Chapter 3

I spent the next week buried inside a safe house I had prepared years ago.

It was a cramped, nondescript apartment in the Bronx.

I didn't go out. I didn't even turn on my phone.

In the silence, I tried to figure out who I was if I wasn't Dante's weapon.

I didn't have an answer.

Then Sofia found me.

I don't know how. Maybe she had her own spies, or maybe I wasn't as hidden as I thought.

She knocked on my door on a gray Tuesday afternoon.

She was wearing oversized sunglasses and a pristine trench coat that looked out of place in this hallway.

"We need to talk," she said.

I let her in.

I didn't have a weapon on me, but my eyes darted to the kitchen knife on the counter.

She looked around my small apartment with open disdain, her nose wrinkling slightly.

"Cozy," she said flatly.

"What do you want?" I asked, keeping my distance.

"I want to know if you're pregnant," she said.

I laughed.

It was a bitter, hollow sound.

"No."

"Good," she said, relaxing slightly. "Dante is sentimental about bloodlines. It would complicate things."

"There is nothing between us, Sofia. You won."

She looked at me closely, searching for a lie.

"I know I won. I just want to make sure you know it too."

Suddenly, the window imploded.

Shards of glass flew everywhere, turning the air into shrapnel.

I hit the deck instinctively.

"Get down!" I screamed.

Sofia stood there, frozen in shock, a deer in the headlights.

Gunfire erupted from the street below, tearing through the drywall.

It was a drive-by. A rival family making a move.

I crawled toward Sofia on my elbows.

I grabbed her ankle and yanked her down just as a bullet embedded itself in the wall exactly where her head had been a second before.

The door burst open.

It wasn't the shooters.

It was Dante.

He had been following her.

He saw us on the floor. He saw the shattered glass. He saw the blood smearing the wood.

He didn't look at me.

He lunged for Sofia.

"Are you hurt?" he yelled, his voice frantic, laced with a panic I had never heard before.

He gathered her in his arms, checking her desperately for wounds.

He shielded her body with his own.

I was lying two feet away.

A jagged piece of glass was stuck in my shoulder.

Blood was pooling under me, soaking my shirt.

He didn't see it.

Or he didn't care.

"Dante," I whispered.

He looked up.

His eyes were wild.

He looked right through me, as if I were part of the wreckage.

"Cover us!" he shouted to his men who were pouring into the room.

He picked Sofia up bridal style.

She was crying, clinging to his shirt like a frightened child.

He ran for the door.

He stepped over my legs to get her out.

His boot grazed my wounded shoulder.

Pain exploded in my arm, white-hot and blinding.

I watched his back as he disappeared down the hallway.

He didn't look back.

Not once.

I was the one who had pulled her down. I was the one bleeding.

But I was invisible.

The room started to go dark at the edges.

My vision blurred.

I saw Marco, the old family doctor, rush in from the hallway, lagging behind the guards.

He looked at the empty doorway where Dante had vanished.

Then he looked at me.

His face crumpled in pity.

"Oh, child," he whispered.

He knelt beside me.

He put pressure on my wound, his hands warm against my cold skin.

"He left me," I mumbled.

It was a statement of fact.

"He saved her."

"Stay with me, Elena," Marco said, his voice urgent. "Don't close your eyes."

But I wanted to close them.

I wanted to sleep.

I realized then that the bullet three years ago hadn't killed me.

But this moment had.

The realization hit me harder than the loss of blood.

I wasn't just disposable.

I was already forgotten.

I let the darkness take me.

It was warmer than Dante's love ever was.