When I finally reached the house and pushed the heavy front door open, the sound of Serafina's sobs filled the living room. She sat on the leather sofa beneath the dim chandelier light, trembling as she cried in Dante's arms. Two of the Moretti soldiers stood near the far wall, gazes averted, hands clasped in front of them as though the scene unfolding on the couch were something sacred and private rather than a performance polished to a shine.

"Dante, I don't want to go through with the alliance marriage. I don't want to marry that lunatic. He's cruel and brutal. The Sisters from previous alliance marriages… they all died." Her voice broke on the word, and her lower lashes fluttered once too quickly before she pressed her face deeper against his shoulder. "Why does it have to be me and not Bianca?"

Dante stroked her back gently. His voice was soothing and tender, the same voice that had once made my chest bloom with warmth and now only hollowed it out. "Don't worry. With me here, no one will dare force you. It doesn't matter who has to go through with the alliance marriage. It won't be you."

My parents immediately chimed in, their voices full of reassurance. My father stood by the liquor cabinet, one thumb tapping once against the marble surface before he spoke, already reducing flesh and blood to arithmetic. "Don't worry, sweetheart. We would never agree to let you go. We'll protect you."

My mother sat in the wingback chair closest to Serafina, smoothing a wrinkle that was not there on the arm of her blouse, her expression already rewriting whatever inconvenient truth might have lingered from the night before. "You're our girl. No one touches you."

I stood silently at the doorway. No one turned to look at me. The soldiers did not shift. The warmth of the room, the low amber glow of the lamps, the faint scent of my father's tobacco, all of it curled around them like a wall I could not enter. Without a word, I walked straight to my room.

The moment the door clicked shut, memories flooded my mind like a relentless tide.

I remembered the time I casually mentioned wanting to see the sunrise. That very night, Dante chartered a private jet to fly me to a remote island. He even built a special observation deck so I could watch the sunrise in comfort. I remembered the feel of the wind at that altitude, how I had believed the whole gesture meant I was irreplaceable to him, as though a man who could reshape a coastline for a woman's whim would never let her stand alone in a hallway while her blood dried on her clothes.

Just to make me smile, he spent hundreds of millions creating a paradise for me. He took me skiing in the Alps, chased the aurora by my side, cooked my favorite dishes again and again and traveled with me to the farthest corners of the world. Every trip had felt like proof. Every meal he set in front of me had tasted like a promise.

Dante documented every moment we spent together, as if each memory was a treasure. Back then, I truly believed he was my one and only. But now I understood that he barely loved me. It was because I was just a passing novelty, a distraction. Something shiny a man picks up because the light catches it, and sets down the moment something shinier cries in his arms on a leather sofa.

I quickly wiped my tears away while I pulled a small recorder from my pocket and took out the memory card. My thumbnail pressed into the inside of my wrist until a pale crescent appeared, steadying the tremor in my hands. I placed the card, along with the prison's surveillance footage, into an envelope and sent it to Sofia.

As I stared at the files on the screen, a bitter taste rose in my throat. At first, I'd only planned to record Serafina pretending to be pitiful in front of Dante and my parents. But in the end, I had also captured proof of her ordering The Sisters to beat me. The footage was ugly. The audio was worse. And now it lived outside this house, outside Moretti reach, in the hands of the only person who would touch a file's edge before pressing play and know whether the truth inside was intact.

The moment the files were successfully sent, I heard familiar footsteps outside my door.

My heart tightened. The door opened quietly. Dante's tall figure appeared in the doorway, backlit by the corridor sconce so that his face was half in shadow. Before I could react, he crossed the room in a few strides and pulled me tightly into his arms. The scent of cedar still clung to him, the same cologne he had worn the first night he kissed me on the rooftop of the Falcone estate, but it only made me feel suffocated now. His arms locked around me the way a man holds something he is not willing to lose but has never learned how to keep.

Dante looked at me as if he was heartbroken. He then rested his chin gently on top of my head before he weakly whispered, "Forgive me, Bianca."

I couldn't help but be stunned in his embrace. My lips pressed together, unable to speak. But Dante didn't seem to mind my silence. He never did. Silence from me had always been permission to him.

He continued speaking softly, as though nothing had happened. "Don't be so hard on Serafina anymore. She's different from you. You're the Moretti Family's biological daughter. You already have everything. Besides, I'll marry you one day."

