Dante Vitiello POV

A courier arrived at my office at ten in the morning.

My assistant placed the envelope on my mahogany desk, her hand trembling. Everyone was on edge today. The shipment from the docks was late, and I was in a mood to break fingers.

I ripped the envelope open.

Divorce papers.

I stared at the document. It was signed. Elena Rossi. Not Vitiello.

I laughed. It was a harsh, barking sound that made my underboss flinch.

"She has lost her mind," I said, tossing the papers back onto the desk. "She thinks this is a game. She thinks she can divorce the Don of Chicago because I renovated a house."

Sienna was sitting on the leather sofa, flipping through a magazine. She looked up, feigning concern.

"Is it Elena again?" she asked. "She is just acting out, Dante. It's the hormones. Or lack thereof."

Her cruelty usually amused me. Today, it grated on my nerves.

I picked up my phone and dialed Elena.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

"Pick up," I growled.

Voicemail.

I grabbed my coat.

"Where are you going?" Sienna asked, standing up. "We have a lunch reservation."

"Cancel it," I said. "I am going to end this tantrum once and for all."

I drove to the estate. I was going to tear those papers up in her face. I was going to remind her that she belonged to me until I said otherwise.

I stormed into the house.

"Elena!" I shouted.

Silence.

The house felt different. Hollow. It echoed.

I walked into the living room. It was empty. Not just devoid of people, but devoid of life. The vases were gone. The throw pillows were gone.

I ran up the stairs.

The master bedroom was stripped. The closet doors were open, revealing bare racks. No clothes. No shoes. No perfume bottles on the vanity.

"She left," I whispered.

Rage boiled in my chest. She had actually run. She thought she could hide from me? I would burn down the entire state to find her.

I saw a journal on the desk. It was the only thing left in the room.

I picked it up. I recognized it. She used to write in it every night when we were first married.

I opened to the last page.

Dante, Goodbye.

I threw the book into the trash can.

"Coward," I spat.

My phone rang.

I answered it immediately, ready to unleash hell.

"Where are you?" I roared.

It wasn't Elena.

It was Giulia. And she was screaming.

"She's gone, you bastard! She's gone!"

I froze.

"Stop lying, Giulia. Tell me where you are hiding her."

"I'm not hiding her!" Giulia sobbed, the sound raw and broken. "She's dead! Elena is dead!"

I laughed again. It was a reflex. A defense mechanism.

"Nice try," I said. "Tell Elena the joke isn't funny."

"I am at the funeral home on 5th!" Giulia screamed. "Come sign the cremation papers, you son of a bitch!"

The line went dead.

I stood there. The phone felt slippery in my hand.

Dead?

Impossible. She was just jealous. She was just dramatic. She was mine.

My assistant walked in. "Boss, I tracked Mrs. Vitiello's phone."

"Where is it?" I demanded.

"The morgue, sir. St. Mary's Hospital."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

I didn't speak. I just ran.

I drove like a madman. I ran red lights. I mounted the curb to bypass traffic.

I pulled up to the funeral home. Giulia's car was there.

I slammed through the double doors. The receptionist looked up, terrified.

"Where is she?" I shouted.

Giulia stepped out of a viewing room down the hall. Her face was swollen from crying. She looked at me with pure hatred.

I pushed past her.

I walked into the room.

There was a table in the center. A white sheet covered a shape.

"No," I whispered.

I walked forward. My legs felt like they didn't belong to me.

I reached out and pulled the sheet back.

Dante Vitiello POV

My first thought was that it was a wax doll.

It had to be. It couldn't be Elena. Elena was soft. Elena was warm. Elena had cheeks that flushed pink when I kissed her.

But this thing on the table was grey. It was skeletal. The skin was stretched too tight over sharp cheekbones, and the lips were a bruised shade of blue.

I stumbled back, hitting the wall hard.

"It's a trick," I said. My voice sounded like it was coming from underwater, distant and distorted.

"It's not a trick, Dante."

Giulia was standing in the doorway. She wasn't screaming anymore. The hysteria had been replaced by a terrifying, hollow calm.

"Look at her," she said. "Really look at her."

I forced myself to look.

I saw the faint scar on her chin from when she fell off a bike at twenty. I saw the small mole on the curve of her neck.

It was Elena.

But she looked... starved.

She looked like she had been dying for a long time.

"Why is she so thin?" I asked, the words scraping against the bile rising in my throat.

"Cancer," Giulia said. "Pancreatic. Stage four."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "She was fine. She was just... tired. She was jealous of Sienna."

