Chapter 6

Elena Vitiello POV

He told me he was in Chicago.

He claimed the Commission had summoned him for a sit-down regarding the western territories. It was a lie that might have worked on anyone else. But I was a Vitiello.

I was raised knowing that silence usually meant violence, and travel plans were often thinly veiled alibis.

I didn't call him out. I didn't scream. I simply tracked the GPS on the vintage Mustang he arrogantly thought was untraceable.

He wasn't in Chicago. He was three miles away, at St. Jude's Hospital.

My driver-a man loyal to my father, not my fiancé-met my gaze in the rearview mirror as we pulled up to the emergency entrance.

"Wait here," I said.

I walked through the sliding glass doors. The smell of antiseptic and burnt coffee hit me instantly. It was the scent of disaster.

I didn't have to ask the front desk where he was. I heard his voice.

He was shouting at a nurse down the hall.

"Do you know who I am? Get a doctor in here now!"

I moved closer, hugging the wall, keeping to the shadows. I peered around the corner.

Dante was standing there. His white shirt was torn at the shoulder. There was blood on his knuckles, but I knew instantly it wasn't his.

And there, sitting on the exam table, was Mia.

She was crying, holding a bag of ice to her forehead. There was a small bruise forming there.

News reports on my phone had already started pinging. *Fazio Underboss in Street Brawl.* The headline claimed he fought three men who had harassed a woman outside a club.

He risked a police investigation. He risked the truce. He risked his standing in the family.

And he did it all for her.

I watched him cup her face. His hands-the very hands that were supposed to put a ring on my finger in forty-eight hours-were trembling with rage and tenderness.

"I'm sorry, baby," he whispered. "I should have killed them."

"You're so brave," Mia sobbed.

She leaned into him.

Then I saw it.

She raised her hand to wipe a tear, and the harsh fluorescent light caught the glint of a green stone on her wrist.

It was a jade bracelet. Heavy with gold and encrusted with diamonds.

My breath hitched. My stomach turned over in a slow, sickening rotation.

That bracelet belonged to Dante's grandmother. It was the Fazio matriarch's legacy. It was tradition. It was supposed to be given to the bride on the wedding day.

He had given it to the stripper.

He hadn't just given her jewelry. He had given her my heritage. He had given her my place in his family.

I felt a wave of nausea so strong I had to lean against the wall. It wasn't heartbreak. It was disgust. Pure, unadulterated revulsion.

I looked at him one last time. He looked pathetic. A man playing a king, yet ruled by his own weakness.

I turned on my heel. I walked back to the car.

"Drive," I told the driver.

"Where to, Miss Elena?"

"Away from this trash," I said coldly.

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just felt a cold, hard numbness spreading through my chest, calcifying my heart into a stone that would never beat for Dante Fazio again.