"But Serafina… she has nothing. It's normal for her to be sensitive. You should try to understand her, to be more patient with her."

"I have everything…"

I muttered those words that tasted bitter, which made me want to vomit. Everything. A name no one honored. Blood no one valued. A place at the table where the chair was never pulled out for me.

So, this was his apology. He didn't come here to truly say sorry. Instead, he came to make excuses for Serafina and to demand that I keep indulging her. The Falcone signet ring on his right hand pressed cold against my shoulder blade where his fingers gripped me, and I wondered if he even noticed the bruises beneath my clothes, the ones his silence had permitted.

Dante thought that a hug and a few soft words would be enough to erase everything. That no matter how deeply he hurt me, I would forgive him like always. Even if just yesterday, he had sent me home bruised, broken and covered in blood.

It seemed that Dante believed he could slap me ninety-nine times… and then hand me a single piece of bone to make me wag my tail and come crawling back.

I lifted my head and looked at his face. My heart ached so fiercely it felt as if it might shatter into pieces. Sadly, he was wrong.

The next morning, I was pulled from sleep by a commotion rising through the floorboards of the Falcone estate — voices, the grind of something heavy being dragged across flagstone, a hollow metallic clang that didn't belong in the manicured quiet of this household.

Still groggy, I sat up in the narrow guest room they'd given me. The sheets smelled faintly of starch and someone else's perfume, as though the linens had been pulled from Serafina's closet and tossed my way without laundering. A dull headache sat behind my eyes. Before I could orient myself, knuckles rapped against the door — three crisp, evenly spaced taps. The way the staff knocked here: neither warm nor cold, just efficient. Just enough to say they'd done their job.

"Miss, Mr. Falcone has arranged a fire performance troupe in the courtyard. He asked me to let you know you're expected downstairs."

I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist, felt the half-moon of pressure form against the bone. Expected. Not invited. Expected. There was a difference in this world, and the Falcone household enforced it without needing to explain.

I straightened my clothes — the same ones from the night before, wrinkled and stiff at the collar — and stared at the closed door, disbelief pooling in my chest like something cold and heavy. A fire performance. Did Dante Falcone genuinely believe that spectacle and showmanship could paper over what had been done to me? That I could watch flames leap into the air and somehow forget the way his family had discussed my future like a shipping manifest, every line item negotiable, every cost already absorbed? I had never liked these kinds of performances. The heat, the noise, the forced gasps of admiration. It was always Serafina who craved spectacle — the louder and brighter, the better. Not me. I had always preferred silence to applause.

I opened my mouth to refuse, the word already half-formed on my tongue, but the door swung open before I could speak, as though my consent had never been part of the equation.

Serafina entered first, her arm looped through Dante's with a possessiveness so practiced it looked like muscle memory. She wore a pale silk blouse unbuttoned one notch lower than modesty required, her hair swept into a careless knot that had probably taken twenty minutes to arrange. The sweetness on her face was instant, automatic — a smile that bloomed like something painted on porcelain, bright and hard and completely hollow. Her lower lashes fluttered once too quickly as she crossed the room toward me, and I knew before she opened her mouth that every word out of it would be performance.

She grasped my hand with both of hers, squeezing just hard enough to make the gesture feel like restraint rather than affection, and her voice dropped to that coaxing, honeyed register she reserved for moments when someone was watching.

"Bianca, come on. Just come downstairs. Dante's been planning this for a long time — all for you. If you don't go, he'll be hurt."

Dante stood behind her, framed by the doorway's heavy molding. His gaze fixed on me with a faint, cautious glimmer of anticipation, as though this circus in the courtyard were some grand peace offering and all I had to do was accept it for everything between us to reset. He rolled the signet ring on his right hand absently, one slow rotation over the knuckle, and his jaw was set the way it always was when he wanted to appear generous but couldn't quite hide the calculation beneath it.

"Let's just go take a look," he said. His voice carried the quiet authority of a man accustomed to having suggestions treated as orders. "Alright?"

The two of them were perfectly in sync — their timing, their expressions, the angle of their bodies toward me — like a well-rehearsed duet performed so many times the performers no longer noticed the artifice. I felt as if a heavy stone was pressing down on my chest, suffocating me. Each breath cost more than the last. But with Serafina's fingers locked around my wrist and Dante's gaze pinning me in place, I had no choice but to follow. I was dragged downstairs like a prisoner being walked to a verdict already decided.

