Chapter 5

Seraphina Vitiello POV

Time doesn't exist in the dark. I didn't know if it had been hours or days. I just knew that the numbness had crept up from my extremities, and I couldn't feel my toes anymore.

The heavy click of the latch shattered the silence. The door swung open.

Light flooded in, violent and blinding. I squeezed my eyes shut, flinching against the intrusion.

Dante stood in the doorway, a sharp silhouette cut against the harsh fluorescent hallway lights. He stepped inside, the click of his dress shoes echoing off the steel drawers. He didn't look at the bodies stored around us. He looked only at me.

I was huddled in the corner, knees pulled to my chest, blue-lipped and shaking uncontrollably.

"Have you repented?" he asked.

His voice was calm, echoing off the cold metal. I looked up at him, squinting.

I saw the arrogance in his posture. I saw the absolute, terrifying certainty that he was righteous.

I could have spat at him. I could have screamed the truth one last time-that I was innocent, that he was a fool.

But I was tired. So incredibly tired.

"Yes," I rasped. My voice was barely a whisper, shredded by the cold. "I was wrong."

"Wrong about what?" he pressed, stepping closer.

"Everything," I said, my teeth chattering. "I was wrong to love you. I was wrong to think you were worth saving."

He frowned, his jaw tightening. That wasn't the answer he expected, but it was the submission he required.

"Get up," he commanded.

I tried. My brain sent the signal, but my legs refused to obey. They were dead weight.

He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then reached down and hauled me up by my good arm. His grip was iron, and his touch burned my frozen skin like fire.

He dragged me out of the morgue, away from the smell of formaldehyde and death.

"Go back to your room," he said, releasing me once we were in the warmer corridor. "Clean yourself up. The Gala is tonight."

"I'm not going," I managed to say, leaning against the wall for support.

"You are," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Isabella wants her sister there."

I stumbled back to my room, using the walls to keep me upright.

I took a scalding shower, scrubbing my skin until it was raw, trying to wash away the chill of the morgue and the lingering sensation of his hand on my arm.

When I stepped out, I looked at the room.

It was full of him.

Photos of us from childhood, smiling before the weight of the family business crushed him. The dried rose from the time he visited me in the hospital when I was twelve. The leather-bound diary where I wrote about "Seven."

I grabbed a heavy-duty trash bag.

I swept it all in.

The photos in their silver frames. The crumbling rose petals. The diary full of secrets he would never read.

I didn't cry. I just cleared the shelves with a robotic efficiency.

I walked out to the service elevator, avoiding the staff, and took the bag to the dumpster behind the kitchen.

I hefted it up and threw it in.

It landed with a heavy, final thud among the kitchen scraps.

"What are you doing?"

Dante. Again.

He was walking Isabella from the car to the back entrance, likely avoiding the paparazzi out front. He looked at the dumpster. He saw the silver frame of a photo sticking out from the black plastic. It was a picture of us, taken years ago at the lake house.

His eyes widened slightly, the mask of the Capo slipping for a heartbeat.

"Trash," I said, my voice flat. "Just taking out the trash."

Isabella giggled, completely oblivious to the tension crackling in the air. "Dante, come on. I need to get ready for my birthday. Stop staring at the garbage."

Dante didn't move. He stared at the photo in the filth. For a second, he looked unsettled, as if he were watching a part of himself rot.

"You're throwing away... everything?" he asked quietly.

"I'm making space," I said.

"For what?"

"For a life without you."

I turned and walked back inside before he could respond.

That night, the Gala was a spectacle of gold and velvet, a display of Moretti power disguised as a birthday party.

I stood in the shadows of the ballroom, wearing a long-sleeved black dress-high-necked and severe-to hide my bandages and the bruises blooming on my skin.

Everyone was looking at Isabella.

She wore a tiara. A literal diamond tiara.

My parents stood on either side of her, beaming with pride, ignoring the daughter standing in the dark.

"Tonight," my father announced into the microphone, his voice booming, "we celebrate not just my daughter's birthday, but the future of our family."

He gestured to the side.

Dante stepped up to the stage. In his tuxedo, under the chandeliers, he looked like a king.

He took a small black velvet box from his pocket.

The room gasped collectively.

He opened it.

A massive diamond ring caught the light, fracturing it into a thousand rainbows.

"Isabella," he said, his voice amplified by the speakers, smooth and commanding. "Will you make me the happiest man in Chicago? Will you be my wife?"

Isabella squealed, clapping her hands over her mouth. "Yes! Yes!"

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. The crowd erupted in cheers. Champagne corks popped like gunfire.

I watched them.

I dug my nails into my palms until I felt the warm slick of blood.

It was the final nail in the coffin.

Dante Moretti was engaged to the woman who stole my life.

And I was just the ghost haunting the wedding.

But ghosts have one advantage.

They can walk through walls.

And when no one is looking, they can disappear.