Dante POV
The morgue reeked of antiseptic masking the sweet, cloying scent of decay. It was a perfume I knew well—the smell of my life, distilled into one sterile room.
The coroner looked nervous, shifting his weight from foot to foot. I paid him enough to be nervous. I paid him enough to be invisible.
"Show me," I ordered, my voice sounding like grinding stones.
He hesitated, then pulled the metal slab from the wall.
The body was... a ruin. Unrecognizable. Charred beyond any hope of identification. A blackened husk of what was once a human being, curled inward by the heat.
I gagged, the bile rising in my throat, but I forced myself to look. To witness.
"Height and weight match," the coroner said quietly, his eyes fixed on the floor. "Dental records were inconclusive due to the intensity of the heat damage, but the ring... the ring was found fused near the left hand."
I reached out. My hand trembled, a traitor to my composure. I brushed the sheet covering the remains.
"Elena," I choked out, the name scraping my throat. "I'm so sorry. *Tesoro*, I'm so sorry."
Tears, hot and foreign, burned my eyes and spilled down my face. I hadn't wept since the day they lowered my father into the earth.
Then, a sound broke the silence. A dull vibration against the metal tray.
I frowned, wiping my eyes. I looked closer.
Wedged beneath the charred remains of the hospital gown, shielded by the density of the body itself and pressed against the cold metal of the slab, was a small, black object.
A phone. A burner.
It was a miracle of physics that it had survived, wrapped tightly in layers of fire-resistant insulation tape that had fused into a protective shell.
I picked it up. It was still warm—from the body, or the fire, I didn't know.
I pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life, cracked but functional. One battery bar remained, blinking like a dying heartbeat.
There was a single video file saved.
I pressed play.
Elena’s face filled the small, fractured screen. She was pale, sitting in the hospital bed, the background unmistakably the room she had occupied before the fire.
Her eyes. They weren't the eyes of a madwoman. They were hollow. Cold. Already dead.
*"Dante,"* she said. Her voice was terrifyingly steady.
*"If you are watching this, then I succeeded. You broke me. You took my memories, you stripped away my dignity, and you tried to take my sanity."*
She leaned closer to the camera, the lens losing focus for a second before sharpening on her resolute expression.
*"You chose her. You chose the lie. So keep her. She is your punishment."*
She held up a match. The flame danced in her pupil.
*"I am not killing myself because I am weak. I am killing Elena Moretti because she loved a monster. And I never want to see you in the next life. If there is a hell, Dante, I hope you rot in it alone."*
The video cut to black.
The silence that followed was heavier than the grave.
"She... she hated me," I whispered. The words felt like glass in my mouth.
The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a psychotic break. It was a calculated escape.
She would rather burn alive than spend another heartbeat as my wife.
Pain exploded in my chest, a supernova of agony tearing through my ribs. My vision blurred into gray static.
I doubled over, a violent cough ripping through me. Liquid splattered onto the pristine white floor.
Blood. Bright, crimson blood.
"Mr. Moretti!" the coroner shouted, his voice distant, underwater.
The room spun on a tilted axis. I fell to my knees, clutching the phone to my chest like a holy relic, like it could save me.
I screamed.
It was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. It echoed off the steel walls, a requiem for the man I used to be.
Dante Moretti died on that cold morgue floor.
And in the hollow space he left behind, the devil took his throne.