The Falcone courtyard had been transformed. A makeshift stage of blackened iron and fireproof canvas occupied the center of the flagstone yard, surrounded by a cordon of rope and weighted stanchions. The morning air was already warm, but here, close to the performance area, the heat pressed against my skin like a living thing. A fire-breather stood at the stage's edge — bare-chested, scarred along the ribs, the kind of man who looked like he'd served time and found his talent afterward. He inhaled, tipped his head back, and sent a blazing column of orange-red flame shooting high into the grey sky. The heat reached me from six paces away, fierce enough to tighten the skin on my cheeks and dry the moisture from my eyes.

Serafina positioned herself at Dante's side with the ease of someone who had claimed that spot a thousand times. She leaned into him, whispering something against his collar, her lips brushing fabric, and then laughed — a soft, musical sound engineered to carry just far enough for me to hear. Dante responded without thought, the gestures instinctive and damning: he wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead with his thumb, tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, let his fingers linger on the curve of her jaw a beat longer than necessary. They moved together like a couple deeply, effortlessly in love, and every tender motion was a blade slid between my ribs.

I stood off to the side. Completely forgotten. Just a silent observer, my thumbnail pressed into the crescent already forming on my wrist, watching the man who was supposed to be mine gentle another woman's face as though I didn't exist.

Then Dante's phone rang — a sharp, vibrating buzz against his jacket pocket that cut through the roar and crackle of the performance. He leaned close to Serafina, murmured something against her temple, and she nodded once with that practiced look of patient understanding. He stepped away, moving toward a shaded corner of the courtyard to take the call, his voice dropping into the low, clipped register he used for Family business.

And I was left with her.

I couldn't help but stare at the raging flames. The fire-breather had switched to a spinning baton, twin heads of fire carving arcs through the air, and the heat pulsed outward in rhythmic waves that I could feel against my breastbone. There was an uneasy feeling creeping over me — a cold, animal awareness that had nothing to do with the performance and everything to do with the silence at my side. My instincts screamed that something terrible was about to happen. The way the courtyard staff had drifted toward the far gate. The way no one stood between me and the cordon. The way the morning felt suddenly, deliberately empty.

And then I met Serafina's gaze.

The sweet, sisterly smile she had worn moments ago had vanished. In its place was a strange, twisted smirk — the corners of her mouth pulled tight, her eyes flat and bright and utterly without warmth — that sent chills racing down my spine. It was the expression of someone who had already decided what was going to happen and was merely waiting for the moment to arrive.

Before I could react, she lunged forward and grabbed my arm with a grip like iron, her manicured nails digging into the soft flesh above my elbow. The force of it stunned me — Serafina, who played at fragility, who let Dante carry her bags and hold doors — suddenly had the strength of someone driven by something far uglier than performance. She shoved me toward the flames, past the safety line, and the heat hit me like a wall.

"Ah!" I screamed. I struggled desperately to pull free, twisting my arm, planting my feet against the flagstone, but her fingers were locked around me and her weight was behind the push and the fire was right there, leaping and snarling and reaching for my skin with tongues of white-edged orange. The searing heat rushed against my face, my neck, the bare skin of my arms, and I felt something beyond pain — a raw, primal terror that turned my bones to water.

Then Serafina let go of me in a single, deliberate motion. And with a loud, pitiful cry that could have won her a theater award, she flung herself even closer to the fire, stumbling against the cordon, throwing her arms up as though she'd been the one shoved.

"Help me! Dante!" she screamed.

Dante's head snapped up the instant he heard her voice. The phone dropped from his hand, clattering against the flagstone, and he charged across the courtyard through the cordon like a man possessed. In one swift move, he scooped Serafina into his arms and stumbled back to safety, his body between hers and the flames, shielding her with every inch of himself.

After he managed to keep his balance, his face changed. The concern drained away and what replaced it was something colder, something rigid and grim that hardened every line of his jaw. He turned to me. His eyes blazed with fury — not the hot, impulsive kind, but the deep, settled rage of a man who had already decided the verdict.

Without warning, his hand struck my cheek with a sharp crack that echoed off the courtyard walls.

He shouted at me through gritted teeth, his voice shaking with a violence barely leashed. "Why did you push Serafina? Do you want to kill her?"

