Elena POV

He led her downstairs. I could hear him soothing her, his voice vibrating through the floorboards like a cruel lullaby.

I dragged myself up using the nightstand. My shoulder throbbed where I had hit the wall, but the physical pain was a mercy, a distraction from the fact that my heart had just stopped beating.

He had shoved me. To protect her.

I walked to the mirror. I looked like a corpse already. Pale skin, dark circles, collarbones protruding like coat hangers. How did he not see it? How did he look at this skeletal version of his wife and see only "jealousy"?

The answer was simple: because he stopped looking at me a long time ago.

I changed into a black dress. I applied makeup to hide the yellow tint of my skin. I had errands to run.

I walked out the side door. The guards let me pass; they didn't care where the barren wife went, so long as I wasn't in the way.

I went to a photo studio downtown. I needed a portrait. A final image for the funeral service, so people would remember Elena, not the ghost I had become.

The photographer was kind. He told me to smile. I tried, but the expression didn't reach my eyes.

As I was picking up the proofs an hour later, the bell above the door chimed.

Dante walked in. He was holding Sienna's hand.

They froze. I froze.

Of all the places in the city, fate had to choose this one, I thought bitterly.

"Are you following us?" Dante asked. His voice was low, dangerous. "We are here for a maternity shoot."

I clutched the large envelope to my chest. "No. I'm leaving."

Sienna stepped forward. She looked glowing. Pregnant. Victorious. She saw the logo on my envelope.

"Modeling photos, Elena?" She laughed. "A bit late for a career change, isn't it? You look... tired."

She reached out and snatched the envelope before I could react.

"Give it back," I said, panic rising in my throat.

Dante stepped between us, blocking me. "What is it? Evidence? Are you documenting us?"

He grabbed my wrist. His grip was iron. It hurt.

"Show me," he demanded.

Sienna ripped the envelope open. She pulled out the 8x10 photo.

It was black and white. Me, in a black dress, looking serene and final. It was unmistakably a memorial portrait.

Sienna's smile faltered for a second, then twisted into something cruel.

"Oh my god," she said, feigning shock. "Is this a suicide threat? Dante, look. She's planning something to ruin the baby's arrival. She wants attention."

Dante looked at the photo, then at me. He looked unsettled, haunted even, but he quickly masked it with anger.

"Is this your leverage?" he asked. "You threaten to kill yourself? You think that will make me come back?"

I snatched the photo back. The frame shattered on the floor. Glass scattered everywhere.

"I just want to see you regret this," I whispered.

Dante sneered. He kicked a piece of the broken frame away.

"If you want to die, Elena, then die. Stop threatening it. It's pathetic."

He turned his back on me. "Come, Sienna. We'll find another studio. This one smells like desperation."

I watched them leave. My legs gave out. I collapsed onto the floor, amidst the broken glass and the black-and-white face of a woman who was already gone.

A stranger, a woman waiting for her passport photos, ran over to help me.

"He doesn't love you anymore, honey," she whispered, helping me up.

I pushed her away. I didn't need a stranger to tell me the news.

I walked out onto the street. It was raining. I didn't open my umbrella. I just walked.

I took two painkillers from my purse and swallowed them dry.

Dante used to beg me to take aspirin when I had a headache. He used to kiss my forehead and bring me water.

Now he had told me to hurry up and die.

Elena POV

The text arrived the next morning.

I won. I'm taking everything.

Attached was a photo. It was a small, white house with blue shutters on the outskirts of the city.

My heart stopped.

The Safe House.

It wasn't a mansion. It was a two-bedroom cottage we had purchased when Dante was just a soldier. It was where we hid when the feds were raiding the city. It was where we had painted the nursery pink three years ago, before the miscarriages, before the doctors told us "never."

It was the only place that was truly ours.

I drove there, breaking every speed limit.

When I skidded into the driveway, I saw the dumpster.

It was full of drywall. Pink drywall.

No.

I ran inside. The front door was wide open, hanging off its hinges. A crew of contractors was tearing down the walls. The living room was gutted. The window seat, where we used to sit and dream about the future, was smashed to pieces.

"Stop!" I screamed. "Stop it!"

The foreman looked at me, bored. "Orders from the Don, lady. Full gut renovation."

I called Dante. He answered on the first ring.

"Why?" I screamed into the phone. "Why the house? You have five estates!"

"Sienna likes the location," he said calmly. "It's secluded. Good for the baby."

"It's my house! It's our memories!"

"It's a building, Elena. And it's in my name."

He hung up.

I sat in the rubble for five hours. I watched the shadows lengthen until the sun died.

Night fell. Headlights swept across the driveway. Dante's black SUV pulled up.

He got out, looking impeccable in a tailored suit that contrasted sharply with the dust and debris. Sienna followed, wrapping a coat protectively around her belly.

