Chapter 4

Dante POV:

I stared at the papers Alessia held out. Divorce. The word felt foreign, absurd. Rossis didn't get divorced. Our marriages were contracts sealed in blood and tradition, unbreakable bonds that held our empire together. It was a joke. Another one of her dramatic gestures.

"Sign it," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion.

Seraphina laughed beside me. "Oh, honestly. Just sign the silly thing, Dante, and let's go home. It means nothing."

"Yeah, Dad, just sign it," Nico urged, tugging on my sleeve. "Mamma's just playing a game."

They didn't understand. But then, neither did I. I took the pen from her lawyer and scrawled my name on the signature line without reading a single word. It was a piece of paper. It couldn't touch me. It couldn't touch us. I was Don Dante Rossi. I made the rules.

After I signed, I expected tears. I expected her to collapse into my arms, the game over. Instead, she just stood there, her eyes as empty as a winter sky. We left her there, standing with her lawyer in the cold, sterile lobby of the hospital.

Driving home, I felt a strange, hollow feeling in my gut. Like I'd swallowed a block of ice. It was the absence of her pain. I was so used to feeding on it, to using it as a measure of her love, that its absence left me starving.

The next few weeks were a blur of calculated cruelty. We played our parts, the three of us against her. We flaunted our happy family facade, hoping to crack her frozen exterior. Nothing worked. She was a beautiful marble statue in our home, present but untouchable.

Then came the accident. A fender-bender on the way back from one of Nico's appointments. A minor jolt. Seraphina, ever the actress, cried out that her injured ankle was in agony. I turned to her instantly, my focus entirely on her feigned pain.

It was Seraphina who pointed it out. "Dante, look. Alessia's bleeding."

I turned. A gash on Alessia's forehead was dripping blood down her face. She sat perfectly still, not making a sound, just watching me with those dead eyes. For a moment, I struggled. A part of me, a deep, primal part, wanted to go to her, to wipe away the blood, to hold her.

But the game, the habit, was stronger. "It's just a scratch," I said, turning back to comfort Seraphina.

"Just a scratch," Nico echoed, his voice a perfect imitation of mine.

Alessia didn't say a word. She took a handkerchief from her purse and pressed it to the wound herself. She took care of her own pain. She didn't need me. The thought was like a punch to the gut.

That night, everything changed. I had received a tip-a rival family, the Falcones, were planning a move. A warning. They wanted to show me they could touch what was mine. I thought it was a threat against my business. I was wrong.

I came home to chaos. My soldiers were shouting, the alarms were blaring. They had been taken. Both of them. Alessia and Seraphina.

We found them in an abandoned Rossi warehouse on the docks. They were tied to chairs, yards apart. And strapped to each of them was a bomb, the red digital timers counting down with terrifying speed. Less than five minutes.

"Boss, we can only get to one in time," my most trusted Soldier, Luca, yelled over the ticking.

Panic, cold and absolute, seized me. My mind raced. Seraphina was a valuable asset, a key executive in my legitimate front company. Losing her would be a logistical nightmare. Alessia... Alessia was my wife. My property. The thought of losing her was... unthinkable. It felt like losing a limb.

I ran to Seraphina first. Her hysterical sobs spurred me on. It was the logical choice. The family choice. Business before everything.

"Dante, help me!" Alessia's voice was calm, a stark contrast to Seraphina's shrieking. It was that calmness that sealed her fate in my mind. She was strong. She would understand.

I worked frantically on Seraphina's bonds. "I'll come back for you, Alessia!" I shouted, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "I promise! Just hold on!"

I didn't look at her. I couldn't.

I freed Seraphina and half-dragged her towards the exit. As we stumbled out into the night air, she looked back over my shoulder. A slow, triumphant, tear-stained smile spread across her face.

It was in that moment, seeing her victory, that I understood. The Falcones had nothing to do with this. This was not a rival family's move. This was a test. Her test. Seraphina had orchestrated the whole thing. The anonymous tip, the kidnapping... it was all a grand, twisted final exam to prove my loyalty to her.

A new kind of terror, colder and deeper than anything I had ever felt, washed over me. I had made the wrong choice.

The warehouse exploded behind us, a deafening roar of fire and shrapnel that threw us to the ground.

And in the heart of the inferno, I had left my wife. My Alessia. The heart of my world had just been extinguished, and I was the one who had let the fire consume her. A primal scream tore from my throat, a sound of pure, animalistic agony.