Dante POV

The whiskey didn't burn anymore. It tasted like nothing.

I sat in my study. The lights were off. The only illumination came from the streetlamps outside, filtering through the heavy velvet curtains like moonlight on a grave.

It had been two weeks.

We dragged the harbor. We hired divers. We bribed the Coast Guard.

Nothing.

The current at the West End is a monster. It drags everything out to the open ocean.

She was gone.

I poured another glass. My hand brushed a stack of papers on the desk. Separation papers. The ones she tried to give me. The ones I tore up. I had taped them back together last night in a fit of drunken madness, tracing her signature with my thumb until the paper wore thin.

The door creaked open.

A silhouette stood there, backlit by the hallway light.

"Dante?"

It was a woman. She was wearing a silk robe. Her silk robe. The emerald green silk I had draped over Elena's shoulders in Milan.

My heart stopped.

"Elena?" I whispered. I stood up, the chair scraping violently against the floor.

She stepped into the room. "Dante, you need to sleep. You haven't slept in days."

The voice was wrong. It was too high. Too pitchy.

It wasn't Elena.

It was Sofia.

She walked toward me, the oversized robe trailing on the floor. She had styled her hair differently. Straighter. Darker.

"I thought..." she started, reaching for my arm. "I thought maybe you needed comfort. I know you're hurting. I miss her too."

She touched my chest.

A red haze exploded behind my eyes.

I grabbed her wrist. Hard.

"Take it off," I snarled.

Sofia flinched. "Dante, you're hurting me."

"Take it off!" I roared. "That is not yours! You do not touch her things!"

I shoved her away. She stumbled, crashing into the bookshelf.

"I'm just trying to help!" she cried. "She's dead, Dante! She's dead and I'm here! I'm the one who needs you now!"

"You are nothing," I said, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "You are a ghost of a mistake I made."

"How can you say that?" She pulled the robe tighter around herself. "You chose me. At the docks. You picked me."

The words hit me like a physical blow.

You chose me.

"I didn't choose you," I said, the truth tasting like ash. "I gambled with her life because I thought you were too pathetic to survive. And I lost."

"Dante..."

"Get out," I said. "Get out before I forget who your brother was."

She ran out of the room, sobbing.

I sank back into the chair. I looked at the empty doorway.

The house was huge. It was a fortress. But without the click of her heels in the hallway, without the scent of her perfume lingering in the air, it wasn't a home.

It was a mausoleum. And I was the corpse sitting at the desk.

Dante POV

The truth is a bullet. You don't hear it until it tears through you.

It was 3:00 AM. I was wandering the halls, a ghost in my own life. I ended up in the library.

My Consigliere, Leo, was waiting for me. He looked pale. He was holding a manila envelope.

"Boss," Leo said. "We need to talk."

"Not now, Leo. Unless you found Volkov."

"It's not Volkov. It's... it's a package. It was left at the gate. Anonymous."

He handed it to me.

There was no return address. Just a small, black USB drive inside.

I walked to my laptop and plugged it in.

A single audio file popped up.

I clicked play.

The sound of static filled the room. Then, a voice. A voice I knew.

"He's still obsessed with her, Nikolai. It's pathetic."

It was Sofia.

"Patience, little bird," Volkov's voice answered. "We stick to the plan. You get the Reaper to the docks. I take the Queen off the board. Then the grieving husband is all yours."

My blood turned to ice.

"Make sure she dies," Sofia said. Her voice was cold, calculating-stripped of the innocence she wore like a costume. "I don't want her wounded. I want her dead. She treats me like dirt. She thinks she owns him."

"Consider it done," Volkov said. "Just like with your brother."

I froze. My hand hovered over the laptop.

"Luca was necessary," Sofia said. "He was going to cut me off. He found out about the gambling debts. He was going to tell Dante. I had to give you his location."

The recording ended.

The silence that followed was heavier than the ocean that took my wife.

I stared at the screen.

Sofia.

Sofia, the innocent ward. Sofia, the fragile flower I burned down a city block to protect. Sofia, the reason I waterboarded my wife.

She sold Luca. She killed my best friend.

And then she colluded with the enemy to kill Elena.

I stood up. The chair toppled over behind me with a crash.

A sound tore out of me-a low, guttural growl that didn't sound human.

I walked to the window and looked out at the garden. I saw the guest house where Sofia was sleeping.

I remembered Elena's face in the dungeon. The water dripping from her hair.

I hate you, she had said.

She knew. She knew what Sofia was. She tried to warn me. She held a knife to Sofia's throat because she saw the monster beneath the skin.

And I shot her for it.

I tortured her for it.

And then I let her die for it.

"Leo," I said. My voice was dead calm.

"Yes, Boss."

"Wake the guards. Bring her to the cellar."

"Sofia?"

"No," I said, turning from the window. My eyes felt like they were burning in their sockets. "Not Sofia. Bring the rat."

I walked toward the door. I wasn't going to kill her. Death was too easy. Death was a mercy.

I was going to make her wish she had died in that ambush with her brother.

But as I walked down the hall, the rage was eclipsed by a crushing, suffocating weight.

I had sacrificed my Queen for a traitor.

I had broken my vows, my honor, and my heart for a lie.

And now, it was too late.