Chapter 3

Elara POV:

I watched them from my window, a tableau of staged grief. Isabella sobbed into Dante's chest, the very picture of a fragile, trembling thing. He held her, his broad back a fortress, murmuring words I couldn't hear. But I didn't need to.

I watched his lips form the familiar shapes of a sentence I'd heard a thousand times before. You're my wife. You shouldn't hide something like this from me.

The words were meant for her, but they seared themselves onto my own skin.

At the nurses' station, the gossip was a low, buzzing hum. Dante Moretti-the cold-hearted Devil, they called him-was a devoted husband. He'd flown in specialists from Johns Hopkins for Isabella. He'd bought out every digital billboard in the city to wish her a happy birthday last month. He'd had a man's tongue cut out for making a crude comment about her at a restaurant.

I returned to my room, numb. The lie of his "loveless contract" was laid bare, exposed under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital. His heart wasn't just occupied; it was conquered.

In the days that followed, I never saw him. But his name was a constant presence, always linked with hers. Mr. and Mrs. Moretti.

On the day of my discharge, they arrived together to pick me up. Isabella, her face a mask of saccharine sympathy, offered a flawless apology for the "terrible accident." She insisted I come to their third anniversary party at the Moretti estate that weekend.

"We're family, after all," she'd said, her smile never reaching her eyes.

Against my better judgment, I went. Some self-destructive part of me needed to see the wreckage up close. The estate was glittering, transformed into a monument to their love. A massive screen on the lawn played a looping video montage: Dante and Isabella in Paris, Dante and Isabella on a yacht in the Mediterranean, Dante and Isabella cutting a cake, laughing.

Then, a clip of him kissing her. It wasn't a perfunctory peck. It was deep, hungry, passionate. The kind of kiss he used to give me. The air turned to glass in my lungs.

"I never thought I'd see the Don so completely smitten," a woman whispered behind me. "She really tamed the devil."

I couldn't breathe. I stumbled away from the crowd, seeking refuge in the sudden quiet of the back garden. But even here, she had replaced me. My beloved white lilies, the ones Dante had planted for me years ago, were gone. In their place stood rows and rows of blood-red roses, Isabella's favorite.

A blur of black fur shot out from the shadows. It was one of Dante's prized hunting hounds, a massive, snarling beast. It barreled into me, knocking me off my feet. I landed hard on the stone path.

Isabella screamed.

I saw Dante's head whip around. His first, immediate instinct was to move in front of his wife, shielding her from a threat that didn't exist.

He saw me on the ground. He saw the dog. And he did not move.

The hound, agitated by the scream, turned on me. It lunged, its teeth sinking into the soft flesh of my calf. A searing, white-hot pain shot up my leg.

But the agony in my heart was infinitely worse.