Chapter 5

Seraphina POV:

The airplane shattered the thick layer of clouds, and the cabin was flooded with a brilliant, almost violent, sunlight.

I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and felt a sensation I hadn't known in three years.

Release.

My new life was beginning.

Dante POV:

I jolted awake in Isabella's bed, a sharp, inexplicable pain seizing my chest.

It felt like my ribs were cracking, my heart being squeezed by an invisible fist.

"Seraphina," I whispered, the name escaping my lips before I was even fully conscious.

A sudden, cold panic washed over me-primal and overwhelming.

I needed to go home.

I needed to see her.

Now.

"Dante? What's wrong?" Isabella murmured, stirring beside me.

I ignored her. I threw on my clothes, my hands shaking, and grabbed my keys.

"Where are you going?" she called after me, her voice laced with irritation. "I thought we were having breakfast."

I didn't answer. I drove home at a reckless speed, my mind a chaotic storm of unease. The feeling that something was terribly, fundamentally wrong grew with every mile.

I burst through the front door, the sound echoing in the unnatural silence of the house.

"Seraphina!" I called out.

Nothing.

I ran through the rooms, my heart pounding against my ribs. Her office was tidy, her drafting table clear. I threw open the doors to our walk-in closet.

Her side was empty.

The neat rows of shoes, the colorful silks, the scent of her perfume that always lingered in the air-all gone.

It was a gaping wound in the heart of our home.

My phone rang. It was the housekeeper, Maria. "Mr. Santos, is everything alright?"

"Where is she, Maria?" I demanded, my voice tight. "Where is Seraphina?"

"I... I don't know, sir," she stammered. "The movers came yesterday."

Before I could process that, my other line buzzed. Isabella. I clicked over.

"She was here," Isabella said, her voice a hysterical whisper. "She came to my apartment while you were sleeping. She told me... she told me if I didn't leave you, she would ruin me. She said I stole you from her."

The words, the lie, slotted into the confusion and panic in my head. It made a sick kind of sense. A jealous wife, pushed too far. In my fractured state, it was the easiest narrative to grasp.

"Maria," I said, switching back to the housekeeper's call, my voice cold with anger. "When you hear from my wife, you tell her she owes Isabella an apology."

I hung up and stormed out of the house, heading back to Isabella's. But as I drove, a deep, gnawing unease about Seraphina's disappearance settled in my gut. It didn't feel right.

I got to Isabella's apartment and saw the show she was putting on-the shimmering tears that never fell, the dramatic performance. For the first time, it didn't stir my protective instincts. It just felt... hollow.

I had no time for this. An overwhelming urge pulled at me, telling me to go home, to wait for Seraphina, to prove this gnawing fear in my gut wrong.

I looked at the woman I thought I loved, the woman I had just wrecked my home for, and realized I was looking at a stranger.

And the woman I had ignored, the woman I had taken for granted, was the only one I wanted to see.