Seraphina Vitiello POV

The music upstairs had finally died away.

The guests had been ushered into the gardens for the grand finale, their eyes turned toward the sky for the fireworks.

I was not in the garden.

I was buried beneath them, in the basement of the estate.

The room smelled of old rust and sharp, chemical bleach.

There was a drain in the center of the concrete floor, waiting.

Dante stood by the heavy steel door.

He had already removed his tuxedo jacket. Now, he was methodically rolling up his sleeves, exposing the tattoos on his forearms.

My father sat on a wooden stool in the corner, calmly smoking a cigar.

"Fifty lashes," my father said, the smoke curling around his words. "For theft. For disrespect. And for ruining the toast."

I was on my knees.

My hands were zip-tied to a cold water pipe running along the ceiling above my head.

My back was exposed to the damp air. The expensive black dress had been sliced open from neckline to waist.

Dante picked up a leather strap from the table.

Isabella stood behind him, peeking out from the hallway.

She looked excited, her eyes bright with a cruel curiosity.

"Make sure she learns, Dante," she said, her voice high and demanding. "She needs to learn her place."

Dante paused and looked back at her.

"Wait outside, Isabella," he ordered, his voice flat. "This is ugly. You shouldn't see it."

"No, I want to stay," she pouted, crossing her arms.

"Turn around then," he commanded. "Cover your ears."

He was trying to protect her innocence.

But he was about to flay the skin off my back.

He walked behind me.

I didn't beg.

I didn't cry.

I just rested my forehead against the condensation on the cold pipe and closed my eyes.

One.

The leather cracked against my skin with a sickening snap.

Pain exploded across my shoulders, white-hot and blinding.

Two.

Three.

He fell into a rhythm.

Methodical. Precise.

He was a professional.

I could tell by the swing that he wasn't doing this out of anger. He was doing it out of duty.

That made it worse.

By the twentieth lash, I couldn't distinguish the individual strikes anymore.

It was just a continuous wall of fire searing into my flesh.

Blood began to trickle down my sides. I heard the soft *drip-drip* as it hit the concrete floor.

I bit my lip until I tasted copper to keep from screaming.

I wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

I forced my mind away. I thought about the London ticket hidden in my room.

I thought about the plane taking off, the engines roaring.

I thought about the clouds looking like cotton beneath me.

Forty-nine.

Fifty.

Dante stopped.

He was breathing hard behind me.

He dropped the strap.

It landed on the floor with a wet, heavy thud.

"Cut her down," my father said, standing up and brushing ash from his trousers. "Leave her here to think about it until the flight."

Dante took a knife from his belt and sliced through the zip ties.

I collapsed immediately.

My legs wouldn't hold me.

I hit the wet floor hard.

The pain was blinding, radiating from my spine to my fingertips.

Dante stood over me for a second.

For a brief, delirious moment, I thought I saw hesitation in his eyes.

He reached out, his hand hovering as if to touch my shoulder.

Then Isabella called his name from the doorway, her voice impatient.

"Dante, are we done? The fireworks are starting!"

He pulled his hand back instantly.

"We are done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

He turned and walked away without looking back.

The heavy metal door slammed shut.

The lock engaged with a final, echoing click.

I was alone in the dark.

Again.

I lay there for a long time, shivering against the concrete.

I was waiting for the darkness to take me.

But it didn't.

My survival instinct—the one thing they couldn't beat out of me—kicked in with a vengeance.

I dragged myself across the floor to the corner where the janitorial supplies were kept.

I found a bottle of cheap vodka my father's guards kept hidden behind a bucket.

I found a sewing kit in the emergency box.

I uncapped the bottle and poured the vodka over my raw back.

The scream tore from my throat then. A raw, animal sound that bounced off the basement walls.

I threaded the needle with trembling fingers.

I couldn't reach everything.

But I stitched what I could.

I stitched my own skin back together in the semi-darkness, with shaking hands and a heart that had finally turned to stone.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out, the screen illuminating the blood on my hands.

A text from Isabella.

It was a photo.

She and Dante, standing under the explosion of fireworks.

She was kissing him.

*He is finally mine,* the caption read.

I stared at the screen.

I didn't feel jealousy.

I didn't feel sadness.

I felt nothing.

The love I had for him died on that concrete floor, washed away with the blood and the cheap vodka.

I deleted the photo.

I put the phone away.

I curled up on the cold floor, the needle still clutched in my hand.

I wasn't waiting for London anymore.

I was waiting for my chance.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

Several weeks later.

The convoy was finally moving.

I was seated in the third SUV. The "suicide seat."

It was the car they put the decoys in. Or the expendable assets.

Dante and Isabella were in the lead armored vehicle. My parents secured the second.

We were heading to the airport.

My exile was finally happening.

I stared out the window at the unforgiving grey Chicago sky.

My back was still healing, a constant ache beneath my clothes. My leg, though no longer in a cast, throbbed with every bump in the road, a dull reminder of the fracture. I walked with a slight limp, a physical manifestation of the scars they had given me.

I hadn't spoken a word since the basement.

