Chapter 3

Alessia POV:

"Please," I begged, the word tearing from my raw throat. "I need to see him."

Isabella-Bella-didn't even look at me. She was examining her perfectly manicured nails, as if my entire world collapsing was a minor inconvenience.

"The Don is managing a significant transition of power," she said, her voice bored. "He can't be bothered with loose ends."

Loose ends. That's what I was. The final, messy piece of a successful mission.

Silent tears cut clean tracks through the grime on my cheeks. The finality of it crashed down on me, a physical weight that made it hard to breathe.

He never loved me. Not for a second.

I remembered the texts I'd sent him that morning, just hours before the wedding.

I can't wait to be your wife.

You're my forever, Dante.

I love you more than anything.

He never answered. I'd told myself he was busy. The truth was so much worse. He was preparing to destroy me.

My bag was on the chair in the corner. My phone was inside. They hadn't taken it. An oversight. A sign of how little I mattered.

My fingers trembled as I found his number. The one I knew by heart.

It rang twice.

He answered. His voice was clipped, impatient. "Yes?"

"Dante," I breathed, a sob catching in my throat.

Silence. Then, his voice dropped, each word a shard of ice. "This number is for Family business only. Don't call it again."

He hung up.

The dial tone buzzed in my ear, a sound more violent than any gunshot.

I tried again, my thumb hitting redial with frantic desperation.

A recorded voice answered. The number you have dialed has been disconnected.

The phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering against the cold tile floor. The sound echoed in the sudden, crushing silence of the room.

The pain that ripped through me was worse than the bullet wound. It was a hemorrhage of the soul.

He hadn't just left me. He had erased me.

The days that followed blurred into a haze of sterile solitude and Bella's relentless questions. I was a prisoner, not a patient.

To them, I was the Scorpion's daughter. Tainted. An outcast.

But a stubborn, foolish part of me refused to believe it all. Refused to believe the loving father who taught me to ride a bike and read me bedtime stories was the monster they claimed he was.

They were lying about him. Just like Dante had lied about everything.

They had to be.