The charity auction was less a gathering and more a battlefield disguised in silk and shadows. A sea of black tuxedos and glittering diamonds stretched out before me.

I wasn't supposed to be here.

Dante had explicitly told me to stay home, dismissing the evening as "tedious family politics."

But Marco, bless his well-meaning but confused heart, had sent a driver for me, assuming Dante had simply forgotten to issue the invitation. I couldn't refuse without raising questions I wasn't prepared to answer.

So, I stood in the periphery, half-hidden by the cold shadow of a marble pillar, watching.

Dante stood in the center of the room. He didn't just occupy the space; he commanded it. He looked like a king. Lethal. Beautiful. Untouchable.

And Sofia was next to him.

She was wearing red. The color of warning. The color of blood.

She was laughing, her hand lingering on his bicep, her lips brushing his ear as she whispered secrets I would never hear.

Suddenly, the atmosphere shifted. The air grew heavy, charged with static.

Three men from the Russo family approached them. They were drunk, their voices too loud for the polite hum of the room.

One of them grabbed Sofia's arm, his grip visibly rough.

"Look at the little princess," the man sneered, his words slurring. "Crawling back to the big bad wolf now that daddy is broke?"

Sofia let out a sound-a sharp, theatrical cry that cut through the noise like glass.

Dante moved faster than thought.

He seized the man's wrist and torqued it. The sickening crunch of bone snapping echoed through the hall.

Chaos erupted.

Security swarmed. People screamed. Champagne glasses shattered.

Dante shoved the man back, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated violence.

"Get back!" Dante roared.

He swung his arm backward to clear a perimeter, creating a protective circle around Sofia.

He didn't see me.

He didn't know I had stepped forward, instinctively trying to reach him, to pull him back from the edge.

His heavy forearm slammed into my chest with the force of a battering ram.

I flew backward.

My head cracked against the sharp edge of the marble pillar.

White light exploded behind my eyes, blinding and absolute.

I crumpled to the floor, my vision swimming.

Warmth trickled down my neck. Thick. Metallic. Blood.

"Dante..." I gasped, the air knocked from my lungs.

But he wasn't looking at me.

He was kneeling on the floor, his attention entirely consumed by Sofia, holding her ankle with gentle hands.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her, his voice frantic, stripped of its usual composure. "Did they touch you?"

"My ankle," Sofia sobbed, clutching his lapels. "I think I twisted it. Oh god, Dante, take me away."

He scooped her up in his arms without hesitation.

He walked right past me.

His expensive Italian leather shoes stepped squarely into a fresh droplet of my blood on the polished floor.

He didn't look down.

He carried her out of the hall like she was porcelain, leaving me bleeding on the cold stone, invisible in the wreckage.

I stitched the wound myself in the bathroom of the penthouse.

Four stitches.

I didn't use anesthetic. The sharp bite of the needle in my scalp was a welcome distraction from the gaping hole in my chest.

I sat on the bathroom tiles all night, staring at the door, waiting for the handle to turn.

It didn't.

The next morning, my phone rang.

"Velvet Lounge. VIP Room 703. Now," Dante's voice was ice. Absolute zero.

He hung up before I could breathe a word.

I pulled on a high-necked sweater to hide the bandage and hailed a cab, my head still throbbing in time with my heart.

When I walked into the private room, the air was thick with acrid cigar smoke and suffocating tension.

Dante was sitting on the leather sofa, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. Sofia was next to him, her foot propped up on a velvet pillow, wrapped dramatically in an ace bandage.

She looked perfect. Not a hair out of place. A pristine victim.

Dante looked at me with eyes I didn't recognize. They were void of any warmth, any recognition of who I was to him.

"Explain," he said.

"Explain what?" I asked, keeping my voice steady despite the trembling in my hands.

"The men at the auction," Dante said, his voice low and dangerous. "The Russos."

"What about them?"

"Sofia says you know them," Dante said. "She says she saw you signaling them before they approached her."

I looked at Sofia, stunned.

She offered me a sad, pitying smile. It was a masterful performance. "Elena, I know you're jealous. But to hire thugs to scare me? That's dangerous. You could have gotten Dante hurt."

My jaw dropped.

"You think I hired the Russo family?" I asked, looking back at Dante, searching for sanity. "Dante, I was standing in the corner. You hit me. You knocked me out."

"Don't lie to me!" Dante slammed his hand on the table, making the crystal glasses jump.

I flinched, the sound echoing like a gunshot.

"I saw the security footage, Elena," he snarled. "You were there. Watching. Waiting."

"I was waiting for *you*," I whispered, the truth sounding pathetic even to my own ears.

"You're lucky I don't kill you for endangering the future Donna," Dante spat, the title hanging in the air like a guillotine blade. "But because of what you did for me in the past... I will show mercy."

Mercy.

He pointed a finger at Sofia.

"Apologize," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Apologize to her. On your knees."

Chapter 3

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