Chapter 2

Seraphina POV:

I spent the next two weeks in the hospital. Dante never came.

Not once.

He sent flowers. Lilies, stark white and funereal, that filled the room with a cloying scent I couldn't stomach. He sent gifts through an associate-cashmere blankets, expensive chocolates, books I'd never read. I donated every single one.

They were gestures of duty, not affection. Payments on an inconvenient debt.

I didn't need his gifts. I had my phone.

Isabella's Instagram was a curated masterpiece of my husband's devotion. A photo of their hands intertwined on a sun-drenched beach, his thumb stroking her knuckles. A video of him cooking for her in a rustic seaside cottage-the one he'd once promised me. A selfie of them wrapped in a blanket by a fire pit, her caption a sickeningly sweet ode to "true love" and "healing with my soulmate."

I felt nothing. The pain had been so sharp, for so long, that it had finally carved out a piece of me, leaving a clean, numb void. I looked at the images of the man I married doting on another woman, and it was like watching a movie about strangers.

When I was discharged, I went home to the echoing silence of the mansion. I was sitting on the terrace, a cool breeze on my face, when I heard voices from the garden below. Marco, Dante's most trusted Capo, and another of his men.

"He bankrupted her ex-husband," the man said, his voice a low grumble. "Used the Family's lawyers to run a personal vendetta. The Don is not happy."

Marco sighed, a heavy, weary sound. "He's always been obsessed. Since they were kids."

"I know, but last night was different," the man countered. I leaned forward, my breath catching in my throat. "He was drunk, out of his mind. Kept calling out a name. Not Isabella's."

My heart gave a foolish, painful lurch.

"He was calling for Seraphina."

I found him passed out on the sofa in his study, the room reeking of expensive whiskey. Empty bottles littered the floor around him like fallen soldiers. His tie was loose, his hair a mess. He looked... broken.

A traitorous part of me, a part I thought was long dead, wanted to cover him with a blanket.

He murmured something in his sleep, his brow furrowed in pain. I leaned closer, straining to hear.

"Isabella," he whispered, the name a ghost on his lips. "I'm sorry... sorry for five wasted years."

The man's words had been a lie. Or a mistake. It didn't matter.

"She's the perfect wife," the man's voice echoed in my memory. "The perfect Regina. Why can't he see what's right in front of him?"

Dante shifted, his lips moving again, a final, slurred judgment from the depths of his subconscious.

"She's not the one."

The words didn't feel like a stab. They felt like a key turning in a lock. I hadn't just been a wife; I had been a placeholder. I had wasted three years of my life trying to earn the heart of a man who saw me as nothing more.

A wave of profound relief washed over me, so pure and absolute it made me dizzy. The cruel, undeniable truth had finally, completely, set me free.