavy bolt cutters. The metal glinted dully in the streetlamps.

"Do you see it?" he asked, his voice flat.

I looked. It was there. A small, brass lock, tarnished by time and weather. *D & E*. Scratched into the metal with a pocketknife.

"I see it," I whispered.

He didn't hesitate. He clamped the jaws of the cutters around the shackle. He didn't look at me. He looked at the lock with a hatred so pure it terrified me.

"This is what your promise is worth," he said.

_Snap._

The sound was louder than a gunshot in the empty air. The lock fell into his hand. He didn't look at it. He wound his arm back and hurled it over the railing, into the dark, churning water below.

It was gone. Just like us.

He turned to me then. He reached into his pocket again, but this time he pulled out a folded piece of paper. He shoved it against my chest.

"Take it."

I took it. It was a check. The amount was staggering. Enough to buy a house. Enough to buy a new life. Enough to bury a body in the mountains.

"This is your severance," he said, his eyes cold and dead. "The wedding is in three days. After that, I never want to see your face again. If you are in this city when I return from my honeymoon, I will kill you myself. And this time, I won't stop my father."

I clutched the check. It felt light, flimsy. It was the price of my soul.

"I understand," I said.

He stared at me for a long moment, searching for something in my face. Maybe he wanted me to beg. Maybe he wanted me to cry. But I had nothing left to give him.

"Goodbye, Elena."

He turned his back on me and walked away. He got into the car and drove off, leaving me standing alone in the rain on a bridge full of other people's promises.

I looked at the water where our lock had vanished.

"Goodbye, Dante," I whispered to the wind.