The driver, a low-level soldier named Rocco, looked at me in the rearview mirror.

"You okay back there?" he asked, his brow furrowed. "You look pale."

I didn't answer.

I just watched the overpass approaching.

I saw the flash an instant before I heard the sound.

An RPG.

It hit the lead car.

The explosion shook the ground beneath us.

Our driver slammed on the brakes.

The SUV swerved, tires screaming against the pavement.

Another explosion hit the asphalt directly in front of us.

The car flipped.

Glass shattered into a million diamonds. Metal groaned like a dying beast.

The world spun.

We rolled once. Twice.

We landed upside down.

I was hanging by my seatbelt, gravity dragging at my injured body.

My head was pounding. Blood dripped warm and thick into my eyes.

I looked to the front. Rocco was dead. His neck was broken at an unnatural angle.

I tried to unbuckle, but the mechanism was jammed.

Gunfire erupted outside.

A chaotic symphony of bullets.

I saw boots on the pavement through the haze.

Then I saw Dante.

He had dragged Isabella out of the burning lead car.

His face was covered in soot.

He was carrying her, shielding her body with his own.

He was running towards the backup vehicle that had pulled up alongside the wreckage.

He ran past my window.

He looked in.

He saw me.

For a heartbeat, time suspended.

Our eyes met through the spiderwebbed glass.

I saw the cold calculation in his eyes.

He had Isabella. She was the asset. She was the future.

I was the spare.

He didn't stop.

He didn't even try to open my door.

He kept running.

He shoved Isabella into the backup car and jumped in after her.

The car sped away, leaving me behind.

I watched his taillights fade into the smoke.

He left me to die.

Again.

Smoke began to fill the cabin.

I smelled gas.

This is it, I thought.

This is how it ends.

It was peaceful, in a way. No more pain. No more silence.

Then the door was ripped open.

A pair of strong hands grabbed me.

It wasn't Dante.

It was a bodyguard from the rear vehicle. Marco.

He cut my seatbelt.

I fell into his arms.

He dragged me out onto the asphalt.

We were barely ten feet away when the SUV exploded.

The heat seared my skin. The shockwave knocked us down.

I hit the ground hard.

Something inside me snapped. Not a bone this time.

Something deep in my abdomen.

Marco was shouting into his radio.

"I have the girl! She's alive!"

I looked up at the sky.

It was starting to rain.

The drops felt cool on my face.

I closed my eyes.

I didn't want to be saved.

But the universe, it seemed, wasn't done torturing me yet.

Seraphina Vitiello POV

The hospital room was blindingly white.

Everything was always white.

I had lost my spleen to internal bleeding.

Three cracked ribs had been added to the collection.

My previously fractured shinbone was now severely re-injured, threatening to set back my recovery by months.

The doctor told me I was lucky.

Lucky.

That word had lost all meaning.

My father loomed at the foot of the bed.

He looked annoyed that I had survived. My breathing complicated things.

"The flight to London has been rescheduled," he said, his voice devoid of warmth. "You leave in three weeks. No more delays."

He didn't ask how I was.

He didn't apologize for leaving me to die in a burning car.

"Dante is handling the retaliation against the Russians," he added, checking his watch. "He is very busy. Do not expect a visit."

I didn't expect anything.

I just nodded.

When he left, I waited for the nurse to change my IV and leave the room.

Then, I moved.

My body screamed in protest, but my mind was clear. Cold and sharp as a scalpel.

I retrieved the go-bag I had hidden in the ventilation shaft of the hospital bathroom during my last visit.

I had been planning this for months. Long before the gala.

I pulled out the burner phone.

I logged into the offshore account.

The money I had siphoned off from the family's charity fund over the last three years sat there, waiting.

It wasn't a fortune, but it was enough.

I booked a ticket.

Not to London.

To Sydney.

One way.

I printed the boarding pass in the business center down the hall, using a stolen hospital ID, ignoring the agony in my ribs with every step. My leg, though still weak, could bear my weight with careful effort, thanks to weeks of secret, painful exercises in my room.

Then I went back to the room.

I took out the legal documents I had prepared.

Emancipation papers.

Name change forms.

I signed them. The ink looked black and final.

*Seraphina Vitiello* ceased to exist on that paper.

Then I took out the flash drive.

The recordings.

The hours of audio from the safe house.

Me reading to Dante.

Me singing to him.

Him whispering his secrets. Him telling me he loved *Sette*.

I put the papers and the drive into a small gift box.

I tied it with a pristine white ribbon.

It looked like a wedding gift.

In a way, it was.

It was the gift of truth.

And truth was the most destructive weapon I possessed.

I dressed in the clothes from my bag. Jeans. A hoodie.

I looked like a nobody.

I looked like a ghost.

I walked out of the hospital.

No one stopped me.

The guards were posted at the main entrance, watching for Russians.

They weren't watching for the girl who didn't matter.

I slid into a taxi.

"Take me to the Vitiello estate," I said.

The driver looked at me in the mirror.

"You sure, miss? That's a rough neighborhood."

"I'm just dropping off a package," I said.

"And then I'm gone."