Chapter 4

Elena POV

The heat of the torch hadn't just been hot; it had been purifying.

I stood in the back of the jeweler's workshop-a shady, windowless alcove Lucia knew in the Diamond District-and watched the fire lick at the gold. The jeweler was a man of grease-stained fingers and silence. He held the flame steady, a professional arsonist of memories.

I watched the intricate engraving of the Paletti crest soften. I watched the diamonds loosen and fall out onto the tray like teeth being pulled from a jaw.

"You want the stones?" the man had asked, his voice gruff.

"No," I said. "Keep them. Payment."

Those diamonds had witnessed me crying myself to sleep. They had witnessed Dante coming home smelling of bourbon and other women's perfume. I didn't want them. They were cursed.

But the gold... the gold was the shackle.

I watched it turn into a glowing orange liquid. It pooled, losing all form, all history. It was violent. It was necessary.

"Pour it," I commanded.

He poured the molten gold onto a steel block. It hissed as it died, hardening into a grotesque, lumpy nugget.

"Ugly," the man grunted.

"It's the most honest thing I've ever seen," I whispered.

Now, thousands of miles away in Portugal, the memory of that melting gold warmed me when the Atlantic breeze turned cold.

I had left precise instructions with a specialized cleaning crew before I fled. *The Clean Slate Initiative*. They were a charity organization that repurposed high-end furniture for women's shelters. I donated everything.

My instructions were absolute: *Leave nothing that was mine. If I bought it, if I chose it, if I touched it-take it. Leave him with the shell.*

I imagined Dante walking through that empty apartment right now. He was a man who defined himself by what he owned. By taking my things, I hadn't just moved out; I had amputated my existence from his narrative.

Dante POV

I was drinking too much. The bottle was merely a vehicle for the numbness.

Three days since she left. The apartment didn't just echo; it screamed silence. I had fired the cleaning staff because I couldn't stand the way they looked at me-with that suffocating, silent pity.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, staring at the lump of gold on the nightstand. I hadn't moved it. It sat there like a malignant tumor excised from a body but not yet discarded.

My phone buzzed against the wood. Lucia Moretti.

"Mr. Paletti," her voice was crisp, professional, and entirely unimpressed. "I trust you've reviewed the documents."

"I'm going to ruin you," I said, my voice a low, vibrating rumble. "I'm going to dismantle your firm brick by brick. Tell me where she is."

"Threatening legal counsel is a felony, Dante. And frankly, beneath a man of your stature. Elena is safe. That is all you are privileged to know."

"She's my wife."

"She is your petitioner in a divorce case involving adultery and emotional abuse," Lucia corrected sharply. "And she has instructed me to convey a message: if you continue to harass her friends or family, she will release the 'B-Roll'."

I froze, the whiskey glass hovering halfway to my mouth. "What B-Roll?"

"The videos she didn't send you. The footage from the security cameras she installed in the bedroom three months ago. The ones that show you... well, let's just say they contradict your public image of a 'devoted family man' quite severely."

I gripped the phone so hard the screen spider-webbed under my thumb. She had bugged the room? Elena? My sweet, quiet, painting Elena?

"She wouldn't," I whispered.

"She melted her wedding ring, Dante," Lucia said, her voice softening just a fraction-not with kindness, but with the gravity of a warning. "She burnt the bridge while she was standing on it. Do not test her."

The line went dead.

I looked around the room. The charity workers had stripped it bare. The curtains were gone. The Persian rug was gone. It was just me, the bed, and that damn lump of gold.

Then, Jade walked in.

She was wearing one of Elena's old silk robes she had scavenged from the donation pile before I could stop her.

"Baby," she cooed, trying to settle onto my lap.

"Forget her. She's crazy. Look what she did to this place. It's disrespectful."

I looked at Jade. I mean, I really looked at her.

Her makeup was too heavy, caked in the creases of her eyes. Her voice was too shrill, grating against my headache. She was wearing my wife's silk, but on her, it looked like a costume. A cheap imitation.

"Take it off," I said.

"What?" She smiled, a slow, suggestive curve of her lips, thinking I meant sex.

"Take the robe off. It's not yours."

"Dante, don't be like that-"

I stood up and grabbed her arm. Not gently. The rage I couldn't vent at Lucia, I poured into my grip.

"I said take it off. Get out. Get out of my house."

"But I'm pregnant!" she shrieked, her eyes going wide with shock.

"I don't care," I roared, the sound tearing raw from my throat. "Get out!"

She scrambled away, terrified by the monster she had uncovered.

I was alone.

I picked up the lump of gold. It was heavy. Cold. Dead.

"I will find you, Elena," I said to the empty, hollow room. "And when I do, you're going to wish you had just bought the damn dresses."