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 The hysteria had been replaced by a terrifying, hollow calm.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.

Dante Vitiello POV

I remained standing in the parking lot until my legs went numb.

I couldn't go back to the office. I couldn't go back to the estate.

Eventually, I forced myself into the driver's seat and started the engine. I didn't have a conscious destination, but the car knew where to go. It followed the ghosts of my past straight to the Safe House.

The blue shutters were gone. The front lawn was a muddy mess of tire tracks and debris.

I got out. It was dark, illuminated only by the hollow glow of the streetlights.

I walked to the dumpster.

It was overflowing. Drywall. Carpet.

And then I saw it.

Sticking out of a black trash bag was a corner of a canvas.

I climbed into the dumpster. I didn't care about my bespoke Italian suit. I didn't care about the mud seeping into my shoes.

I pulled the painting out.

It was a watercolor. Simple. Imperfect. Elena painted it for my birthday the year we bought the house. It was a picture of us, sitting on the porch, old and grey.

The inscription on the bottom read: To growing old together.

It was cracked down the middle. Someone had deliberately stepped on it.

Sienna.

I wiped the dirt off the canvas with my sleeve. I held it to my chest like it was the Holy Grail.

I screamed.

I screamed until my throat felt raw, until the sound tore at my vocal cords. I screamed at the house, at the sky, at myself.

Finally, silence reclaimed the night. I climbed out of the dumpster, clutching the painting against my ribs.

I drove back to the main estate.

I kicked the front door open.

Sienna was coming down the stairs, wearing a silk robe.

"Dante?" she asked. "Where have you been? Is she... is it over?"

I walked past her. I didn't even look at her. If I looked at her, I would kill her, and I wasn't ready for that yet.

I went to the living room. I needed photos. I needed to see Elena's face. Not the wax doll in the morgue. My Elena.

I opened the drawers. Empty.

I checked the mantle. Bare.

I ran to the library. The albums were usually on the bottom shelf.

Gone.

"Where are the photos?" I yelled.

A maid hurried in, looking terrified.

"Madam... Madam burned them, sir."

"What?"

"Yesterday. In the fireplace."

I ran to the fireplace.

It was cold. A pile of grey ash sat in the grate.

I fell to my knees. I dug my hands into the ash. I sifted through it, looking for a corner of a photo, a scrap of a smile.

Nothing. Just dust.

She had erased herself. She had scrubbed her existence from my life so thoroughly that it was like she had never been here.

Except for the pain. The pain proved she was real.

I sat in the ashes of my memories, holding the broken painting, and finally, I understood.

She didn't just leave me.

She divorced me from her soul.