Chapter 6

Elena POV

The rain had turned into a relentless downpour by the time Dante shoved me into the back of his armored SUV.

My temple throbbed where Don Salvatore had struck me, the blood drying sticky and cold against my skin. I didn't wipe it off. I wore it like the mark of Cain he seemed to believe I deserved.

"Drive," Dante ordered the driver.

He didn't look at me. He stared out the window at the gray blur of New York, his jaw set so hard a muscle ticked rhythmically in his cheek. The silence in the car was suffocating, heavy with five years of unsaid words and a lifetime of broken promises.

We didn't go to the estate. We went to the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Get out."

I stumbled out into the gale. It whipped my wet hair across my face, stinging my eyes. Dante walked ahead, his long coat billowing behind him like a dark wing.

He stopped at a section of the railing cluttered with rusted padlocks.

Lovers locked them there. They wrote their initials, locked the shackle, and threw the key into the river below. It was a promise of forever.

We had done this. Ten years ago. Before the blood. Before the lies.

Dante reached into his coat and pulled out a pair of heavy bolt cutters. The metal glinted dully in the streetlamps.

"Do you see it?" he asked, his voice flat.

I looked. It was there. A small, brass lock, tarnished by time and weather. *D & E*. Scratched into the metal with a pocketknife.

"I see it," I whispered.

He didn't hesitate. He clamped the jaws of the cutters around the shackle. He didn't look at me. He looked at the lock with a hatred so pure it terrified me.

"This is what your promise is worth," he said.

_Snap._

The sound was louder than a gunshot in the empty air. The lock fell into his hand. He didn't look at it. He wound his arm back and hurled it over the railing, into the dark, churning water below.

It was gone. Just like us.

He turned to me then. He reached into his pocket again, but this time he pulled out a folded piece of paper. He shoved it against my chest.

"Take it."

I took it. It was a check. The amount was staggering. Enough to buy a house. Enough to buy a new life. Enough to bury a body in the mountains.

"This is your severance," he said, his eyes cold and dead. "The wedding is in three days. After that, I never want to see your face again. If you are in this city when I return from my honeymoon, I will kill you myself. And this time, I won't stop my father."

I clutched the check. It felt light, flimsy. It was the price of my soul.

"I understand," I said.

He stared at me for a long moment, searching for something in my face. Maybe he wanted me to beg. Maybe he wanted me to cry. But I had nothing left to give him.

"Goodbye, Elena."

He turned his back on me and walked away. He got into the car and drove off, leaving me standing alone in the rain on a bridge full of other people's promises.

I looked at the water where our lock had vanished.

"Goodbye, Dante," I whispered to the wind.