She looked at the gutted house and smiled. It was a smile of pure malice.

"It's a bit of a fixer-upper," she said, stepping delicately over a piece of broken trim. "But the nursery will be huge once we knock down that wall."

She pointed to the wall of the room that was supposed to be mine.

Dante stood there, watching me sitting on a pile of debris.

"You look insane, Elena," he said. "Go home."

"You are erasing me," I said, my voice hollow.

"I am renovating a property," he corrected coldly.

I stood up. I walked over to Sienna. She flinched, hiding behind Dante.

"You are trash," I told her. "You are living in my leftovers."

Sienna gasped. "Dante, she's scaring me."

Dante stepped forward, his chest hitting mine. He was a wall of muscle and heat.

"Get in your car, Elena. Or I will have my men drag you."

I looked up at him. I looked for the boy I loved. He wasn't there.

"Is the house just trash to you?" I asked. "Like me?"

He looked at the ruins of our first home. He didn't blink.

"It's just wood and brick," he said. "Stop being sentimental. It's weak."

Sienna pulled a checkbook from her bag.

"I can pay you for the furniture we threw out," she offered. "If you need the money."

I lunged.

Dante caught me easily. He twisted my arm behind my back with practiced efficiency.

"Enough!" he roared.

He shoved me toward my car.

"Go back to the estate. Wait for the divorce papers. I'm done with this."

He turned back to Sienna, checking her hands, checking her face, treating her like fine china while treating me like the garbage on the floor.

Every piece of you will be erased, Sienna texted me as I drove away.

I returned to the main estate, where the silence was deafening.

I called a removal company.

"I want it all gone," I told them. "The clothes. The furniture. The photos. Everything that proves I lived here."

They worked through the night. By dawn, the master bedroom was empty. The closet was bare.

I took the photo albums from the safe. Our wedding. Our trips to Italy. The candid shots of him sleeping.

I threw them into the fireplace.

I lit the match.

I watched our history curl up, blacken, and turn to ash.

I lay down on the bare wooden floor. The house was as empty as my marriage. The pain in my body was sharp, but the pain in my soul was gone.

There was nothing left to break.

Elena Vitiello was dead. I was simply waiting for my body to catch up.

Elena POV

I mailed my marriage away in a flat, rigid cardboard envelope.

It cost me exactly twenty dollars for expedited shipping. That was the cheap price of severing a bond that was supposed to be eternal before God.

I stood outside the post office, the winter wind biting at my exposed cheeks. I felt strangely, terrifyingly light. The heavy anchor of Dante Vitiello was no longer chained to my ankle.

I had mailed two packages. One went to Giulia, containing the deed to my small savings account and my final will. The other went to Dante, containing the divorce papers I had signed with a remarkably steady hand.

I walked back to the car. My legs felt heavy, dragging as if pulled by lead weights. The energy burst-that terminal lucidity the doctors always whispered about-was fading fast.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was Sienna. Of course it was.

She had sent a photo. It was an intimate close-up of Dante sleeping. His face was relaxed, his guard completely down.

The caption read: "He dreams of our son. What do you dream of, Elena?"

I looked at the screen. I didn't feel the familiar stab of jealousy. I didn't feel the urge to scream. I just felt an overwhelming exhaustion.

I deleted the thread.

I drove back to the estate. The wrought-iron gates opened automatically, recognizing the car of a ghost.

I walked out into the garden. It was far too cold to be outside, but the house felt like a tomb. I sat on the cold stone bench where Dante had once proposed to me.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the old leather journal I had found while cleaning out the closet.

The pages were yellowed with age. The handwriting in the beginning was loopy and excited.

Entry 1: I met a boy today. He has blood on his knuckles and sadness in his eyes. I think I love him.

I flipped through the years. The entries became shorter, sharper. The ink became darker.

Entry 400: He didn't come home again.

Entry 650: I am alone in a house full of people.

I took a pen from my pocket. My hand was trembling now. The pain in my abdomen was a screaming beast, tearing me apart from the inside out.

I wrote one final line.

I am in pain. I want to go. I wish I never met Dante Vitiello.

I closed the book.

The sun was setting, painting the sky in bruises of purple and red.

I took the bottle of morphine from my pocket. I didn't bother counting the pills. I just swallowed them. All of them.

I lay down on the freezing stone bench.

Slowly, the pain began to recede. It was replaced by a warm, fuzzy blanket of nothingness.

My eyes grew heavy.

I saw a figure walking toward me through the garden. He was wearing a leather jacket that was two sizes too big. He had a split lip and a shy, boyish smile.

It was Dante. But not the Don. Not the monster.

It was the boy from the studio apartment. The boy who had promised me the moon.

"Elena," he said, reaching out a hand. "Let's go home."

I smiled.

I took his hand.

And then, there was only white.