My ears rang. My whole body went still, stunned into a silence so complete I could hear my own pulse thundering behind my eyes. I stared at him, utterly bewildered, unable to comprehend what had just happened — how the world had inverted itself in the space of a heartbeat, how the victim had become the accused and the liar had become the wounded. Dante didn't wait for an answer. His expression twisted with disgust, and he shoved me hard with the flat of his palm against my shoulder.

I lost my balance and fell backward, hitting the ground. The flagstone was hot beneath me, baked by the radiant heat, and my shoulder struck the edge of the spreading flames — close enough that I felt fabric catch, felt the instant searing bite of fire against skin.

Immediately, I screamed.

The sound made Dante freeze. He looked down at me lying on the ground, my arm clutched to my body, smoke curling from the scorched fabric of my sleeve. For a brief second — one single, fractured moment — a flicker of heartache flashed in his cold eyes. Something human, something that remembered who I was to him, surfaced and then was smothered.

Because Serafina clutched at his chest, her fingers curling into his jacket, and weakly said, "Dante… Bianca looks more seriously hurt than I am. Take her to the hospital first…"

The performance was flawless. Her voice trembled at exactly the right pitch. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. Her lower lashes fluttered once — just once — and Dante looked at her as though she were the most selfless creature ever born.

Without further deliberation, he glanced back at me with visible disgust. Then he looked at the fragile woman in his arms, and his voice went cold and commanding — the voice of a man giving orders to soldiers, not tending to someone he'd once promised to marry.

"Take her too," he ordered the Soldiers. "We're going to the hospital."

Then he carried Serafina to the waiting car like she was the most precious thing in the world, cradling her against his chest, his hand cupped protectively over the back of her head. He did not glance back at me. Not once.

I lay on the courtyard ground. The pain in my shoulder deepened with each breath, spreading outward in waves that turned the edges of my vision white and then grey. The flagstone was rough beneath my back. Somewhere above me, the fire-breather had stopped his performance, and the silence that replaced the roar of flames was worse — a hollow, ringing emptiness that seemed to confirm what Dante's retreating back had already told me. I was nothing.

Just as the Soldiers' hands closed around my arms to lift me, the grey at the edges of my vision rushed inward, swallowing everything — the courtyard, the pain, the smoke, the sound of the car pulling away — and everything went black.

Thanks to the constant injuries, I developed a high fever that refused to break. I was unconscious for three full days. During that time, I had a long, vivid dream.

The dream was filled with warm light.

In it, I was never lost. My parents had never taken in Serafina. They loved only me, their blood daughter, the one they called their precious girl. Dante was still the same boy who used to wait outside the iron gate of the Moretti estate every morning, his coat buttoned wrong, just so he could walk beside me on the way to school.

Later, he told me he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me in a garden thick with climbing roses, away from the families, away from the arrangements that made marriages into territorial mergers. At the ceremony he held my hand and promised me forever, and his voice never wavered, and nobody in the pews was calculating what the union was worth in shipping routes or clean-money fronts. After we married, we had a child, a sweet and perfect thing. The three of us were a happy, whole family, untouched by the syndicate world that had shaped every other part of our lives.

But in the next moment, everything changed.

The warm light went out as though someone had cut the power at the fuse box. My parents' smiles turned cold. Dante's hand, the one that had been so warm around mine, became icy and distant, the signet ring on his finger pressing into my skin like a brand.

The three of them stood at the edge of a cliff. They were laughing, all of them, that particular cruelty that only people who once loved you can produce. And then they pushed me down into the darkness below. I woke with a sharp gasp, my chest heaving. My eyes flew open to an empty room in the family clinic.

My body felt weak and impossibly heavy. My shoulder throbbed with each pulse, a deep, nauseating ache that radiated down to my fingertips as I slowly pushed myself upright. My arm was numb and trembling. With great effort I pulled the IV needle from the back of my hand, pressed the cotton swab over the bead of blood, and slid out of bed. The tile floor was cold enough to make me flinch. The clinic was small, discreet, the kind of place the Moretti Family kept on retainer for injuries that did not need public hospital records. No police. No questions. Just silence and locked doors.

As I stepped into the hallway, I heard hushed voices coming from the nurses' station around the corner. I stopped. My bare feet made no sound on the linoleum.

"Look at those two young ladies from the Moretti Family. Their lives couldn't be more different."

