Dante Moretti POV

The phone call didn’t just break the silence of my office; it detonated it.

"We have Seraphina," the voice on the other end rasped, distortion layering the words with grit. "She's alive. And we're going to finish what the Bratva started unless you bring five million to the docks."

My heart slammed against my ribs, hammering out a violent rhythm I hadn't felt in months.

Seraphina.

She had vanished three days ago. I had convinced myself it was for the best. I had told myself she was dangerous, unstable—a wildfire I couldn't control.

But the silence in the penthouse was deafening. Lucia's incessant prattle about baby names and nursery colors had begun to feel like static interfering with a radio signal.

"Let me speak to her," I demanded, my grip tightening on the mahogany desk.

"No talking. Just payment." The line went dead.

I didn't think. I moved. Instinct took the wheel. I grabbed my keys and my gun in one fluid motion.

"Dante?" Lucia called from the living room, her voice shrill against my panic. "Where are you going?"

"Business," I said, not looking at her. I couldn't. If I looked at her, I would see the woman I chose—the safe option. And right now, all I wanted was the woman I had discarded.

I drove to the hospital first. Lola. The bartender. She was the only one Sera ever really talked to.

I found her smoking outside her apartment building, leaning against the brickwork with a weary slouch. I slammed the car door, the sound echoing like a gunshot.

"Where is she?" I barked, pinning her with a look that usually made grown men beg for mercy.

Lola blew a lazy stream of smoke in my face. "Gone, asshole. And good riddance."

"Someone has her," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous growl. "A kidnapper called. They want ransom."

Lola laughed. It was a harsh, barking sound that grated on my nerves. "Kidnapped? She's on a beach in the southern hemisphere by now, Dante. I saw the flight confirmation. She's gone."

"Then who..." I trailed off, confusion warring with the adrenaline in my veins.

My phone buzzed again. A text. A photo.

It wasn't Seraphina.

It was Lucia.

She was tied to a chair in a warehouse, fear etched into her features. A gun pressed to her temple.

The text read: "Wrong wife. We have the favorite. Bring the money. Or the heir dies."

My stomach dropped as if the floor had vanished beneath me. I had left her alone in the penthouse. The guards... where the hell were the guards?

I ran back to the car. I called the head of security. No answer.

I drove like a man possessed to the coordinates sent in the text. An abandoned textile factory in Queens.

I didn't call for backup. I needed to fix this. I needed to save the mother of my child.

But as I drove, tearing through red lights, a dark thought clawed at my mind. Why did the first caller say they had Seraphina? Why the confusion?

I pulled up to the factory. It was a rotting husk of brick and broken glass, looming against the grey sky. I checked my clip. Full.

I moved into the shadows, hugging the wall. I breached the side door, silent as a ghost. I expected guards. I expected resistance.

There was nothing. Just the melancholy drip of water and the scurrying of rats.

I moved toward the main floor, weapon raised. I heard voices.

"Is he coming?" A woman's voice. Impatient. Annoyed.

"He's coming, babe. Relax. The tracker shows he's two minutes out." A man's voice. Rough. Familiar.

I froze.

I peered around a rusted pillar.

Lucia was there.

She wasn't tied up. She was sitting on a crate, casually eating an apple.

The man was standing next to her, checking his phone. It was Marco. One of my own soldiers. A man I had trusted with my life.

"You sure he'll pay?" Marco asked, glancing at the entrance.

"He paid for Seraphina, didn't he?" Lucia laughed, a cold, calculating sound. "He traded her to the Russians. He'll pay double for the 'heir'."

She rubbed her stomach possessively.

"Besides," she continued, taking a crunchy bite of the apple. "I need the cash. This baby isn't going to be cheap, especially since it's yours, Marco. We need to disappear before it comes out looking like you."

The world stopped. The factory walls seemed to close in, crushing the air from my lungs.

The baby. Marco. The kidnapping.

It was all a lie.

Dante Moretti POV

I didn't shoot. Not immediately. Death was too easy for them.

I holstered my gun and stepped out from the shadows. The deliberate click of my Italian leather shoes on the concrete was the only warning they got.

"Dante!" Lucia shrieked. She scrambled off the crate, dropping the apple. It rolled across the floor, a hollow sound that died at my feet.

Marco went for his gun.

A mistake.

I was faster. I put a bullet in his kneecap before his hand even touched his waistband.

The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space. He screamed and collapsed, clutching his shattered leg as blood began to pool beneath him.

Lucia backed away, her face draining of color. She looked from Marco to me, her eyes wide with primal terror.

"Dante, thank God! He forced me! He threatened the baby!"

I looked at Marco writhing on the floor. Then I looked at Lucia.

"I heard you," I said softly.

Lucia froze.

"I heard about the money," I said, stepping closer. "I heard about the paternity."

"No," she whispered, shaking her head frantically. "You misunderstood. I was playing along! To save us!"

"Unlock your phone," I said.

"What?"

"Unlock. Your. Phone."

She fumbled with it, her hands shaking so hard she almost dropped it. Finally, the screen lit up, and she handed it to me.

I scrolled. Texts to Marco. Photos. Dates.

*Plan B is a go. Make the call about Seraphina first. Confuse him. Then grab me.*

*He’s so stupid. He actually believes the asthma attack story.*

*Can’t wait to leave this boring life. Just need the payout.*

I scrolled back further. Seven months ago.

*Positive test. It’s yours, Marco. We hit the jackpot. I’ll pin it on Dante.*

I looked up. The rage was a cold, solid thing in my chest. It wasn't fire. It was ice. Absolute zero.