"She has been dying in your house for months," Giulia spat, her voice cracking the air. "And you were too busy fucking your mistress to notice she couldn't eat. You were too busy building a nursery to notice your wife was fading away."

I fell to my knees. The impact cracked against the tile floor, but I didn't feel it.

I crawled to the table. I took her hand.

It was ice cold.

"Elena," I whispered. "Wake up."

Silence.

"Elena, please. I'm here. I'm home."

Nothing.

I tried to lift her. I needed to warm her up. If I just warmed her up, she would wake up.

"Sir, you can't do that."

A man in a suit tried to pull me away.

"Get off me!" I roared. I shoved him across the room with a burst of frantic strength.

I wrapped my arms around her body. She was so light. Too light. Like a bird with hollow bones.

Giulia walked over. She didn't try to pull me away.

Instead, she raised her hand and slapped me.

The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room. My head snapped to the side.

"She is gone!" Giulia screamed, the hollowness shattering. "You killed her! You killed her with your indifference! Now let her go!"

I looked at Elena's face. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful. More peaceful than she had looked in years.

The funeral director approached cautiously, holding a clipboard like a shield.

"Mr. Vitiello," he said, his voice trembling. "We need a signature for the death certificate. And the release for cremation."

"Cremation?" I asked. "No. She goes in the family mausoleum."

Giulia snatched the clipboard.

"She didn't want the mausoleum," she hissed. "She didn't want to be near you."

I looked at the paper. Cause of Death: Pancreatic Cancer. Cardiac Arrest.

I picked up the pen. My hand was shaking so hard the ink blotted against the page.

I signed my name.

It felt like signing my own death warrant.

Dante Vitiello POV

They say fire is supposed to be cleansing. They are wrong.

I stood outside the retort room, paralyzed. The hum of the furnace was a low, hungry vibration that rattled through the soles of my shoes.

They were burning her.

My Elena. The girl who had stitched my bullet wounds with trembling hands. The woman who had waited up for me every night until I simply stopped coming home.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold tile floor. I put my head in my hands, the darkness behind my eyelids offering no relief.

"How long?" I asked Giulia. She was leaning against the opposite wall, smoking a cigarette she wasn't supposed to have, the smoke curling around her like a shroud.

"Diagnosed a month ago," she said, her voice flat. "Sick for six."

Six months.

I replayed the last six months in my mind, and the memories were daggers.

I had bought Sienna a car. I had missed our anniversary. I had looked Elena in the eye and told her she was barren and useless.

I had told her to die quietly.

A sob ripped out of my chest. It was an ugly, guttural sound, something animalistic and broken.

"I told her to die," I choked out.

Giulia didn't comfort me. She just watched me with cold, unforgiving eyes.

"She listened to you," she said.

"Why didn't she tell me?" I asked, desperation clawing at my throat. "I would have saved her. I would have flown in the best doctors money could buy."

"She didn't want your money, Dante. She didn't want your pity. She wanted your love. And you gave it to a whore."

The heavy door to the furnace room groaned open. The director came out, carrying a simple bronze urn.

I scrambled to my feet. I reached for it instinctively.

"That's my wife," I said.

Giulia stepped forward and intercepted the urn before I could touch it. She held it to her chest possessively.

"No," she said.

"Give her to me, Giulia. I am her husband."

"Not anymore," she said. She pulled a folded document from her purse with her free hand.

Elena's Will.

"I appoint Giulia Moretti as the sole custodian of my remains," I read, my vision blurring. "I explicitly forbid Dante Vitiello from possessing my ashes or attending my burial."

I stared at the paper. The words swam before my eyes, mocking me.

"She... she forbade me?"

"She didn't want to see you in Hell, Dante," Giulia said.

She turned on her heel and walked toward the exit.

"Giulia!" I shouted, stumbling after her. "Where are you taking her?"

"To a place you can't find," she said without looking back.

I followed her to the parking lot, the rain beginning to slick the asphalt. I grabbed her arm.

"Please," I begged. I have never begged for anything in my life. "Please, let me say goodbye."

Giulia stopped. She looked at my hand on her arm, then up at my tear-streaked face with distinct disgust.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone. Elena's phone.

She threw it hard at my chest. I fumbled to catch it against my ribs.

"You want to say goodbye?" Giulia said, opening her car door. "Read the texts. See exactly what your mistress did to her while she was dying."

She got into her car, slammed the door, and drove away.

I was left standing in the rain, holding a dead phone and a heart full of ash.