Chapter 4

Seraphina Vitiello POV

The water around me was diluting into a soft, sickening pink.

The cold didn't just touch me; it seeped into the marrow of my bones, numbing the fresh, searing fire of my torn stitches.

Dante stripped off his coat and wrapped it around Isabella's trembling shoulders.

"She tried to pull me in!" Isabella sobbed, burying her face into the solid wall of his chest. "She said if she couldn't have you, no one could!"

Dante's gaze shifted. He looked down at me.

I was struggling to find purchase in the shallow water. My heavy cast, now waterlogged, acted like a concrete anchor dragging my broken shoulder down.

"Is this true?" he demanded. His voice was zero degrees.

"Would it matter if I said no?" I asked. My teeth chattered so hard the words were chopped into pieces.

"You're pathetic," Dante said, his lip curling. "Trying to hurt your sister? After everything your family does for you?"

"Does for me?" A wet, jagged laugh tore from my throat. "They use me for spare parts, Dante. And you... you're just blind."

The muscle in his jaw ticked.

"Get out of the water," he ordered.

I tried. I slipped against the slick tiles.

He didn't offer a hand. He didn't move. He simply watched me struggle like a drowning insect in a glass jar.

It took everything I had to drag my body over the limestone rim of the fountain. I collapsed onto the pavement, dripping wet, shivering violently.

My parents came running out, a phalanx of bodyguards flanking them.

"My baby!" My mother shrieked, rushing past me to get to Isabella.

My father stopped in front of me. He saw the blood blooming on my hospital gown. But more importantly, he saw the defiance I refused to extinguish.

He stepped into my space and slapped me.

It landed with significantly more force than the strike in his office.

My head snapped back. The metallic tang of copper filled my mouth.

"You ungrateful bitch," he roared, his face purple with rage. "Attacking your sister? In public?"

"She pushed me," I whispered through split lips.

"Liar!" Isabella screamed from the safety of Dante's arms.

"Enough," Dante said.

The word was quiet, but it cut through the noise like a blade. He stepped forward. He was the Don here. His word was law.

"She needs to be taught a lesson," Dante said, his eyes devoid of humanity. "She needs to cool off."

My father nodded, understanding the code immediately. "The cooler?"

The cooler.

The hospital morgue. The overflow storage. It was kept at a permanent, preserving thirty-five degrees.

"No," I whispered, panic finally piercing through the shock. "Please. I'm bleeding."

"You should have thought of that before you touched her," Dante said.

He signaled the guards with a sharp jerk of his chin.

Two massive men hoisted me up by my arms.

Agony shot through my broken shoulder, blinding and white-hot. I screamed.

Dante didn't flinch. He turned his back to me, focusing entirely on wiping a stray tear from Isabella's cheek.

They dragged me through the labyrinth of basement corridors.

The air grew heavier, colder.

They hauled open a heavy steel door. The chemical stench of formaldehyde slammed into me.

Rows of body bags lay still on metal racks, waiting.

"Enjoy the quiet," the guard sneered, and shoved me inside.

The door slammed shut with a final, resounding boom.

Darkness.

Absolute, freezing darkness.

I slid down the wall, curling into a tight ball to preserve whatever heat I had left.

My wet clothes clung to my skin like sheets of ice.

My stitches were definitely open. I could feel the warm, steady trickle of blood mapping a path down my side.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

In the dark, my mind drifted back to the safe house.

I remembered Dante lying on a cot, his eyes bandaged, vulnerable.

I remembered the way he shivered from the fever.

*"I'm cold, Seven,"* he had whispered, his voice rough with pain.

I had climbed into the narrow cot with him. I had held him, pressing my body against his, whispering stories to keep him anchored to reality.

*"You're warm,"* he had murmured into my hair. *"You're the only warm thing in this world."*

I laughed in the pitch black of the morgue.

A tear froze on my cheek.

You were wrong, Dante.

I'm not warm anymore.

I'm finally just as cold as you.