"I know, right? Serafina only had a few minor injuries, but the Boss and his wife stayed by her side every single day, and Dante Falcone never left her for a second. Meanwhile, Bianca was seriously hurt and no one even came to visit her these past three days…"

One of them clicked her pen cap shut, and the other finished the thought she should not have said aloud: "Three days unconscious and not a single family member through that door. Not one."

Their whispers were crystal clear, cutting into my heart like a blade.

My knees went weak for a moment, but I steadied myself against the wall. I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist until a pale crescent appeared, letting the small, focused pain anchor me to the present, to the facts. Nobody had come. Not once. The fact did not surprise me. What surprised me was how much it still hurt, after everything, to have the proof laid out in the mouths of strangers.

It made me not hesitate. After that, I walked slowly to the nurses' station while holding on to the wall for support, and I signed my own discharge papers. The nurse behind the desk glanced up, glanced at my shoulder, and opened her mouth to object. I met her eyes and she looked away. In this world, you learned early: a Moretti daughter's signature was still a Moretti signature, even if the family treated her like a ghost.

When I returned to the Moretti estate, it was eerily quiet. The courtyard fountain trickled in the stillness. No soldiers at the front entrance, no staff moving through the halls. Everyone was out, orbiting Serafina like planets around a brighter sun. I went straight to my room and began packing. There was not much. One small suitcase. That was all I had left in a house where I had lived my entire life. One suitcase, and even that felt generous.

After I finished, I went downstairs to get some water. Just as I reached the living room, I heard the sound of laughter outside the front door. Voices, car doors, the particular note of a family arriving home in good spirits. They were back.

My parents entered first, carefully supporting Serafina as she limped inside. She leaned into them with practiced fragility, her bandaged ankle presented like a medal of war. Dante followed close behind. His eyes were full of tenderness as he looked at her. The four of them chatted happily, warmly, as if nothing had happened, as if I had not spent three days unconscious in a clinic bed two miles from where they stood.

When they saw me standing at the foot of the stairs, Dante's steps faltered. For a brief second, I caught a flash of heartache in his eyes as he noticed my pale face, the way my hand still gripped the banister because my legs were not entirely trustworthy yet. His right hand moved, almost involuntarily, and I watched him roll the signet ring over his knuckle once before he caught himself.

But before he could speak, my mother rushed toward me. Elena Moretti's voice was sharp and full of blame as she confronted me. "Bianca, what is wrong with you? Why didn't you tell us you were being discharged? Do you know how worried we were about you?"

My father immediately added his weight to the accusation. Salvatore Moretti stood with one hand resting on Serafina's shoulder, a display of protection so automatic it could not have been staged. "Serafina already explained what happened. She said she lost her balance that day and accidentally dragged you into the fire. Out of guilt, she pushed you away to save you. She didn't mean it."

He tapped once on the side table with the pad of his thumb, the gesture I had seen a hundred times before a negotiation reduced someone to a number. "And you… you're being ungrateful, leaving the clinic on your own and throwing a tantrum?"

Serafina lowered her head, her expression pitiful and weak, the portrait of a girl still suffering for her innocent mistake. But at the corners of her lips there was a subtle, triumphant smile. It was a smile meant only for me to see. Her lower lashes fluttered once, quickly, the way they always did when the lie mattered.

She looked at me like a victor claiming her prize.

I stared at them all and suddenly laughed bitterly. The sound was thin and hard in the marble foyer, and I saw one of the household staff freeze mid-step in the corridor behind them.

"Worried about me? So worried that during my three-day coma, you only cared about Serafina and never once came to see me?"

My eyes shifted to Serafina and I spoke coldly. "Serafina, this time you're claiming you 'lost your balance' again? You really do change your excuses quickly."

This time, I looked at them coldly. I was no longer the obedient girl they used to know, the one who swallowed every slight and called it love, the one who kept her head down because the Family demanded it.

I pressed my thumbnail into the inside of my wrist one final time, felt the crescent bite, and let my hand fall to my side. My voice was level and clear, carrying the way a warning carries in a quiet room full of dangerous people.

"Watch your precious daughter carefully. If she dares to lay a hand on me again, I won't hold back. If I'm not happy, I won't let her be happy either."

After that, I turned and walked up the stairs. I did not look back at their shocked and furious faces. I did not need to. I could feel the silence I had left behind me, heavy as gunpowder before a match.

This house. These people. They were no longer worth a single moment of my time.