I had destroyed Seraphina. I had broken her body, her spirit, her trust. I had sent her to hell and back. For this. For a lie wrapped in a pretty face.

"Where is Seraphina?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm.

"I don't know!" Lucia cried. "She left! She's gone!"

"You staged the Russian kidnapping too, didn't you?"

Silence.

"Answer me!" I roared, the sound echoing off the metal beams.

"Yes!" she screamed. "I told Marco where she'd be! I wanted her gone! She had everything! The name, the status, you! I was just the bastard sister living in her shadow!"

I looked at Marco. He was whimpering, clutching his ruined knee.

"Get up," I told Lucia.

"Dante, please, the baby..."

"The baby isn't mine," I said. "And neither are you."

I dragged Marco by his collar, leaving a thick trail of blood. I grabbed Lucia by the arm.

"We are going home," I said. "And then, I am going to find my wife."

My phone buzzed in my pocket. My assistant.

I ignored it. It buzzed again. And again.

I pulled it out, annoyed. A video link.

*Boss. You need to see this. It's circulating on the encrypted networks.*

I clicked it.

It was a video from a club security camera. Time stamped eight months ago.

Lucia. In a VIP booth. With Marco. And two men from the rival cartel. The very cartel I was fighting when Seraphina was taken.

She wasn't just cheating. She was selling secrets. She was the leak.

I looked at her. She wasn't just a liar. She was a traitor.

And in our world, traitors don't get divorces. They get erased.

I shoved her toward the exit.

"Walk," I said. "Before I drag you."

I had to find Seraphina. I had to tell her she was right. I had to beg.

But deep down, I knew the look in her eyes when she left the apartment.

I wasn't just a husband who cheated. I was the enemy. And she was never coming back.

Dante Moretti POV

The video looped on my phone screen, a silent, sickening rhythm.

It was grainy, pulled from a security feed in a VIP room at The Red Room—Bratva territory. But the faces were clear enough to ruin me.

Lucia.

She wasn’t bound. She wasn’t gasping for breath in the throes of an asthma attack. She was laughing. Her head was thrown back, her throat exposed in joy, her hand resting intimately on the thigh of a man who wasn't me.

It was Marco. And across from them sat Vanya, the Bratva lieutenant who had negotiated the trade for Seraphina.

The timestamp was dated three weeks before the kidnapping.

I sat in my car outside the penthouse. The engine had gone cold, but it was nothing compared to the arctic chill settling in my veins.

I had traded my wife for this.

I had watched Seraphina scream as the Russians dragged her away. I had watched her fall from the roof. I had watched her crawl on the floor of the chapel, broken and bleeding.

All to protect a woman who was currently upstairs, likely wrapped in silk, ordering room service, and crafting her next perfect lie.

I didn't feel heartbreak. Heartbreak implied love, and what I felt was far more destructive. I felt a tectonic shift in my reality. The ground I stood on—my honor, my judgment, my legacy—dissolved into a sinkhole of absolute humiliation.

I opened the car door. I didn't slam it. I moved with the terrifying, quiet calm of a man walking toward an execution.

I signaled the two guards by the entrance. They were loyal to the Vitiello bloodline, not to Lucia.

"Bring him." I gestured to the trunk.

They didn't ask questions. They hauled Marco out. His kneecap was shattered, his face a ruin from the work I’d done on him at the factory.

We took the private elevator. The numbers climbed. 10. 20. 30. Each chime was a countdown.

The doors slid open.

Lucia was in the living room. She had changed into a white silk robe, looking like a pristine angel. She was pacing, holding a glass of water. When she saw me, her face crumpled into a mask of relief so perfect, so practiced, it made bile rise in my throat.

"Dante!" she cried, rushing forward. "Did you find her? Did you pay them?"

I stepped aside. She stumbled, nearly losing her balance.

"Sit down," I said.

She froze. "What?"

"Sit. Down."

She sank onto the edge of the beige sofa, her eyes darting to the guards dragging a bleeding mass into her sanctuary. Marco groaned, leaving a streak of crimson on the imported marble floor.

"Dante, why is Marco here? He's hurt!"

"He fell," I said, my voice devoid of emotion. "Just like you fell out of bed. Just like Seraphina fell off the roof. There is a lot of gravity in this family tonight."

I took my phone out and cast the video to the massive television screen on the wall.

Lucia's recorded laughter filled the room, a ghostly echo mocking the silence. The image of her kissing Marco, then clinking glasses with the Russian, loomed over us.

Lucia went pale. Not the pretty, faint pallor she used to garner sympathy. This was the gray, clammy skin of a corpse.

"It's a deepfake!" she blurted out, her voice shrill. "Seraphina made it! She has friends in tech. She's trying to frame me!"

I looked at her. Really looked at her. I saw the greed in her eyes. The calculation.

"Seraphina has no friends in tech," I said quietly. "Seraphina had no friends at all. Because I isolated her. For you."

I walked over to Marco. I kicked his broken knee.

He screamed. It was a wet, gurgling sound.

"Tell her," I commanded.

"It was her idea," Marco wheezed, spitting blood onto the rug. "The Bratva trade. She set it up with Vanya. She wanted the legit wife gone so she could be the Don's lady."

The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bones.

"You traded Seraphina to the Russians," I said, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. "It wasn't a hostage situation. It was a transaction."

Lucia stood up, desperate. "He's lying! He's jealous because I chose you!"

"You didn't choose me," I said, staring into the void where her heart should have been. "You chose the crown."